bsolute rotter and then got on to the fact when
it was too late, I guess you wouldn't be very much like yourself, either.
I'm a confounded cad, Willa, and worse!" He dropped his head on his
hands with a groan. "I ought to be shot!"

"Well, that's a healthy sign," Willa observed cheerfully. "Lots of
people are rotters and never find it out. It's like a disease; when you
know what is the matter, you can usually find a cure."

"Sometimes it's incurable." His voice was muffled. "I'm in a hole and
there's no way out."

"Then climb up again." Willa paused and added deliberately: "Don't try
to burrow a passage-way through slime, Vernon. You'll only get in deeper
and deeper."

That brought his head up with a suspicious start.

"I say, what do you know about it?"

"Suppose you tell me?"

"You, Willa? You're the last person in the world--!" He broke off
hastily.

"Why? If you are in a scrape perhaps I could help you out of it."

"It's worse than a scrape! It's something beyond the pale; it's the sort
of thing they shoot a man for, down where you came from! Now you know!"

"Yes," responded Willa slowly, "I do know. Now tell me what that check
is, which Starr Wiley is holding over your head."

Vernon rose with blanching face.

"You heard! Good Lord, where were you?"

"In the furnace!" Willa dimpled irrepressibly. "Right in it, with the
ashes and all! And you stood talking straight down into the open
register, like a speaking tube."

Vernon cringed away from her in bitter shame.

"Then if you heard the whole thing, you know what a wretched cad I've
been, spying on you and trying to get information from you for that
bounder."

"I knew about that before, Vernon. When I met you leaving the club
yesterday and you tried to question me about Tia Juana, you made a
dreadful mess of it. I saw right through you and I realized for whom you
must be acting, but not why, of course." She drew a deep breath and
added in a matter-of-fact tone: "What's the matter with that check Wiley
has? Is it a forgery?"

He nodded dumbly.

"Whose name did you sign? I might as well know the rest, don't you
think?"

"Mason North's." His voice was a mere strained whisper. "I must have
been crazy to do such a thing!"

"What sum did you make it out for?"

"Four thousand dollars." He gazed at her as if hypnotized, replying
mechanically under the sheer dominance of her will.

"Was it for speculation or in payment o