ght break her before she would give in, but he bluffed it out.

"Come on!" he said. "There's no time to lose. I have sent for the
police though you make out not to believe it. I see you've been
writing on the table. Sit down and write me an order for the bonds."

"Break up our organisation on your say-so? Never!"

"If you don't the police will. Come now, whatever happens you can't go
on using those infatuated boys to further your own ends. That's low,
Corinna; that's like offering a starving man husks."

"You have your gun in your pocket," she cried passionately. "Use it,
for you'll never break my will!"

"It's not a bullet that waits you, but jail," said Evan grimly. "No
grand-stand finish, but endless dragging days in a four-by-ten cell!
Come on, give up the loot. You'll have to anyhow, and go to jail in
the bargain!"

"It's not loot!" she cried. "It's mine! By every rule of justice and
right, it's mine. Simeon Deaves robbed my father. Beggared him and
brought him to his grave!"

"Ha!" cried Evan, "I might have guessed there was something personal
here! But someone has to lose in the warfare of business."

"This was not the chance of warfare. This was malice, cold and
calculated. I'll tell you. It spoiled my childhood. Deaves and my
father were workers in the same church. You didn't know, did you, that
Deaves was a religious man. Oh, yes, always a pillar of some church
until his avarice grew so upon him that he could no longer bring
himself to subscribe. My father learned that he was using his position
in our church to lend money to other members at usurious interest, and
to collect it under threats of exposure. My father showed him up, and
Deaves was put out of the church. He set about a cold and patient
scheme of revenge, but we didn't learn this until the crash came a
couple of years afterwards. He bought up,--what do you call it?--all
my father's paper, the notes every merchant has to give to carry on his
business. At last he presented all my father's outstanding
indebtedness at once with a demand for instant payment, and when my
father couldn't meet it, Deaves sold him out, and we were ruined. It
killed my father and embittered my mother's few remaining years.

"That was what I grew up with. I don't know when it started, but the
determination to punish him grew and grew in my mind until it crowded
out every other thought. I planned for years before I did anything. I
followe