Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/344

332 of failure. And worse than this he would have to acknowledge before them that his father—his own father—was capable of actions that he himself could not approve. Ken's feeling of family loyalty fought hard. Was he to turn against his own father? Should he not stick to him, right or wrong? His affectional instincts tore at his decision. Slower and slower became his steps, as he pondered.

At the square devoted to the beginnings of a city park he turned in one of the paths and sat down on a bench beneath a pepper tree; and there fought the matter out with himself. So absorbed was he that for twenty minutes his attitude did not change by so much as a hair's breadth. At last he arose, his mind made up. The immediate, the insistent thing was to serve justice. If he could do anything to help Colonel Peyton, he must do it. He must be personally loyal to his father, and must make that evident to the others.

He found the situation unexpectedly easy. The members of the Sociedad glanced at his face, nodded gravely to his constrained statement that his father seemed too deeply involved with Eastern men to abandon the scheme, and dismissed that aspect of the subject. "We've been getting a few details while you were away," Corbell told him. "We know the amount of the notes and how much in arrears the interest is. Also we know that the mortgage is to be made over to Mr. Boyd the first of the month. That gives us four days. Now it remains to see if we can do anything."

"I've been thinking," suggested Kenneth, "that if I only had time to make the arrangements, I could get hold of my own property. That might help in some way." "Own property?"—"how much?"—"what do you mean?" cried Corbell, Carlson, and Frank Moore in a breath.

"I have an inheritance—from my mother," said Kenneth. "It would take care of about half of this thing, if I could realize on it. Perhaps we could fix up the other half somehow."

"You mean you'd use this?" asked Corbell.

"Why, of course."

"On what basis?"

"What do you mean?"