be selling on the curb for about two cents a share."

"You do not mean just that, do you, Mr. Bartholomew?" asked Tom
Swift earnestly, and staring at the big-little man before the
fire.

Mr. Richard Bartholomew was just that--a "big-little man." In
the railroad world, both in construction and management, he had
made an enviable name for himself.

He had actually built up the Hendrickton and Pas Alos from a
narrow-gauge, "jerkwater" road into a part of a great cross-
continent system that tapped a wonderfully rich territory on both
sides of the Pas Alos Range.

For some years the H. & P. A. had a monopoly of that territory.
Now, as Mr. Bartholomew intimated, it was threatened with such
rivalry from another railroad and other capitalists, that the
H. & P. A. was being looked upon in the financial market as a
shaky investment.

But Tom Swift repeated:

"You do not mean just that, do you, Mr. Bartholomew?"

Mr. Bartholomew, who was a little man physically, rolled around
in his chair to face the young fellow more directly. His own eyes
sparkled in the firelight. His olive face was flushed.

"That is much nearer the truth, young man," he said, somewhat