can prove every transaction, show you or anybody
else exactly how I did it. Disbelieve me or not, it is the truth that I
am innocent. If my people were sold out at that time, somebody else got
the selling price. I was chagrined because my love affair had gone
wrong. I shook the dust of New York from my feet. I did not even look at
a New York newspaper for more than a year. Somebody else got the money,
and I got a nasty name. And Mr. Griffin, who was as a father to me,
thinks that I was an ungrateful cur!

"This thing is hard to believe, Miss Gilbert. But I never can thank you
enough for telling me. I am going to clear myself before I am done."

"I cannot believe you, Mr. Prale! The proof was there!"

"And who furnished it?" he demanded. "Who is handling this campaign of
vengeance against me now?"

"You scarcely can expect me to tell you that," she said. "I am
done--have nothing more to do with the affair--but I am not going to be
a traitor, as you were!"

"If you ever are convinced, Miss Gilbert, that I am entirely innocent,
that somebody has put this stain upon me for their own reasons, can I
count upon your friendship?"

"Convince me that injustice has been done you, Mr. Prale, and I'll do
everything in my power to make amends--and so will all the others!"

"Thanks for that assurance," Prale said. "I am going to clear myself in
your eyes, and in the eyes of the others. I remember the details of that
big deal perfectly and I shall know how to start to work."

"I cannot understand this," she said. "You speak as if you were indeed
innocent, but I cannot believe it!"

"I am innocent!"

"If so, who is guilty?"

"That is what I intend finding out."

"But you were in their confidence--you knew all the details of their
financial plans," Kate Gilbert said. "You were the only one who could
have betrayed them. You scarcely expect me to believe that they betrayed
themselves."

"Any spying clerk in the Griffin offices could have told the enemy
enough to betray the plans," Prale replied. "By the way, who is this man
who goes too far and insists upon using violence? Who is the man who
seems to be so extraordinary vindictive toward me in this affair?"

"I can tell you nothing more," she declared. "It would not be fair to
them."

"But they have Jim Farland, and Heaven knows what they are doing to him,
simply because he will not turn against me. Is it fair to Jim Farland's
wife and child?"

"I--I am being kept info