to me in my own house!" Janet broke in, with
a flash of eyes. "You will walk out of that door this instant and
never set foot here again."

"Will I, you slippery young Jezebel? I'll do nothing of the kind until
I'm ready, which will be when you've handed over that paper. Don't try
to deny that you have it or Weir has it; I suppose he has now, and
I'll be forced to go shoot him down as he deserves. But I came here
first to make sure. It would be just like the rest of the schemes of
you two to have you keep it, thinking I'd be fooled. I have half a
notion to wring your white neck for lying to me to-day--lying, while
all the time you knew my son was hanging between life and death."

So savage was his voice, so threatening his visage and air that Janet
retreated a step. His hands worked as if he actually felt her soft
throat in his clutch; his huge body and big beefy head swayed towards
her ominously; while his eyes carried a baleful light that revealed in
full intensity the man's real brutal soul. Hitherto carefully coated
in an appearance of respectability fitted to a station of wealth,
influence and prominence, he now stood as he truly was, domineering,
repellant, lawless. Janet could at that minute measure the close
kinship of father and son.

"Fortunately a man in Bowenville recognized Ed, or I should never have
known he had been injured," Sorenson went on. "So your little scheme
to keep me in ignorance went wrong. The doctor 'phoned me about five
and I took my wife and we rushed there, and I have just this instant
returned. Do you know what the doctor says? Ed will live, but be a
life cripple, a useless wreck, a bundle of smashed bones, always
sitting in a chair, always eating out his heart. And all because of
you and that engineer! Ed was conscious; he told me the real story
about which you lied,----"

"I did not lie," Janet stated, firmly.

Sorenson made an angry gesture as if to sweep aside this declaration.

"He told me how you promised to slip away with him to spend a week in
the mountains, and how you warned this Weir so that the two of you
could trick my son and get him out of the way. You, who always
pretended to be so innocent and virtuous! And then Weir caused the
accident up there in the hills that has crippled my boy for life! Did
it to get him out of the path to you, and you helped, like the
traitress you are; and the two of you took the paper."

Janet's form had stiffened at these insulting speec