“Now,” said Dane quietly, “I know that we have lost you, for a while at least.  Will you ever come back, Winston?”

Winston nodded.  “Yes,” he said.  “When time has done its work, and Colonel Barrington asks me, if I can buy land enough to give me a standing at Silverdale.”

“That,” said Dane, “will need a good many dollars, and you insisted on flinging those you had away.  How are you going to make them?”

“I don’t know,” said Winston simply.  “Still, by some means it will be done.”

It was next day when he walked into Graham’s office at Winnipeg, and laughed when the broker who shook hands passed the cigar box across to him.

“We had better understand each other first,” he said; “You have heard what has happened to me and will not find me a profitable customer to-day.”

“These cigars are the best in the city, or I wouldn’t ask you to take one,” said Graham dryly.  “You understand me, any way.  Wait until I tell my clerk that if anybody comes round I’m busy.”

A bell rang, a little window opened and shut again, and Winston smiled over his cigar.

“I want to make thirty thousand dollars as soon as I can, and it seems to me there are going to be opportunities in this business.  Do you know anybody who would take me as clerk or salesman?”

Graham did not appear astonished.  “You’ll scarcely make them that way if I find you a berth at fifty a month,” he said.

“No,” said Winston.  “Still, I wouldn’t purpose keeping it for more than six months or so.  By that time I should know a little about the business.”

“Got any money now?”

“One thousand dollars,” said Winston quietly.

Graham nodded.  “Smoke that cigar out, and don’t worry me.  I’ve got some thinking to do.”

Winston took up a journal, and laid it down again twenty minutes later.  “Well,” he said, “you think it’s too big a thing?”

“No,” said Graham.  “It depends upon the man, and it might be done.  Knowing the business goes a good way, and so does having dollars in hand, but there’s something that’s born in one man in a thousand that goes a long way further still.  I can’t tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.”

“Then,” said Winston, “you have seen this thing in me?”

Graham nodded gravely.  “Yes, sir, but you don’t want to get proud.  You had nothing to do with the getting of it.  It was given you.  Now, we’re going to have a year that will not be forgotten by those who handle wheat and flour, and the men with the long heads will roll the money in.  Well, I’ve no use for another clerk, and my salesman’s good enough for me, but if we can agree on the items I’ll take you for a partner.”

The offer was made and accepted quietly, and when a rough draft of the arrangement had been agreed upon, Graham nodded as he lighted another cigar.