azy that needs three hundred dollars?"

"Yes," Adams said. "They are if they ask ME for it, when I got to
stretch every cent I can lay my hands on to make it look like a dollar!"

"You won't do it?"

Adams burst out at him. "You little fool! If I had three hundred dollars
to throw away, besides the pay I expected to give you, haven't you got
sense enough to see I could hire a man worth three hundred dollars
more to me than you'd be? It's a FINE time to ask me for three hundred
dollars, isn't it! What FOR? Rhinestone buckles to throw around on your
'girl friends?' Shame on you! Ask me to BRIBE you to help yourself and
your own family!"

"I'll give you a last chance," Walter said. "Either you do what I want,
or I won't do what you want. Don't ask me again after this, because----"

Adams interrupted him fiercely. "'Ask you again!' Don't worry about
that, my boy! All I ask you is to get out o' my room."

"Look here," Walter said, quietly; and his lopsided smile distorted his
livid cheek. "Look here: I expect YOU wouldn't give me three hundred
dollars to save my life, would you?"

"You make me sick," Adams said, in his bitterness. "Get out of here."

Walter went out, whistling; and Adams drooped into his old chair again
as the door closed. "OH, my, my!" he groaned. "Oh, Lordy, Lordy! The way
of the transgressor----"

CHAPTER XVI

He meant his own transgression and his own way; for Walter's stubborn
refusal appeared to Adams just then as one of the inexplicable but
righteous besettings he must encounter in following that way. "Oh,
Lordy, Lord!" he groaned, and then, as resentment moved him--"That dang
boy! Dang idiot" Yet he knew himself for a greater idiot because he had
not been able to tell Walter the truth. He could not bring himself to do
it, nor even to state his case in its best terms; and that was because
he felt that even in its best terms the case was a bad one.

Of all his regrets the greatest was that in a moment of vanity and
tenderness, twenty-five years ago, he had told his young wife a business
secret. He had wanted to show how important her husband was becoming,
and how much the head of the universe, J. A. Lamb, trusted to his
integrity and ability. The great man had an idea: he thought of
"branching out a little," he told Adams confidentially, and there were
possibilities of profit in glue.

What he wanted was a liquid glue to be put into little bottles and sold
cheaply. "The kind of thing