for believing Walmer
would let me see the cipher report in time to sell. As it happened, he
and the other traitor sold their own stock instead and that must have
started the panic. Now they've got their report. There's no ore that
will pay for milling in the reef."

It was not all clear to Millicent, but she understood from his manner
that her husband was ruined. "Then what are we to do?" she asked. "Is
there nobody who will give you a start again? You must be known in the
business."

"That is the precise trouble. I'm too well known. So long as a man is
a winner at this particular game and can make it worth while for
interested folks to applaud him, or, at least, to keep their mouths
shut, he can find a field for his talents when he wants it, but once he
makes a false move or comes down with a bang, they get their claws in
him and keep him from getting up again. Nobody has any sympathy with a
broken company exploiter, especially when he has for once been crazy
enough to believe in his own venture."

Leslie found it a small relief to run on with ironical bitterness, but
Millicent, who was severely practical in some respects, checked him.

"You haven't answered my other question."

"Then I won't keep you waiting. In a few weeks we'll go out to the
Pacific Slope of North America. I may save enough from the wreck to
start me in the land-agency business somewhere in British Columbia."

Millicent turned from him, and gazed down the moon-lit valley.
Troubled as she was, its rugged beauty and its stillness appealed to
her, and she knew it would be a wrench to leave the land which had
hitherto safely sheltered her. She had known only the smoother side of
life in it, and nobody could appreciate the ease and luxury it could
offer some of its inhabitants better than she did. Now, it seemed, she
must leave it, and go out to struggle for a mere living in some
unlovely town in what she supposed must be a wild and semi-barbarous
country. She felt bitter against the man who, as she thought of it,
had dragged her down, but she hid her resentment.

"But you know nothing about the land-agency business," she pointed out.

Leslie laughed ironically. "I have a few ideas. Milligan--we had him
over at dinner once--made a good deal of money that way, and from what
he told me it doesn't seem very different from the business I have been
engaged in. Success evidently depends upon one's ability to sell the
confiding invest