“Not now,” he replied sturdily.
“Or of Mr. Bragdon? He mightn’t like it, you know.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of him,” laughed Roderick. “And I guess he will trust me—and you,” he added gently and with a chivalrous little bow.
Shortly the sleighs were brought round to the hotel. Grant was beside himself with delight when he discovered the extra rig for himself and Dorothy, and he laughingly shouted to Roderick: “I say, old man, you’re the best ever.” Soon the merrymakers were tucked snugly beneath the lap robes, and were speeding over the glistening expanse of snow to the joyous tinkle of the silver bells.
CHAPTER XXX.—WHITLEY ADAMS BLOWS IN
RODERICK WARFIELD’S election to a seat on the board of directors of the Encampment Mine and Smelter Company had for him a series of most unexpected consequences. He had had no knowledge that Uncle Allen Miller and a number of his financial followers in Iowa were now large stockholders in the corporation. Nor had he been aware that Major Buell Hampton, after his journey to New York, had visited the Keokuk banker. The Major had learned from his brokers in Wall Street that Allen Miller was on the market for this particular stock and had already acquired a considerable holding. Hence his flying business visit to Keokuk, which had resulted in the combination of forces that had gained the control and ousted Grady, Carlisle, and their pawns on the old directorate.
Major Hampton had since been in continuous correspondence with the banker, but had never for a moment associated the names of Allen Miller and Roderick Warfield as having any possible connection by relationship or otherwise. The selection of the new board had been left entirely in Buell Hampton’s hands after the banker had given his assent to the profit-sharing scheme. That assent had not been won without considerable argument. The plan upset all the banker’s old theories about industrial enterprises. At the same time the shrewd old man of finance was reading the signs of the times, and had long since come to realize that a readjustment of the relations between capital and labor was inevitable. He was all the more inclined to make this experiment, in the first place because he was not going to be bothered with the working out of the practical details, and in the second place because the magnetic personality of Buell Hampton had at once inspired him with confidence both in his ability to do things and in his integrity. Therefore the shrewd old banker had fallen in with the Major’s plans, and given him a free hand when entrusting him with the powers of attorney for himself and the other Iowan stockholders.
In point of fact there was another secret motive animating Allen Miller to this line of action. Unless he cooperated with Buell Hampton, the control would remain with W. B. Grady and his associates. And it was Grady whom the banker was after—Grady, the financial shark who had robbed his lifelong friend, General John Holden, of his underlying bonds in the original and now defunct smelter company, at the time when the amalgamation scheme had been devised to freeze out the first founders of the enterprise. General Holden had been the chief victim of this rapacious trick of financial jugglery, and Allen Miller was working secretly to undo the wrong. But the banker was animated not only by reasons of friendship. He had another incentive almost as strong. He wanted to satisfy his keen sense of personal pride toward Roderick Warfield. For the vital cause of quarrel between the old banker and the youth he loved yet had disowned was the unnamed girl he had thrust upon Roderick as a suitable bride because of her fortune. And this fortune had been proved to be illusory on the very day succeeding the rupture that had culminated in Roderick’s fine display of scorn and anger, when he had flung himself out of the banker’s room and started off for parts unknown to fight his own way in the world.