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 "But phony or not, I'm glad you did go after him, Henry, because I had thought you might be lying to me about that disappearing dead man of yours. Now I know that you were not."

Henry darted a charged glance at Old Two Blades. "I will never lie to you, Mr. Boland," he said simply and directly. "I am not going to boast that I'm a little George Washington; but lying is not my habit. It is seldom my refuge. I shall never lie to you."

The older man weighed the younger in his eye.

"You will though, Henry," he prophesied, faintly pessimistic. "Everybody lies to me. They think that's the way to get on with me. Perhaps it is—in part. I am weak and mortal. The truth is often ugly, unpleasant. Somctimes people tell me lies and I know they are lies; yet because they are pleasant lies, I like them for telling them to me. But when a young man—still so young that he knows the difference between the naked truth and a fawning falschood—says to me what you have just said, I pause and consider what a golden thing truth is, and how impracticable at times."

Henry gasped. "Why, Mr. Boland, you amaze me. You want men to lie to you?"

"Expect them to, rather, let me say; and I must trust my own perspicacity to know when they are doing so. Upon that knowledge my control of them is built."

"But you do not lie, Mr. Boland?" Henry's glance was frank and inquiring.

Before Mr. Boland could answer, Billie had entered rather abruptly, a bright vision in pink chiffon, with a high-piled coiffure.

"Count Eckstrom would like a word with you, father, before he goes," she said quite innocently.