“I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Cereal. My friend Wycherley, sir. I have had the pleasure of your daughter’s acquaintance since last winter.”
The elderly gentleman smiles. Aleck notes the firm mouth under the mustache, and believes poor Adela will wait a long time ere she hears words of forgiveness for that error so far back in the past, the fearful blunder that ruined her life. Perhaps he does Samson Cereal a wrong, but judging from his strong features he believes him to be a stern man with whom justice goes before mercy.
“I have heard something about your meeting up at Montreal, and my daughter has told me certain facts that occurred last night—facts that stamp you a hero——”
“Sir!”
“Facts that make me proud to know you, young man. Let no false modesty cause you to belittle the deed. I claim that when a man takes his life in his hands and imperils it for parties unknown to him, who may be in danger, he rises above the ordinary plane and becomes a hero. Let us not argue the subject then. I am glad to meet you for your own sake—glad to know you. Let us sit down again. I have something to say that is of deepest importance to me.”
He drops into a chair, with one of them on either side. Both the young men show signs of excitement, and the veteran speculator is the cool one. Aleck is saying to himself:
“Dorothy has told him how she came to know me—what can he want to see me for,” and his bachelor heart persists in keeping up a trip-hammer accompaniment that is rather singular in a man who has been born and reared in the country of ice and snow.
As for Wycherley, his thoughts run about in this wise:
“Here’s Samson Cereal, the great grain operator, king of the wheat pit. Let me study him well, since fate has decided that I am to be in the same line. What would he say if he knew I had plunged on the markets and came out two million ahead on yesterday’s deal—what, indeed? I must use my ears—who knows but what in the course of his everyday talk he may drop some hints that I may seize upon, and use as a ladder upon which to mount to future success.”
“Mr. Craig, am I right in presuming that this is the gentleman who was with you last night on the Midway?” begins the operator.