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 remember how he put all the money he had into dirigible balloons? Well, everything was coming down and nothing going up with ’em, as you might say. Well, I know Edith as well as you do—although I married her. I was worth a million then, but I’ve run it up since to between five and six. It wasn’t me she wanted as much as—well, it was about like this. She had that bunch on her hands, and they had to be taken care of. Edith married me two months after you did the ground-squirrel act. I thought she liked me, too, at the time.”

“And now?” inquired the recluse.

“We’re better friends than ever now. She got a divorce from me two years ago. Just incompatibility. I didn’t put in any defence. Well, well, well, Hamp, this is certainly a funny dugout you’ve built here. But you always were a hero of fiction. Seems like you’d have been the very one to strike Edith’s fancy. Maybe you did—but it’s the bank-roll that catches ’em, my boy—your caves and whiskers won’t do it. Honestly, Hamp, don’t you think you’ve been a darned fool?”

The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was and always had been so superior to the crude and mercenary Binkley that even his Rh