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 per?" Then he shook his head quickly with just the faintest suggestion of the air of a man who hastens to put away temptation. "No; I wouldn't feel comfortable—not in investing your money there."

But why wouldn't he feel comfortable? he asked himself, the instant he had made this kind of response, and Fay, not so much because of her husband's decision as because of the manner of it, was questioning also, but aloud:

"Sound—it's sound—the Judson-Morris Company, isn't it?" she asked. "The money would be safe, wouldn't it?"

"Sound? Safe?" George jeered at himself, and he laughed at her. "Secure as the future of the automobile," he declared.

Again his manner was and his confidence as firm as Gibraltar. The wife was as convinced as her husband.

But while this fond project of nest-building swelled George Judson's heart in moments when he could think of it, the sum total of his business energies was being absorbed by that most audacious and hazardous enterprise of a bold and daring career, the attempt to carry the Nemo model unimproved through a second year and double its total sale at the same time. It was understood by all that he staked not alone his reputation, but his fortune and the future of the Judson-Morris Motor Works. And who