It was, however, undeniable that he was a power in the Street.  No other man’s name was oftener mentioned in the daily journals in connection with some bold and successful operation.  He seemed to thrive on panics, and to grow strong and rich with every turn of the wheel.  There is only one stock expression in America for a man who is very able and unscrupulous, and carries things successfully with a high hand—­he is Napoleonic.  It needed only a few brilliant operations, madly reckless in appearance but successful, to give Ault the newspaper sobriquet of the Young Napoleon.

“Papa, what does he mean?” asked the eldest boy.  “Jim Dustin says the papers call you Napoleon.”

“It means, my boy,” said Ault, with a grim smile, that I am devoted to your mother, St. Helena.”

“Don’t say that, Murad,” exclaimed his wife; I’m far enough from a saint, and your destiny isn’t the Island.”

“What’s the Island, mamma?”

“It’s a place people are sent to for their health.”

“In a boat?  Can I go?”

“You ask too many questions, Sinclair,” said Mr. Ault; “it’s time you were off to school.”

There seems to have been not the least suspicion in this household that the head of it was a pirate.

It must be said that Mavick still looked upon Ault as an adventurer, one of those erratic beings who appear from time to time in the Street, upset everything, and then disappear.  They had been associated occasionally in small deals, and Ault had more than once appealed to Mavick, as a great capitalist, with some promising scheme.  They had, indeed, co-operated in reorganizing a Western railway, but seemed to have come out of the operation without increased confidence in each other.  What had occurred nobody knew, but thereafter there developed a slight antagonism between the two operators.  Ault went no more to consult the elder man, and they had two or three little bouts, in which Mavick did not get the best of it.  This was not an unusual thing in the Street.  Mr. Ault never expressed his opinion of Mr. Mavick, but it became more and more apparent that their interests were opposed.  Some one who knew both men, and said that the one was as cold and selfish as a pike, and the other was a most unscrupulous dare-devil, believed that Mavick had attempted some sort of a trick on Ault, and that it was the kind of thing that the Spaniard (his complexion had given him this nickname) never forgot.

It is not intended to enter into a defense of the local pool known as the New York Stock Exchange.  It needs none.  Some regard it as a necessary standpipe to promote and equalize distribution, others consult it as a sort of Nilometer, to note the rise and fall of the waters and the probabilities of drought or flood.  Everybody knows that it is full of the most gamy and beautiful fish in the world—­namely, the speckled trout, whose honest occupation it is to devour whatever is thrown into the pool—­a