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“Will you allow me to make a suggestion or two? I think I can show you that you are in error in regard to the business itself.”

“Most gladly will I receive any suggestion,” returned Jordan. “Though I am not apt to seek advice–a fault of character, perhaps–I am ever ready to listen to it and weigh it dispassionately, when given. A doubt as to the result of the business, if properly carried out, has never yet crossed my mind.”

“I have always doubted it from the first. Indeed, I knew that you could not succeed.”

“Then, my dear sir, why did you not tell me so?” said Jordan, earnestly.

“If you had consulted me, I would”–

“I never dreamed of consulting any one about it. I had confidence in Mr. Barnaby’s statements; but more in my own judgment, based upon the data he furnished me.”

“But I have none in either Barnaby or his data.”

“I have none in him, for he has shamefully deceived me; but his data are fixed facts, and therefore cannot lie.”

“There you err again. Barnaby knew that the data he gave you was incorrect. I had, myself, demonstrated this to him before he went far enough to involve himself seriously. Something led him to doubt the success of his project, and he came and consulted me on the subject. I satisfied him in ten minutes that it wouldn’t do, and he at once abandoned it. Unfortunately, you arrived just at this time, and were made to bear the loss of his mistake.”

“You are certainly not serious in what you say, Mr. Page!”

“I never was more serious in my life,” returned the old gentleman.

“And you permitted me to be made the victim, upon your own acknowledgment, of a shameful swindle, and did not expend even a breath to save me!”

“I am not used to be spoken to in that way, young man,” replied Mr. Page, coldly, and with a slightly offended air. “Nor am I in the habit of forcing my advice upon everybody.”

“If you saw a man going blindfold towards the brink of a precipice, wouldn’t you force your advice upon him?”

“Perhaps I might. But as you were not going blindfold over a precipice, I did not see that it was my business to interfere.”

A cutting reply was on the lips of Jordan, but a thought of Edith cooled him off suddenly, and he in a milder and more respectful tone of voice, “I should be glad, Mr. Page, if you would demonstrate the error under which I have been labouring in regard to this business. If there is an error, I wish to see it; and can see it as quickly as any one, if it really exists, and the proper means of seeing it are furnished.”

The change in the young man’s manner softened Mr. Page, and he sat down, pencil in hand, and by the aid of the answers which the actual experience of Jordan enabled him to give, showed him, in ten minutes, that the more land he cleared and the more logs he sawed up, the poorer he would become.

“And you knew all this before?” said Jordan.

“Certainly I did. In fact, I built the saw-mill owned by Tompkins, and after sinking a couple of thousand dollars, was glad to get it off of my hands at any price. Tompkins makes a living with it, and nothing more. But then he is his own engineer, manager, clerk, and almost every thing else, and lives with the closest economy in his family–much closer than you or I would like to live.”

“And you let me go on blindly and ruin myself, when a word from you might have saved me!”

There was something indignant in the young man’s manner.

“You didn’t consult me on the subject. It is not my place to look after everybody’s business; I have enough to do to take care of my own concerns.”

Both were getting excited. Jordan retorted still more severely, and then they parted in anger, each feeling that he had just cause to be offended.