“Garry Webster!” Kenyon gripped the extended hand, equally delighted. “Why, old boy, this is a surprise.”

Webster shook Kenyon’s hand with the utmost vigor.

“Well, who would ever have thought to meet you here,” cried he. “It’s been all of ten years since I saw you last, Ken, and a good five since I heard from you; and here you all but knock the breath out of me before I’m in New York ten minutes. But I thought you were doing stunts in South America with a machine gun and a backing of barefooted patriots.”

“So I was, until a few weeks ago, but—”

[57]“Hold on, tell me about it later. Pile in here,” drawing him toward the cab door; “kick those bags and things out of the way. I’m for the Waldorf, and the biggest breakfast they’ve got in the place.”

[57]

A feeling of faintness in the stomach told Kenyon that breakfast was a thing that he stood rather in need of himself. So he got into the cab with Webster and they bore down upon the hotel.

“I’m just in from Chicago,” the red-haired young man told Kenyon, “going to look into the windings of the hardware business here, and see if we can’t corral some of the trade that has been lately taken from us.”

“Still traveling for Webster & Seybold, eh?”

“Bless you, no!” laughed Garry. “The governor took me into the firm three years ago. This is my first business trip since, and I wouldn’t be making it, only it’s something special. You see, a rival concern has been cutting into our eastern trade like sixty, and something had to be done about it. And as I am the only one in the shop that is sufficiently acquainted with this market, why, it was me to get busy with my trunks. Back there somewhere, in a freight shed, I’ve got about a dozen sample cases filled with the finest steel implements and sundries ever seen east of[58] Pittsburg. They are the limit, and no mistake. Webster & Seybold are out after the business of this section; and, as I block things out, when I’ve covered the ground, the entire harvest will be reaped and bound. I don’t intend to leave those other fellows opening enough to put in a pound of wire nails.”

[58]

Webster so laughed and choked and shook over this ideal if exaggerated prospect, that Kenyon, also laughing, was forced to pound him upon the back.

“You haven’t changed 

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