for the confinement of an office.

"You leave that to me," his father had answered, brusquely. "What you
don't know about business won't help you any in giving advice. You're
going into the diplomatic service."

Unfortunately for the smooth execution of Stephen Sanford's idea, the
whole country at this moment happened to be agitated over the discovery
that a member of the diplomatic corps at Washington had taken advantage
of his official position to secure plans and information, which he had
transmitted to a power unfriendly to America, but allied to the
government which he represented. The diplomat fled, ignominiously
disgraced; but as far as Allen could judge from the comment he heard,
his greatest sin was considered to be the breaking of the thirteenth
commandment, "Thou shalt not be found out."

All this prejudiced the boy unduly against diplomacy as a profession. In
his eyes the acts of this man were unsportsmanlike; and to Allen
Sanford, who looked upon a "good sport" as the noblest work of God, this
charge was the most serious in the category of crime. But his
expostulations and protests to his father were of no avail. Stephen
Sanford had made up his mind, and that was the end of it. Until he met
Alice, Allen had been more upset because his father still treated him as
a child than on account of any serious opposition to plans which he
himself had formed. He had never yet focussed himself upon any one
particular determination with sufficient strength to make his father's
objections other than an annoyance. But now, assimilating a part of the
girl's enthusiasm, and strengthened by the instant admiration which Mr.
Gorham commanded, he was determined to make a stand at this point,
taking the head of the great Consolidated Companies as his model, and