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Victor Burns laughed cordially at his friend’s diatribe. It amused him thoroughly. McLagan was on his pet theme, which was an utter contempt and detestation of the city of Beacon Glory.

“That’s all right, Ivor,” he said. “You can’t run a branch of your bank and shout at the folks you do business with. For just as long as it’s my job collecting the dust folks don’t know better than to waste their lives chasing, Beacon Glory’s a deal bigger than ‘ace high’ to me. It’s a swell city that does a mighty big credit to the folks whose enterprise set it up—and made my living possible. You’re collecting oil in the big valleys, which is liable to leave you finding a queer sort of human fog lying about our principal avenue, but I’d like to say the ‘muck-hole’ of Beacon Glory don’t hurt your prospect a cent, and you’d miss its ‘beauties’ if the foolish ones had never dumped it down.”

McLagan laughed good-naturedly, and returned his cigar to its place in the corner of his capacious mouth. They were lounging in the office of Beacon Glory’s principal hotel, this engineer of the Mountain Oil Corporation and the chief banker of the place. They were something more than business acquaintances. A pleasant friendship existed between them, inspired perhaps by mutual esteem for the other’s integrity in surroundings which each knew to be something morally deplorable.