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 that he was cheap. Besides, there was his new principle of thrift. He signed the contract in duplicate at that same desk across which he had boasted to Miss Marceau, "I shall never be retained by the other side"; and sat fingering the check for the retainer.

"You could make an awful hit with the old man, Henry, by investing that five thousand in the new cedar company," smiled Scanlon.

"I'm going to buy an auto—an auto built for two," answered Henry seriously, as if it was something he had thought over quite carefully.

Scanlon's yellow eyes lighted and his shoulders were shaken by a perceiving chuckle. "Oh, all right," he beamed, still in entire good-fellowship. "Spend it your own way. Our business is that you earn it."

Earn it! That was really a tactful expression which contributed to Henry's sense of comfort and good feeling; while now, as recognizing a new associate, he freshly considered Scanlon in the mass and on the hoof—Scanlon with that voice yonder in the dark, so identical with that voice which had ridden away in the coupé with Billie.

Just what was back of Scanlon, Henry wondered. He was a likable old buffalo—the Chief Counsel—but how thoroughly did Mr. Boland know him? Very thoroughly, no doubt, yet a study of Scanlon's broad, shrewd face did not tell Henry the story of their relations.

The story was that the two men had been associated almost from the beginning of things in Socatullo County. They had drifted into the timber together, a lawyer without clients and a king without a kingdom. Boland was ambitious and constructive; he employed