squeeze a roadster automobile into that, also. With the remaining
ninety thousand, I took a flier in thirty-nine hundred acres of red
cedar up the Wiskah River. I paid for it on the instalment plan
--yearly payments secured by first mortgage at six per cent., and----"

"Who cruised it for you?" The Laird almost shouted. "I'll trust no
cruiser but my own David McGregor."

"I realized that, so I engaged Dave for the job. You will recall that
he and I took a two months' camping-trip after my first year in
Princeton. It cruised eighty thousand feet to the acre, and I paid two
dollars and a half per thousand for it. Of course, we didn't succeed
in cruising half of it, but we rode through the remainder, and it all
averaged up very nicely. And I saw a former cruise of it made by a
disinterested cruiser----"

The Laird had been doing mental arithmetic.

"It cost you seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars--and you've
paid ninety thousand, principal and interest, on account. Why, you
didn't have the customary ten per cent, of the purchase-price as an
initial payment!"

"The owner was anxious to sell. Besides, he knew I was your son, and I
suppose he concluded that, after getting ninety thousand dollars out
of me at the end of three years, you'd have to come to my rescue when
the balance fell due--in a lump. If you didn't, of course he could
foreclose."

"I'll save you, my son. It was a good deal--a splendid deal!"