just about to cry. His eyes were blue and far away, and his still, mournful face and his great bent shoulders seemed to suggest all the power and mystery of high finance. 

 Gloom indeed hung over him. For, when one heard him talk of listed stocks and cumulative dividends, there was as deep a tone in his quiet voice as if he spoke of eternal punishment and the wages of sin. 

 Under his great hands a chattering viscount, or a sturdy duke, or a popinjay Italian marquis was as nothing. 

 Mr. Boulder's methods with titled visitors investing money in America were deep. He never spoke to them of money, not a word. He merely talked of the great American forest—he had been born sixty-five years back, in a lumber state—and, when he spoke of primeval trees and the howl of the wolf at night among the pines, there was the stamp of reality about it that held the visitor spellbound; and when he fell to talking of his hunting-lodge far away in the Wisconsin timber, duke, earl, or baron that had ever handled a double-barrelled express rifle listened and was lost. 

 "I have a little place," Mr. Boulder would say in his deep tones that seemed almost like a sob, "a sort of shooting box, I think you'd call it, up in Wisconsin; just a plain place"—he would add, almost crying—"made of logs." 

 "Oh, really," the visitor would interject, "made of logs. By Jove, how interesting!" 

 All titled people are fascinated at once with logs, and Mr. Boulder knew it—at least subconsciously. 

 "Yes, logs," he would continue, still in deep sorrow; "just the plain cedar, not squared, you know, the old original timber; I had them cut right out of the forest." 

 By this time the visitor's excitement was obvious. "And is there game there?" he would ask. 

 "We have the timber-wolf," said Mr. Boulder, his voice half choking at the sadness of the thing, "and of course the jack wolf and the lynx." 

 "And are they ferocious?" 

 "Oh, extremely so—quite uncontrollable." 

 On which the titled visitor was all excitement to start for Wisconsin at once, even before Mr. Boulder's invitation was put in words. 

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