was recalling events of the long ago.     

       Roderick Warfield’s father and Allen Miller had as young men braved perils together in an unsuccessful overland trip when the great California gold rush in the early fifties occurred. At that time they were only boys in their ‘teens. Years afterward they married sisters and settled down in their Iowa homes—or tried to settle down in Warfield’s case, for in his wanderings he had been smitten with the gold fever and he remained a mining nomad to the end of his days. Allen Miller had never been blessed with a child, and it was not until late in their married life that any addition came to the Warfield family. This was the beginning of Roderick Warfield’s career, but cost the mother’s life. Ten years later John Warfield died and his young son Roderick was given a home with Mr. and Mrs. Allen Miller, the banker accepting the guardianship of his old friend’s only child.     

       The boy’s inheritance was limited to a few thousand dollars of life insurance, which in the hands of anyone but Allen Miller would have fallen far short of putting him through college. However, that was not only accomplished, but at the close of a fairly brilliant college career the young man had found himself possessed of a round couple of thousand dollars. Among his college friends had been the son of a well-to-do New York broker, and it was on this friend’s advice that Roderick had at the outset of his business life adventured the maelstrom of Gotham instead of accepting the placid backwaters of his Iowan home town. Hence the young man’s present difficulties and precarious future, and his uncle’s bitterness of spirit because all his past efforts on Roderick’s account had proved of such little avail.     

       At last the banker resumed his chair. The tightly closed lips showed that his mind was made up to a definite line of action. Roderick awaited the decision in silence—it was not in his nature to plead a cause at the cost of losing his own self-respect He had already returned the unopened bundle of mining papers to the inner pocket of his coat.     

       “As for any advance to meet speculative mining commitments,”       began the man of finance, “I do not even desire to know the amount you have had in mind. That is a proposition I cannot even entertain—on principle and for your own ultimate good, young man.”     

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