sought to make converts. The charges seemed to him puerile and he listened with an air of aloofness.
It was intimated that "things" would be "made easy" if he were willing to undertake certain missions for which his attainments specially fitted him. He declined the loophole. "It's entirely a matter of principle," he maintained. Hence they did not make it easy for him.
"And serve him right!" said Hale's Turning, with the exception of Miss Todd, Mrs. Kestrell, Mrs. Barker, Becky States, Mr. Silva, old Silas and Phœbe Meddar.
Phœbe, overcome by the shock, wrote a letter in which she diffidently, and between the lines tearfully, attempted to creep back, to reassure him of her continued faith and goodwill and love. On the bottom of the sheet he wrote:
"The faith I'll keep on trust, Phœbe. The goodwill is still more acceptable, for on the cultivation of that article the salvation of the world depends. The love I'm sending back, dear, ever so gently, with your letter. You'll have wiser uses for it."
Of all the messages he received, that from old Dave Ashmill struck him as being the most apt. "You have two big faults, boy," wrote his former employer. "You're too smart and too honest for your own good. Let me know if I can do anything."
Paul smiled cynically. Old Dave's opportunism always prevailed over his generosity. That explained why Andrew Minas had died poor, when he ought to have prospered on just commissions for charters he had obtained for Ashmill. Paul knew that the patriot, Ashmill, would not trouble to put in a word with the authorities for a young man whom the profiteer, Ashmill, slyly admired. Simply because the shrewd profiteer had observed that his secretary had become bored with shipbuilding—as he became bored with everything in life that failed to add cubits to his spiritual stature. And old Dave, like most of the men Paul had encountered, was
