shoulders seemed to suggest all the power and mystery of
high finance.

Gloom indeed hung over him. For, when one heard him talk
of listed stocks and cumulative dividends, there was as
deep a tone in his quiet voice as if he spoke of eternal
punishment and the wages of sin.

Under his great hands a chattering viscount, or a sturdy
duke, or a popinjay Italian marquis was as nothing.

Mr. Boulder's methods with titled visitors investing
money in America were deep. He never spoke to them of
money, not a word. He merely talked of the great American
forest--he had been born sixty-five years back, in a
lumber state--and, when he spoke of primeval trees and
the howl of the wolf at night among the pines, there was
the stamp of reality about it that held the visitor
spellbound; and when he fell to talking of his hunting-lodge
far away in the Wisconsin timber, duke, earl, or baron
that had ever handled a double-barrelled express rifle
listened and was lost.

"I have a little place," Mr. Boulder would say in his
deep tones that seemed almost like a sob, "a sort of
shooting box, I think you'd call it, up in Wisconsin;
just a plain place"--he would add, almost crying--"made
of logs."

"Oh, really," the visitor would interject, "made of logs.