ager, was outside it, but he waited the outcome with little anxiety, for Dorsett already had conferred with him.
"Hale," said old Dorsett, "I'm obliged to give up soon; I might as well now while I can steer you into the place instead of Stanway. What's been the matter with you, man? Not a malignancy, as I've heard said."
"No," said Hale, as directly. "I was shot by a divorced husband in a flat up on the north side."
"Hmm!" Dorsett considered, his eyes narrowing with speculation; and Hale knew that he had heard that, too, and from what source. "What are the chances of it happening again?"
"It will not happen again," said Hale.
"You mean it will be impossible for it to happen again?"
"It will not happen again," Hale repeated; and Dorsett squinted his old eyes and let himself be satisfied with that.
So, about five o'clock, Charles Hale received invitation to the directors' room—where E. H. Stanway and one Stanway cousin, who had stood out against the rest, now were not; here old Dorsett seized his hand and introduced the new president of the corporation.
There was a touch of ceremony about it which surprisingly affected Charles Hale, and when at last he was alone and free to turn where he wished, he felt his new triumph more than he would have thought possible; it caused him to review his whole life,—to recall his boyhood in the little, plain, meager home in the Illinois town where his father had worked patiently and persistently for very little reward; to remember, particularly, his mother who had prayed for him and, more
