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 he was silent, thinking. "George," he said after an interval, hitching nearer, "I do hate to see those fellows get the screws on you—those particular three."

"And yet," argued George gloomily, "they're the three that got control for me in the first place. If anybody's going to trim me, they're entitled to."

"But not if they started out to trim you from the first," rebutted Simon Mumford quickly. "They had to see you get something from others before they could take it away from you. Supposing they were the ones who so industriously knocked you in financial circles over the Nemo failure just so they could get this chance to skim you like a pan of milk."

"Suppose they did!" exclaimed George flaring up. "Dod gast 'em, I'd like to beat them more than ever if it's possible they did that."

"It's not only possible, it's probable," declared Simon. "Look here now, George! I'm not so sure but I could find somebody else to underwrite those bonds, although of course none of these financial underwriters are in it for their health. Any of them might demand a taste of sugar—they might even demand as much as Blodgett, Tompkins, and Haley, but—"

"I'd rather pay it to them than to those three buzzards," asserted George, his mind having proved very suggestible on the possibility of