“Mr. Brummage fell in love with pig-iron?”

“Precisely.  He had been a dry-goods jobber, risen from a retailer somewhere in the country.  He felt a certain lack of dignity in his work.  He wanted to deal in something more masculine than lace and ribbons.  He read a sentimental article on Iron in the ‘Journal of Commerce’:  how Iron held the world together; how it was nerve and sinew; how it was ductile and malleable and other things that sounded big; how without Iron civilization would stop, and New Zealanders hunt rats among the ruins of London; how anybody who would make two tons of Iron grow where one grew before was a benefactor to the human race greater than Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon; and so on,—­you know the eloquent style.  Brummage’s soul was fired.  He determined to be greater than the three heroes named.  He was oozing with unoccupied capital.  He went about among the other rich jobbers, with the newspaper article in his hand, and fired their souls.  They determined to be great Iron-Kings,—­magnificent thought!  They wanted to read in the newspapers, ’If all the iron rails made at the Dunderbunk Works in the last six months were put together in a straight line, they would reach twice round our terraqueous globe and seventy-three miles two rails over.’  So on that poetic foundation they started the concern.”

Wade laughed.  “But how did you happen to be with them?”

“Oh! my friend Damer sold them the land for the shop and took stock in payment.  I came into the Board as his executor.  Did I never tell you so before?”

“No.”

“Well, then, be informed that it was in Miss Damer’s behalf that you knocked down Friend Tarbox, and so got your skates for saving her property.  It’s quite a romance already, Richard, my boy! and I suppose you feel immensely bored that you had to come down and meet us old chaps, instead of tumbling at her feet on the ice again to-day.”

“A tumble in this wet day would be a cold bath to romance.”

The Gulf Stream had sent up a warm spoil-sport rain that morning.  It did not stop, but poured furiously the whole day.

From Cohoes to Spuyten Duyvil, on both sides of the river, all the skaters swore at the weather, as profane persons no doubt did when the windows of heaven were opened in Noah’s time.  The skateresses did not swear, but savagely said, “It is too bad,”—­and so it was.

Wade, loaded with the blessings of his Directors, took the train next morning for Dunderbunk.

The weather was still mild and drizzly, but promised to clear.  As the train rattled along by the river, Wade could see that the thin ice was breaking up everywhere.  In mid-stream a procession of blocks was steadily drifting along.  Unless Zero came sliding down again pretty soon from Boreal regions, the sheets that filled the coves and clung to the shores would also sail away southward, and the whole Hudson be left clear as in midsummer.