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 quite composed, Urleigh telling about himself and his adventures.

"You took a chance on solving the diamond mystery by running down to Hickman, and dropping down the river with that beast!" she commented.

"I had to trust him." Urleigh shook his head. "He told me a good deal; but waking or sleeping, he never said a word about the double robbery. He boasted all the while that he got his ready money slick, though. I wondered if that wasn't selling the diamonds to Judge Wrest?"

"It sounds that way," she admitted. "Now, he'll follow Murdong down and perhaps kill him. He'd do murder, that man Gost."

She told him what she had done—how she had discovered the diamonds in their case, and how she had wondered what to do with them, until Murdong drifted into Yankee Bar eddy and Mrs. Mahna sold her cabin-boat for her, because she didn't need both boats.

"I'd hid the diamonds in one of the pump-wells," she said, "and when I carried my things on to the gasolene boat, I just left them where they were—hundreds and hundreds of them. I didn't know what else to do with them. I might have sent them to Ofsten & Groner, but I didn't know how to do it. They would have traced back, you see, and when