Mr. Schuyler Tenney had never before been afforded an opportunity of studying a young gentleman of fashion and culture in the intimacy of his private apartments, and he looked about Horace’s room with lively curiosity and interest, when the two conspirators had entered the General’s house, gone up-stairs, and shut doors behind them.

“It looks like a ninety-nine-cent store, for all the world,” was his comment when he had examined the bric-à-brac on the walls and mantels, “hefted” a bronze trifle or two on the table, and taken a comprehensive survey of the furniture and hangings.

“It’s rather bare than otherwise,” said Horace, carelessly. “I got a tolerably decent lot of traps together when I had rooms in Jermyn Street, but I had to let most of them go when I pulled up stakes to come home.”

“German Street? I suppose that is in Germany?”

“No—London.”

“Oh! Sold ’em because you got hard up?”

“Not at all. But this damned tariff of yours—or ours—makes it cost too much to bring decent things over here.”

“Protection to American industry, my boy,” said Mr. Tenney, affably. “We couldn’t get on a fortnight without it. Just think what—”

“Oh, hang it all, man! We didn’t come here to talk tariff!” Horace broke in, with a smile which was half annoyance.

“No, that’s so,” assented Mr. Tenney, settling himself in the low, deep-backed easy-chair, and putting the tips of his lean fingers together. “No, we didn’t, for a fact.” He added, after a moment’s pause: “I guess I’ll have to rig up a room like this myself, when the thing comes off.” He smiled icily to himself at the thought.

“Meanwhile, let us talk about the ‘thing,’ as you call it. Will you have a drink?”

“Never touch it,” said Mr. Tenney, and he looked curiously on while Horace poured out some brandy, and then opened a bottle of soda-water to go with it. He was particularly impressed by the little wire frame-work stand made to hold the round-bottomed bottle, and asked its cost, and wondered if they wouldn’t be a good thing to keep in the store.

“Now to business!” said Horace, dragging out from under a sofa the black tin box which held the Minster papers, and throwing back its cover. “I’ve told you pretty well what there is in here.”

Mr. Tenney took from his pocket-book the tabular statement Horace had made of the Minster property, and smoothed it out over his pointed knee.

“It’s a very pretty table,” he said; “no bookkeeper could have done it better. I know it by heart, but we’ll keep it here in sight while you proceed.”

“There’s nothing for me to proceed with,” said Horace, lolling back in his chair in turn. “I want to hear you! Don’t let us waste time. Broadly, what do you propose?”

“Broadly, what does everybody propose? To get for himself what somebody else has got. That’s human nature. It’s every kind of nature, down to the little chickens just hatched who start to chase the chap with the worm in his mouth before they’ve fairly got their tails out of the shell.”

“You ought to write a book, Schuyler,” said Horace, using this familiar name for the first time: “‘Tenney on Dynamic Sociology’! But I interrupted your application. What particular worm have you got in your bill’s eye?”

“We are all worms, so the Bible says. I suppose even those scrumptious ladies there come under that head, like we ordinary mortals.” Mr. Tenney pointed his agreeable metaphor by touching the paper on his knee with his joined finger-tips, and showed his small, sharpened teeth in a momentary smile.

“I follow you,” said Horace, tentatively. “Go on!”

“That’s a heap of money that you’ve ciphered out there, on that paper.”

“Yes. True, it isn’t ours, and we’ve got nothing to do with it. But that’s a detail. Go on!”

“A good deal of it can be ours, if you’ve got the pluck to go in with me.”

Horace frowned. “Upon my word, Tenney,” he said, impatiently, “what do you mean?”

“Jest what I said,” was the sententious and collected response.

The younger man laughed with an uneasy assumption of scorn. “Is it a burglary you do me the honor to propose, or only common or garden robbery? Ought we to manage a little murder in the thing, or what do you say to arson? Upon my word, man, I believe that you don’t realize that what you’ve said is an insult!”

“No, I don’t. You’re right there,” said the hardware merchant, in no wise ruffled. “But I do realize that you come pretty near being the dod-blamedest fool in Dearborn County.”

“Much obliged for the qualification, I’m sure,” retorted Horace, who felt the mists of his half-simulated, half-instinctive anger fading away before the steady breath of the other man’s purpose. “But I interrupt you. Pray go on.”

“There ain’t no question of dishonesty about the thing, not the slightest. I ain’t that kind of a man!” Horace permitted himself a shadowy smile, emphasized by a subdued little sniff, which Tenney caught and was pleased to appear to resent, “Thessaly knows me!” he said, with an air of pride. “They ain’t a living man—nor a dead one nuther—can put his finger on me. I’ve lived aboveboard, sir, and owe no man a red cent, and I defy anybody to so much as whisper a word about my character.”

“‘Tenney on Faith Justified by Works,’” commented Horace, softly, smiling as much as he dared, but in a less aggressive manner.

“Works—yes!” said the hardware merchant, “the Minster iron-works, in particular.” He seemed pleased with his little joke, and paused to dwell upon it in his mind for an instant. Then he went on, sitting upright in his chair now, and displaying a new earnestness:

“Dishonesty is wrong, and it is foolish. It gets a man disgraced, and it gets him in jail. But commercial acumen is another thing. A smart man can get money in a good many ways without giving anybody a chance to call him dishonest. I have thought out several plans—some of them strong at one point, others at another, but all pretty middlin’ good—how to feather our own nests out of this thing.”

“Well?” said Horace, interrogatively.

Mr. Tenney did not smile any more, and he had done with digressions. “First of all,” he said, with his intent gray eyes fixed on the young man’s face, “what guarantee have I that you won’t give me away?”

“What guarantee can I give you?” replied Horace, also sitting up.

“Perhaps you are right,” said Tenney, thinking in his own swift-working mind that it would be easy enough to take care of this poor creature later on. “Well, then, you’ve been appointed Mrs. Minster’s lawyer in the interest of the Thessaly Manufacturing Company—this company here marked ‘D,’ in which the family has one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.”

“I gathered as much. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what it is all about.”

“I’m as transparent as plate-glass when I think a man is acting square with me,” said the hardware merchant. “This is how it is. Wendover and me got hold of a little rolling-mill and nail-works at Cadmus, down on the Southern Tier, a few years ago. Some silly people had put up the money for it, and there was a sort of half-crazy inventor fellow running it. They were making ducks and drakes of the whole thing, and I saw a chance of getting into the concern—I used to buy a good deal of hardware from them, and knew how they stood—and I spoke to Wendover, and so we went in.”

“That means that the other people were put out, I suppose,” commented Horace.

&ldqu............