see at a glance that here was
a man who looked upon the world with a calculating eye. No fat and
genial miller was James Ellison. No grist that came from his mill was
likely to be ground finer than a business scheme put before him. He eyed
Colonel Witham sharply.

"Aha, Colonel," he exclaimed, in a slightly sneering tone, "bright and
cheery as ever, I see. I thought I'd like to have you drop in and
scatter a little sunshine. Sit down. Have a pipe?"

Colonel Witham, accepting the proffered clay and and the essentials for
loading it, sat back in a chair, and puffed away solemnly, without
deigning to answer the other's bantering.

James Ellison continued figuring at his desk.

"Well," said Colonel Witham after some ten minutes had passed, "Suppose
you didn't get me down here just to smoke. What d'ye want?"

"Oh, I'm coming to that right away," replied Ellison, still writing.
"You know what I want, I guess." He turned abruptly in his seat, and his
keen face shaded with anger. He pointed a long lean finger in the
direction of the town of Benton. "You know 'em, Dan Witham," he said,
"as well as I do. Though you didn't get skinned as I did. You didn't go
down to town, as I did twenty odd years ago, with eight thousand
dollars, and come back cleaned out. You didn't invest in mines and
things they said were good as gold, and have 'em turn out rubbish. You
didn't lose a fortune and have to start all over again. But you know em,
eh?"

Colonel Witham nodded assent, and added mentally, "Yes, and I know you,
too. Benton don't have the only sharp folks."

"And now," added James Ellison, "when I've got some of it back by hard
work, you know how I keep it from them, and from others, too. Well,
here's some more of the papers. The mill and a good part of the farm and
some more land 'round here go to you this time. All right, eh? You get
your pay on commission. Here's the deeds conveying it all to you--for
valuable consideration--valuable consideration, see?"

The miller gave a prodigious wink at his visitor, and laughed.

"You don't mind being thought pretty comfortably fixed, eh--all these
properties put in your name? Don't do you any harm, and people around
here think you're mighty smart. Your deeds from me are all recorded, eh?
People look at the record, and what do they see? All this stuff in your
name. Well, what do I get out of that? You know. There are some claims
they don't bother me with, because they think I'm not so