“Well, old stick-in-the-mud,” said Orde as, at the end of two days, the men thawed out in a smoking car, “ducks enough for you?”

“Jack,” said Welton solemnly, “there are no ducks in Minnesota.  They’ve all come over here.  I’ve had the time of my life.  And about that other thing:  as soon as our woods work is under way, I’ll run out to California and look over the ground—­see how easy it is to log that country.  Then we can talk business.  In the meantime, send Bob over to the Chicago office.  I’ll let Harvey break him in a little on the office work until I get back.  When will he show up?”

Orde grinned apologetically.

“The kid has set his heart on coaching the team this fall, and he don’t want to go to work until after the season,” said he.  “I’m just an old fool enough to tell him he could wait.  I know he ought to be at it now—­you and I were, long before his age; but——­”

“Oh, shut up!” interrupted Welton, his big body shaking all over with mirth.  “You talk like a copy-book.  I’m not a constituent, and you needn’t run any bluffs on me.  You’re tickled to death with that boy, and you are hoping that team will lick the everlasting daylights out of Chicago, Thanksgiving; and you wouldn’t miss the game or have Bob out of the coaching for the whole of California; and you know it.  Send him along when you get ready.”

II

Bob Orde, armed with a card of introduction to Fox, Welton’s office partner, left home directly after Thanksgiving.  He had heard much of Welton & Fox in the past, both from his father and his father’s associates.  The firm name meant to him big things in the past history of Michigan’s industries, and big things in the vague, large life of the Northwest.  Therefore, he was considerably surprised, on finding the firm’s Adams Street offices, to observe their comparative insignificance.

He made his way into a narrow entry, containing merely a high desk, a safe, some letter files, and two bookkeepers.  Then, without challenge, he walked directly into a large apartment, furnished as simply, with another safe, a typewriter, several chairs, and a large roll-top desk.  At the latter a man sprawled, reading a newspaper.  Bob looked about for a further door closed on an inner private office, where the weighty business must be transacted.  There was none.  The tall, broad, lean young man hesitated, looking about him with a puzzled expression in his earnest young eyes.  Could this be the heart and centre of those vast and far-reaching activities he had heard so much about?

After a moment the man in the revolving chair looked up shrewdly over his paper.  Bob felt himself the object of an instant’s searching scrutiny from a pair of elderly steel-gray eyes.

“Well?” said the man, briefly.

“I am looking for Mr. Fox,” explained Bob.

“I am Fox.”

The young man moved forward his great frame with the easy, loose-jointed grace of the trained athlete.  Without comment he handed his card of introduction to the seated man.  The latter glanced at it, then back to the young fellow before him.