ident had foregathered.

Champ Thorne knew nothing of this; he knew only that by a miracle
Barbara Barnes was in town; that at last he was in a position to ask
her to marry him; that she would certainly say she would. That was all
he cared to know.

A year before he had issued his declaration of independence. Before he
could marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he
earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until
he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait.

"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.

Thorne had evaded the direct question.

"There is too much of it," he said.

"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because
rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and
galoshes. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoshes. And
what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat?"

Thorne shook his head unhappily.

"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's
the way they get the raw material."

"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with
enlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There
it is terrible! That is slavery. But there are no slaves on the
Amazon. The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the
trees the way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me
about it often."

Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend
were among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as
heartily as he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he
preferred to leave to others. And he knew besides that if the father
she loved and the man she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would
not rest until she learned the reason why.

One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of
the Indian slaves in the jungles and backwaters of the Amazon, who are
offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her
father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were
true it was the first he had heard of it.

Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved
most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good
opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he
assured her he at once would order an investigation.

"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months