I'll scare him clean out of Indiana, and he'll
never show his head again. Why, Ware, I've been counting on it, that
when you saw we were in a hole and going to lose, you'd come down from
your high horse and help me out. I tell you, there's no doubt about it;
that woman's the woman I'm looking for! I guessed it the night you told
that story up there in the house-boat."

"Quit this business, Ed," the minister was saying; "I'm an old friend of
yours. But I won't budge an inch. I'd never breathed a word of that
story before and I shouldn't have told it that night. It was so far back
that I thought it was safe. But your idea that Bassett had anything to
do with that is preposterous. Your hatred of him has got the better of
you, my friend. Drop it: forget it. If you can't whip him fair, let him
win."

"Not much I won't; but I didn't think you'd go back on me; I thought
better of you than that!"

Thatcher strode to the door and went out, slamming it after him.

The minister peered into the library absently, and then, surprised to
find Sylvia, advanced to meet her, smiling gravely. He took both her
hands, and held them, looking into her face.

"What's this you've been reading? Ah, that book!" The volume slipped
into his hands and he glanced at it, frowning impatiently. "Poor little
book. I ought to have burned it years ago; and I ought to have learned
by this time to keep my mouth shut. They've always said I look like an
Indian, but an Indian never tells anything. I've told just one story too
many. _Mea maxima culpa!_"

He sat down in the big chair beside his desk, placed the book within
reach, and kept touching it as he talked.

"I saw Mr. Thatcher," said Sylvia. "He seemed very much aroused. I
couldn't help hearing a word now and then."

"That's all right, Sylvia. I've known Thatcher for years, and last fall
I went up to his house-boat on the Kankakee for a week's shooting. Allen
and Dan Harwood were the rest of the party--and I happened to tell the
story of this little book--an unfinished story. We ought never to tell
stories until they are finished. And it seems that Thatcher, with a zeal
worthy of a better cause, has been raking up the ashes of an old affair
of Bassett's with a woman, and he's trying to hitch it on to the story I
told him about this book. He says by shaking this at Bassett he can
persuade him that he's got enough ammunition to blow him out of the
water. But I don't believe a word of it; I won't b