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 "Bah!" Old Two Blades barked. "You've got too much sense not to see that you can't break with me in a thing as big as this Hurricane Island matter and not break in everything." Mr. Boland looked quite incredulous, and Henry passed his hand blunderingly across his brow, as wondering how he could have made such a mistake himself; then all at once he understood and grasped at the explanation, for he did not like to appear a fool.

"With an ordinary man, Mr. Boland, yes," Henry discriminated; "but I did not think you were an ordinary man."

Mr. Boland acknowledged with an imperious nod that he was not an ordinary man, but started impatiently to say: "Because in this county alone twenty thousand families draw their living from my enterprises it doesn't follow that" When Henry broke out in exultant speech as if he suddenly accounted for his stupendous misconception.

"That's it exactly, Mr. Boland, your genius for organization has given you a twenty thousand man-power mind, and I—I guess I figured it had given you a twenty thousand man-power heart—a twenty thousand man-power conscience, too."

Harrington stopped abruptly, almost reverently, before what seemed to him a very large idea which he had stumbled upon; but Mr. Boland's long lips were already curling in scorn at the fantastic absurdity, and his sneer made him utterly unlovely! "Why do you do this rash thing, Harrington? Oppose me like this?" he reproached, with the very slightest note of consideration mellowing the gall of his bitterness.

"Because I told you once, Mr. Boland, that I would