ng story, and
I'm not going to talk about it. With the money I took away from here I
began monkeying with real estate; it didn't seem that anybody out there
could lose just then: but I was a bad guesser. In five years I had
played in all my chips, and had to sneak around office buildings trying
to sell life insurance, which wasn't dignified nor becoming in a member
of the haughty house of Holton."

"Sam told me a different story. Why don't you tell the truth if you talk
about it at all? You gambled and lost your money--that's what happened;
and real estate speculation was only a side line. But Lois had money; I
suppose you played that away, too. Sam never seemed quite clear about
your relations with her."

"I guess he didn't! There's a queer woman, Will. The inscrutable ways of
Providence were not in it with hers. She hated me, but she wouldn't let
go of me; seemed to be her idea that shaking one man was enough and she
wouldn't let me make her a widow a second time. By George, I couldn't
shake her--I had to live off her!"

William shrugged his shoulders and scowled. It was incredible that this
could be his own brother who spoke thus of the gravest relationships of
life. And it was with a steady sinking of spirit that it was beaten in
upon him that this man had come back to plant himself at his door. He
was busy calculating the effect upon himself, his family, and his
business of the prodigal's return. He was shocked, disgusted, alarmed.

His wife had told him in the long vigil that followed her return from
Amzi Montgomery's house, when she learned that her brother-in-law was
sleeping off his spree in her guest-room, that Jack had to go. She was
proud and arrogant, and she had no idea of relinquishing her social
pre-eminence--not too easily won--in the town to which William Holton
had brought her to live out her life. One or two of the old families had
never received her with any cordiality, clearly by reason of the old
scandal. And where there are only seventeen thousand people in a town
the indifference of two or three, when they happen to include a woman
like Mrs. King, was not to be ignored or borne without rancor. William's
indignation was intensified as he reviewed Jack's disclosures from the
angle his wife had drawn for him in the midnight conference. His
curiosity was sharpened, however, as to the subsequent relationship of
Jack and Lois Kirkwood. Seattle is a long way from Montgomery and lines
of communicati