gin to make a living for
Anna. And there was no time to lose, either, for Henry's checking
balance was about to slide past the vanishing point.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to meet the gravely
sympathetic eyes of Mr. Theodore Mix.

* * * * *

Mr. Mix was fresh from an interview with Miss Mirabelle Starkweather.
Her acquaintance with him was slight, but from a distance she had
always esteemed him, partly for his mature good-looks, and partly for
the distinguished manner which had always been a large fraction of his
stock-in-trade, and was now to be listed among his principal assets.
Her esteem, however, applied to him merely as an individual, and not
as a debtor.

"I wanted to see you about a note," she said, primly. "A five thousand
dollar demand note you gave my brother four months ago. He endorsed
it over to me, and I wanted to see you about it."

Mr. Mix allowed his mouth to widen in a smile which was disarmingly
benevolent. The horse at Bowie had proved dark indeed,--so dark that
it had still been merged with the background when the winner passed
the judge's stand--and this colour-test had cost Mr. Mix precisely two
thousand dollars. Beyond that, he had paid off a few of his most
pressing creditors, and he had spent a peculiarly carefree week in New
York (where he had also taken a trifling flyer in cotton, and made a
disastrous forced landing) so that there was practically nothing but
his smile between himself and bankruptcy. Yet Mr. Mix beamed, with
almost ecclesiastical poise, upon the holder of his demand note, and
tried her with honey.

"Ordinarily, I'm embarrassed to talk business with a woman," said Mr.
Mix. "I'm so conscious of the--what shall I say?--of a woman's
disadvantage in a business interview. But in your case, Miss
Starkweather, when your executive ability is so well known and so
universally praised--"

She nodded, and took it without discount, but she wasn't distracted
from her purpose. "I hope it's convenient for you to pay it, Mr.
Mix."

"If it weren't convenient," said Mr. Mix, soothingly, "I should _make_
it convenient. When the sister of my oldest friend--a man who once sat
at the same desk with me, when we were young clerks together--when his
sister is in need of funds, I--"

"'T isn't that," she said, quickly. "I want this money for some
special reason."

He inclined his head slightly. "One of your favourite charities, I