you. I need one hundred thousand dollars' worth of
lumber-mill machinery, blade saws, crosscuts, jackers, planers,
kickers, chain belting, leather belting, and everything else that goes
to make up a first-class plant. I can pay for it--in installments. I
guarantee to give you every cent above my current running expenses
until the bill is disposed of. My contract with the Mountain, Plains
and Salt Lake Railroad is my bond. I don't even ask a discount, or for
you to lose any of your profits. I don't even ask any public statement
by you regarding my innocence. All I want is to have you do what you
would do to any reputable business man who came to you with a contract
running into the millions of dollars--to give me credit for that
machinery. It's a fair proposition. Come in with me on it, and we'll
forget the rest. Stay out--and I fight!"

For a long moment, Kilbane Worthington paced the floor, his hands
clasped behind him, his rather thin head low upon his chest. Then, at
last, he looked up.

"How long are you going to be in town?"

"Until this matter's settled."

"Where are you staying?"

"The Touraine."

"Very well. I'll have a machine there to pick you up at ten o'clock
to-morrow morning and take you to my office. In the meanwhile--I'll
think it over."

CHAPTER XVIII

It was a grinning Barry Houston who leaped from the train at Tabernacle
a week later and ran open-armed through the snow toward the waiting
Ba'tiste.

"You got my telegram?" He asked it almost breathlessly.

"Ah, _oui! oui, oui, oui_! _Sacre_, and you are the wizard!"

"Hardly that." They were climbing into the bobsled. "I just had
enough sense to put two and two together. On the train to Boston I got
a tip about my case, something that led me to believe that the district
attorney knew all the time that I was innocent. He had conducted
experiments at the Bellstrand Hospital of which nothing had been said
in the trial. Three famous doctors had been with him. As soon as I
saw their names, I instinctively knew that if the experiments had
turned out the way the district attorney had wanted them, he would have
used them in the trial against me, but that their silence meant the
testimony was favorable to me."

"_Bon_!" Ba'tiste grinned happily. "And he?"

"It just happened that he is now in the mill machinery business. I,"
and Houston smiled with the memory of his victory, "I convinced him
that he should give me