“I’ve heard of you often from some of our officers, Mr. Watson,” he said.  “You deliver good goods and you’re a New Englander, like myself.  Ten years from now you’ll be an extremely rich man, a millionaire, twenty years from now you’ll be several times a millionaire.  About that time I’ll become president of Harvard, and we’ll need money—­a great university always needs money—­and I’ll come to you for a donation of one hundred thousand dollars to Harvard, and you’ll give it to me promptly.”

John Watson looked at him fixedly, and slowly a look of great admiration spread over his face.

“Of course you’re a New Englander,” he said.  “It was not necessary for you to say so.  I could have told it by looking at you and hearing you talk.  But from what state do you come?”

“Vermont.”

“I might have known that, too, and I’m glad and proud to meet you, Captain Warner.  I’m glad and proud to know a young man who looks ahead twenty years.  Nothing can keep you from being president of Harvard, and that hundred thousand dollars is as good as given.  Your hand again!”

The hands of the two New Englanders met a second time in the touch of kinship and understanding.  Theirs was the clan feeling, and they had supreme confidence in each other.  Neither doubted that the promise would be fulfilled, and fulfilled it was and fourfold more.

“You New Englanders certainly stand together,” said Dick.

“Not more than you Kentuckians,” replied the contractor.  “I was in Kentucky several times before the war, and you seemed to be one big family there.”

“But in the war we’ve not been one big family,” said Dick, somewhat sadly.  “I suppose that no state has been more terribly divided than Kentucky.  Nowhere has kin fought more fiercely against kin.”

“But you’ll come together again after the war,” said Watson cheerfully.  “That great bond of kinship will prove more powerful than anything else.”

“I hope so,” said Dick earnestly.

They had the contractor to dinner with them, and he opened new worlds of interest and endeavor for all of them.  He was a mighty captain of industry, a term that came into much use later, and mentally they followed him as he led the way into fields of immense industrial achievement.  They were fascinated as he talked with truthful eloquence of what the country could become, the vast network of railroads to be built, the limitless fields of wheat and corn to be grown, the mines of the richest mineral continent to be opened, and a trade to be acquired, that would spread all over the world.  They forgot the war while he talked, and their souls were filled and stirred with the romance of peace.

“I leave for Washington tonight,” said the contractor, when the dinner was finished.  “My work here is done.  Our next meeting will be in Richmond.”