sting me?" West thrust back. "Unless you
think that a dozen years in prison have deprived me of my ancient skill.
Would you choose a man who has been a drunkard for your butler? No! Then
don't choose a swindler and an ex-convict for your bailiff."

He swung around with the words and shut the window with a bang.

But again Babbacombe took his cue from that inner prompting to which he
had trusted all his life. For the first time he liked the man; for the
first time, so it seemed to him, he caught a glimpse of the soul into
which the iron had been so deeply driven.

"Look here, West," he said, "I am not going to take that sort of refusal
from you. We have been together some time now, and it isn't my fault if
we don't know each other pretty well. I don't care a hang what you have
been. I am only concerned with what you are, and whatever that may be,
you are not a weak-kneed fool. You have the power to keep straight if
you choose, and you are to choose. Understand? I make you this offer
with a perfectly open mind, and you are to consider it in the same way.
Would you have said because you had once had a nasty tumble that you
would never ride again? Of course you wouldn't. You are not such a fool.
Then don't refuse my offer on those grounds, for it's nothing less than
contemptible."

"Think so?" said West. He had listened quite impassively to the oration,
but as Babbacombe ended, his grim mouth relaxed sardonically. "You seem
mighty anxious to spend your money on damaged goods, Lord Babbacombe.
It's a tom-fool investment, you know. How many of the honest folk in
your service will stick to you when they begin to find out what you've
given them?"

"Why should they find out?" asked Babbacombe.

West shrugged his shoulders. "It's a dead certainty that they will."

"If I can take the risk, so can you," said Babbacombe.

"Oh, of course, I used to be rather good at that game. It is called
'sand-throwing' in the profession."

Babbacombe made an impatient movement, and West's hard smile became more
pronounced.

"But you are not at all good at it," he continued. "You are almost
obtrusively obvious. It is a charm that has its very material
drawbacks."

Babbacombe wholly lost patience at that. The man's grim irony was not to
be borne.

"Take it or leave it!" he exclaimed. "But if you leave it, in heaven's
name let it be for some sounder reason than a faked-up excuse of moral
weakness!"

West uttered an abrupt laugh. "You