r it."

"Oh, as to that," answered Hallam lightly, "the stock will be good
enough. I'll make it so by taking a majority interest in the company and
consolidating it with my own. You see, we simply must do something for
Old Napper Tandy."

XXVI

A PACT WITH BARBARA

That evening Guilford Duncan was summoned to Hallam's house for supper.
With only Mrs. Hallam for auditor, Hallam wished to tell the young man
all that had occurred, for Duncan had not been permitted to know aught
of it, since Hallam had turned him out of his room, in order that the
conference with Dick Temple might be a strictly private one.

Nor had Duncan seemed very greatly concerned to inquire. He had not
expected Hallam and Temple to succeed in accomplishing anything, and at
this time his fate was at crisis in another and, to him, a dearer way.
His interview with Barbara had been held, as we know, at the precise
time when Hallam and Temple were in consultation with regard to the
matter of Tandy's accusation. In some degree, at least, the painful
character of that interview with Barbara, and its unsatisfactory result,
had dulled his mind to the other trouble. In view of Barbara's seemingly
final rejection of his wooing, he was not sure that he greatly cared
what might become of his reputation, or his career. He was too strong a
man in his moral character, however, to remain long in a state of such
indifference, but for the time being he found it impossible to regard
his future as a matter of much consequence, now that Barbara refused to
share that future with him.

"There is still one more chance," he reflected, "one more interview with
Barbara, one more hope that I may win her. If that fails, the other
thing won't matter much. I'll horsewhip Tandy and then go away. No, I
won't go away. I won't desert in the presence of the enemy. I won't--oh,
I don't know what I will or won't do. All that must wait till I know my
fate with Barbara."

This was on the morning after his evening with Barbara--the morning on
which Temple first made acquaintance with Tandy. Duncan was sitting idly
in his office, mechanically toying with a paper cutter. Presently he
overturned the inkstand, spilling its contents over some legal papers
that he had drawn upon the day before.

"That's fortunate!" he ejaculated, as with blotting pads he sought to
save what he could of the documents. "It gives me something better to do
than sit here idly mooning. Those papers must