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Another day and another night he spent with his maps, and his books, and his figures; then he went to his broker with a list of railroads.

“Get me what stock you can of these,” he directed. “Pick it up as quietly as possible.”

The broker looked them over and elevated his eyebrows, There was not a road in the list which was important strategically, but he had ceased to ask questions of Edward Allison.

Three days later, Allison went into the annual stockholders’ meeting of the L. and C. Railroad, and registered majority of the stock in that insignificant line, which ran up the shore opposite Crescent Island, joined the Towando Valley shortly after its emergence from its hired entrance into New York, ran for fifty miles over the roadway of the Towando, with which it had a long-time tracking contract, and wandered up into the country, where it served as an outlet to certain conservatively profitable territory.

The secretary of the L. and C., a man of thick spectacles and a hundred wrinkles, looked up with fear in his eyes as his cramped old fingers clutched his pen.