ble. He had bought raw material lavishly, and worked it badly into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried to bully them when they asked for their money. They had insulted him, and threatened to knock off work, unless they were paid at once. "A set of horrid ruffians," Whiffler said," and his life would n't be safe many days among them."

"Withdraw, if you please, Mr. Superintendent," President Brummage requested. "The Board will discuss measures of relief."

The more they discussed, the more consternation. Nobody said anything to the purpose, except Mr. Sam Gwelp, his late father's lubberly son and successor.

"Blast!" said he ; 66 we shall have to let it slide!"

Into this assembly of imbeciles unexpectedly entered Mr. John Churm. He had set his Western railroad trains rolling, and was just returned to town. Now he was ready to put those Herculean shoulders at any other bemired and rickety no-go-cart.

Mr. Churm was not accustomed to be a Director in feeble companies. He came into Dunderbunk recently as executor of his friend Damer, a year ago bored to death by a silly wife.

Churm's bristly aspect and incisive manner made him a sharp contrast to Brummage. The latter personage was flabby in flesh, and the oppressively civil counter-jumper style of his youth had grown naturally into a deportment of most imposing pomposity.

The Tenth Director listened to the President's recitative of their difficulties, chorused by the Board.

"Gentlemen," said Director Churm, "you want two things. The first is Money!"

He pronounced this cabalistic word with such magic. power, that all the air seemed instantly filled with a cheer

ful flight of gold American eagles, each carrying a double eagle on its back and a silver dollar in its claws; and all the soil of America seemed to sprout with coin, as after a shower a meadow sprouts with the yellow buds of the dandelion.

66

Money! yes, Money!" murmured the Directors.

It seemed a word of good omen, now.

"The second thing," resumed the new-comer, "is a Man!"

The Directors looked at each other and did not see such a being.

"The actual Superintendent of Dunderbunk is a dunderhead," said Churm.

"Pun!" cried Sam Gwelp, waking up from a snooze. Several of the Directors, thus instructed, started a complimentary laugh.

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'Order, gentlemen! Orrderr!" said the President, severely, rapping with a paper-cutter.

"We must have a Man, not a Whiffler!" Churm continued. "And I have one in my eye."

Everybody examined his eye.

"Would you be so good as to name him?" said Old Brummage, timidly.

He wanted to see a Man, but feared the strange creature might be dangerous.

"Richard Wade," says Churm.

They did not know him. The name sounded forcible. "He has been in California," the nominator said.

A shudder ran around the green table. They seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a bison, in a red shirt and jackboots, hung about the waist with an assortment of six-shooters and bowie-knives, and standing against a background of mustangs, monte-banks, and lynch-law.

"We must get Wade," Churm says, with authority. "He knows Iron by heart. He can handle Men. I will

back him with my blank check, to any amount, to his order."

Here a murmur of applause, swelling to a cheer, burst from the Directors.

Everybody knew that the Geological Bank deemed Churm's deposits the fundamental stratum of its wealth. They lay there in the vaults, like underlying granite. When hot times came, they boiled up in a mountain to buttress the world.

Churm's blank check seemed to wave in the air like an oriflamme of victory. Its payee might come from Botany Bay; he might wear his beard to his knees, and his belt stuck full of howitzers and boomerangs; he might have been repeatedly hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut down and revived by galvanism; but brandishing that check, good for anything less than a million, every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his friend, and his brother.

"Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation," cried the Directors.

"But, gentlemen," Churm interposed, "if I give him my blank check, he must have carte blanche, and no one to interfere in his management."

Every Director, from President Brummage down, drew a long face at this condition.

It was one of their great privileges to potter in the Dunderbunk affairs and propose ludicrous impossibilities.

"Just as you please," Churm continued. "I name a competent man, a gentleman and fine fellow. I back him with all the cash he wants. But he must have his own way.

Now take him, or leave him!"

Such despotic talk had never been heard before in that Directors' Room. They relucted a moment. But they thought of their togas of advertisements in danger. The blank check shook its blandishments before their eyes.

"We take him," they said, and Richard Wade was the new Superintendent unanimously.

"He shall be at Dunderbunk to take hold to-morrow morning," said Churm, and went off to notify him.

Upon this, Consternation sailed out of the hearts of Brummage and associates.

They lunched with good appetites over the green table, and the President confidently remarked,

"I don't believe there is going to be much of a crisis, after all."

CHAPTER II.

BARRACKS FOR THE HERO.

WADE packed his kit, and took the Hudson River train for Dunderbunk the same afternoon.

He swallowed his dust, he gasped for his fresh air, he wept over his cinders, he refused his "lozengers," he was admired by all the pretty girls and detested by all the puny men in the train, and in good time got down at his station. He stopped on the platform to survey the land and water privileges of his new abode.

"The June sunshine is unequalled," he soliloquized, "the river is splendid, the hills are pretty, and the Highlands, north, respectable; but the village has gone to seed. Place and people look lazy, vicious, and ashamed. I suppose those chimneys are my Foundry. The smoke rises as if the furnaces were ill-fed and weak in the lungs. Nothing I can see looks alive, except that queer little steamboat coming in, the 'I. Ambuster,' jolly name for a boat!" Wade left his traps at the station, and walked through the village. All the gilding of a golden sunset of June could not made it anything but commonplace. It would be forlorn on a gray day, and utterly dismal in a storm.

"I must look up a civilized house to lodge in," thought