could
comprehend and take care of? Would it not be better for them?

Then there was forty-five thousand dollars to be given to a cheap
little man--that was hardest of all, for he had come to hate the sight
of the sleek black head of Arthur Eldred. Yes, but he had saved the
day. He had put in six hundred dollars when every dollar was a ducat.
True, but the reward was too great. A hundred thousand dollars for six
hundred.

Oh, this was familiar ground! He had gone over it in a sort of
sub-conscious way a hundred times, each time apparently the final one.
It had been quite settled when this slender little woman first lifted
her face to him, and now nothing was settled.

It was very still and cold. There was no stream to sing up through the
pines, and no wind in the pines to answer should the stream call.
Nothing seemed to be stirring save the pensive man and his faithful
pony.

Reaching the upper levels he spurred on at a gallop, finding some
relief in the pounding action of the saddle and in the rush of air
past his ears. The moon was late, but when it came it seemed to help
him, lightening his mood as it lightened the trail. The big ledges and
lowering, lesser peaks lifted into the dark sky weirdly translucent,
and their upper edges seemed smooth and graceful as the rims of
bubbles. Solid rock seemed melted and transfused with light and air.
It was all miraculously beautiful, and the sore-hearted man lifted his
eyes to the heights seeing the face of a girl in every moonlit rock
and in every wayside pool.

As he entered the office he found them all waiting for him--Dan and
Biddy in their best dress, and Eldred with a supercilious half-grin,
half-scowl on his face.

Clement nodded at him, but said "Hello" to Dan and "Good-evening" to
Biddy. Conly, his trusted, discreet cashier, was at his desk, and the
office was dimly lit with a single electric bulb.

Dan and Biddy greeted him cautiously, for Eldred had filled their
simple souls with suspicion. "He wants to compromise. He's afraid of
our suit against him."

As a matter of fact Dan would never put a dollar into the plan for a
suit, and it had never gone beyond Eldred's talk--and yet he had made
them suspicious. Dan was forced to confess that Clement was becoming
an "a-ristocrat." And Biddy acknowledged that he "sildom dairkened her
dure these days." They had always felt his superiority and refinement,
and they rose as he entered.

He wasted no time in prelimi