* * * * *

Mr. Melsom had left Ned and Strong together, having to attend to his own business which had already been sufficiently interfered with by his exertions on behalf of his pet theory of “getting things talked over.”  Ned had felt inwardly agitated as he walked under the great archway and up the broad iron stairway that led to the inner offices of this great fortress-like building, the centre of the southern money-power.  He had noted the massive walls of hewn stone, the massive gates and the enormous bolts, chains and bars.  In the outer office he had glanced a little nervously around the lofty, stuccoed, hall-like room, of which the wood-work was as massive in its way as were the stone walls without and of which the very glass of the partitions looked put in to stay, while the counters and desks, with their polished brass-work and great leathern-bound ledgers, seemed as solid as the floor itself; he wondered curiously what all these clerks did who leaned engrossed over their desks or flitted noiselessly here and there on the matting-covered flagstones of the flooring.  Why he should be nervous he could not have explained.  But he was cool enough when, after a minute’s delay, a clerk led Melsom and himself through a smaller archway opening from this great office hall and up a carpetted stone stairway loading between two great bare walls and along a long lofty passage, wherein footfalls echoed softly on the carpetted stone floor.  Finally they reached a polished, pannelled door which being opened showed Strong writing busily at a cabinet desk placed in the centre of the handsomely furnished office-room.  The great financier greeted Melsom cordially, nodded civilly enough to Ned and agreed with the latter’s immediate statement that he came, as a private individual solely, to see a private individual, at the request of Mr. Melsom.

“Now, where do we differ?” Strong asked, when Melsom had gone.

“We are you and me, of course,” said Ned, putting his hat on the floor.

Strong nodded.

“Well, you have sat down at your desk here and drawn up a statement as to how I shall work without asking me.  I object.  I say that, as I’m concerned, you and I together should sit down and arrange how I shall work for you since I must work for you.”

“In our agreement, that you refer to, we have tried to do what is fair,” replied Strong, looking sharply at Ned.

“Do you want me to talk straight?” asked Ned.  “Because, if you object to that, it’s better for me to go now than waste words talking round the subject.”

“Certainly,” answered Strong.  “Straight talk never offends me.”

“Then how do I know you have tried to do fairly?” enquired Ned.  “Our experience with the pastoralists leads us to think the opposite.”

“There have been rabid pastoralists,” admitted Strong, after a moment’s thought, “just as there have been rabid men on the other side.  I’ll tell you this, that we have had great difficulty in getting some of the pastoralists to accept this agreement.  We had to put considerable pressure on them before they would moderate their position to what we consider fair.”