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 spoke eagerly as a thirsty man hastens to water.

"We—I was scheming to find out what that thief's hold over you is, and break it."

"You and that young pup! You and that young pup!"

"It must be a dreadful thing when you'd kill a man at your own door to cover it up," she said.

"He's a liar!" Nearing sprang to his feet, striding menacingly toward her, his foot striking the pedestal of her harp, making the strings groan.

"He lied like the gentleman that he is—only to conceal the truth," she said.

"Trouble increased a hundred-fold the day he came to this range. Would to God his ship had gone down in the sea!"

"If you would be frank with him, with me!" she appealed, standing near him, her white arms outstretched in beseeching.

"Whatever it is I'm keeping from you, Alma, I am doing so for your own peace," he assured her, his voice sombre, steady. "And whatever this—this—hold, as you have called it, may be, it will be broken, I will be free to go on with my business plans and the redemption of my word to my trusting friends, the moment you marry Dale. It isn't—it isn't—a—a hard fate. Dale's a gentleman by birth and breeding, he's a man among"

"Thieves! No, If I can't have your confidence, you can't have mime. In the morning I'll leave this house, Uncle Hal. You and Dale Findlay can stand or fall together, as you deserve. Oh, poor old Uncle Hal!