gards Bellairs," I admitted. "The point I
am trying to make is that Bellairs himself may be mistaken; that what he
supposed to be a round sum was really an outside figure."

"Well, Loudon, if that is so," said Jim, with extraordinary gravity of
face and voice, "if that is so, let him take the Flying Scud at fifty
thousand, and joy go with her! I prefer the loss."

"Is that so, Jim? Are we dipped as bad as that?" I cried.

"We've put our hand farther out than we can pull it in again, Loudon,"
he replied. "Why, man, that fifty thousand dollars, before we get clear
again, will cost us nearer seventy. Yes, it figures up overhead to more
than ten per cent a month; and I could do no better, and there isn't
the man breathing could have done as well. It was a miracle, Loudon. I
couldn't but admire myself. O, if we had just the four months! And you
know, Loudon, it may still be done. With your energy and charm, if the
worst comes to the worst, you can run that schooner as you ran one
of your picnics; and we may have luck. And, O, man! if we do pull it
through, what a dashing operation it will be! What an advertisement!
what a thing to talk of, and remember all our lives! However," he
broke off suddenly, "we must try the safe thing first. Here's for the
shyster!"

There was another struggle in my mind, whether I should even now admit
my knowledge of the Mission Street address. But I had let the favourable
moment slip. I had now, which made it the more awkward, not merely the
original discovery, but my late suppression to confess. I could not help
reasoning, besides, that the more natural course was to approach the
principal by the road of his agent's office; and there weighed upon my
spirits a conviction that we were already too late, and that the man
was gone two hours ago. Once more, then, I held my peace; and after an
exchange of words at the telephone to assure ourselves he was at home,
we set out for the attorney's office.

The endless streets of any American city pass, from one end to another,
through strange degrees and vicissitudes of splendour and distress,
running under the same name between monumental warehouses, the dens
and taverns of thieves, and the sward and shrubbery of villas. In San
Francisco, the sharp inequalities of the ground, and the sea bordering
on so many sides, greatly exaggerate these contrasts. The street for
which we were now bound took its rise among blowing sands, somewhere in
view of the Lon