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Rh burst on him how far, how marvellously far, he had travelled since he last saw Jennifer. He laughed, exultantly, as becomes a man who had just discovered for himself something that is very new and hidden, and very sweet.

"No," he said. "But don't you understand, you owl? I can't eat a man's bread and betray him."

"Oh!" The short laugh held contempt. "Well, I can; especially when the man is Ducane." He sat down, crossing his arms on the chair-back. "In an album of Mrs. Ducane's I found two photographs of our wonderful West which I had seen before—in one of those prospectuses that old man from Tennessee showed us last week," he said.

"You don't mean that!"

"I mean it very certainly. Ducane is the man at this end of the string."

Tempest walked through the room in agitation.

"Even so, I hate to have you do it this way," he said.

"My dear fellow, with a good object in view it is allowable to stretch a point occasionally. I don't pretend to be very moral or very nice in my methods, or very honest, you know. But I have never shirked settling day yet, and if this matter puts me in a corner I hope I won't shirk it then. But I intend that it shall put Ducane in the corner instead. He won't be very pretty when he gets here, either. 1 have a notion that he'll cry."

"Dick, I can't allow this. It is degrading our work to do it this way."

"It is only when we cease to recognise degradation that it becomes complete. You may recognise it all you like, Tempest, but you will leave me alone here. You gave me a free hand, and I am going to take it. This case is big enough to make me if I pull it off."

"And you'll sell your honour for that?"

"I could not sell my honour at all—for obvious reasons. You know that I have the blackest sheet in the Force and perhaps the best record for the kind of work that some men don't care about touching. What those widows and maiden ladies and doddering old men are doing about this company which has corralled them, I can't say. But I