chair to the
lounging angle and laughed; a slow gurgling laugh that spread from lip
to eye and thence abroad through his great frame until he shook like a
grotesque incarnation of the god of mirth.

"I was to turn around and help him out of the hole, was I? Oh, no; I
guess not," he denied. "It's business now, little girl, and the
tea-fights are barred. I'll give you a check for that span o' blacks you
were looking at, and we'll call it square."

"Does that mean that you intend to go on until you have smashed him?"
she asked, quietly ignoring the putative bribe.

"I'm going to put him out of business--him and that other fool friend of
yours--if that's what you mean."

Again the sudden lightning glowed in Margery Grierson's eyes, but, as
before, the flash was only momentary. There was passion enough in blood
and brain, but there was also a will, and the will was the stronger.

"Please!" she besought him.

"Please what?"

"Please ruin somebody else, and let Mr.----let these two go!"

Grierson's laugh this time was brutally sardonic.

"So you're caught at last, are you, girlie? I was wondering if you
wouldn't come out o' that pool with the hook in your mouth. But you
might as well pull loose, even if it does hurt a little. Raymer and
Griswold have got to come under."

She looked across at him steadily and again there was a struggle, short
and sharp, between the leaping passions and the indomitable will. Yet
she could speak softly.

"That is your last word, is it?"

"You can call it that, if you like: yes."

"What is the reason? Why do you hate these two so desperately?" she
asked.

Jasper Grierson fanned away the nimbus of cigar smoke with which he had
surrounded himself and stared gloomily at her through the rift.

"Who said anything about hating?" he derided. "That's a fool woman's
notion. This is business, and there ain't any such thing as hate in
business. Raymer's iron-shop happens to be in the road of a bigger
thing, and it's got to move out; that's all."

She nodded slowly. "I thought so," she said, half-absently: "and the
'bigger thing' has some more money in it for you. Oh, how I do despise
it all!"

"Oh, no, you don't," he contradicted, falling back into the half-jocular
vein. "You're a pretty good spender, yourself, Madgie. If you didn't
have plenty of money to eat and drink and wear and breathe----"

"I hate it!" she said coldly. Then she dragged the talk back to the
channel it was leavin