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THRU FIRE TO FORTUNE
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lose all of his money. He accused your father of being a robber, forgetting that he too was a gambler, and would have done precisely the same thing under the same circumstances. Franklin Bowers swore vengeance."
"And his throwing me out of the position that I had spent nine years working up to — from breaker boy — "
"To superintendent — exactly. He waited until you had reached the pinnacle, and then threw you off from
bigger fish to fry. I wanted a man who could succeed."
Tom looked at him gratefully. "Thank you," he said feelingly.
"Eleven years ago 1 was obliged to shut down operations in the coal mine that had been opened at the village then founded and called Mayflower. A faulty title and militant heirs brought the property into hopeless litigation, and the entire mining project was abandoned. I was nearly
if
BLAIR DISCHARGES TOM BARRETT
your dizzy height. Naturally, you felt that you had become a failure in life, for life, for everything."
"I'm not a failure, then?" asked the young man, half ruminatingly.
"I am president of the Black Diamond Mining Company," continued Pearce, ignoring his query. "It is possible that I might have saved you."
' ' That is what I wanted to ask you. Why didn't you?"
"There were two reasons why. Sooner or later you would have been undone again thru some piece of chicanery. But, better still, I had
ruined. But what hurt me most was the bringing of my name into opprobrium by the two hundred families that had been induced to move and settle in the hamlet of Mayflower. They fled from the place as tho it were accursed."
"That is, then, the deserted village?" asked Tom, significantly.
"Two years ago, after a nine years' wrangle, I had bought up full property rights and title. But I dared not try to repeat my former venture. T wanted a man, a confident, courageous young man — to hide behind."
"You are too big for any man I