rics that monks affect for their abasement. But one saw, when
one remembered the characteristic of the man, that they represented here
only an extremity of avarice.

Zindorf looked coldly at his guest.

"Mr. Lucian Morrow," he said, "you will go on, and my price will go on!"

But the young blood, on his feet, was not brought up by the monetary
threat. He looked about the room, at the ceiling, the thick walls. And,
like a man who by a sudden recollection confounds his adversary with an
overlooked illustrative fact, he suddenly cried out:

"By the soul of Satan, you're housed to suit! Send me to the pit! It's
the very place for you! Eh! Zindorf, do you know who built the house you
live in?"

"I do not, Mr. Lucian Morrow," said the man. "Who built it?"

One could see that he wished to divert the discourses of his guest. He
failed.

"God built it!" cried Morrow.

He put out his hands as though to include the hose.

"Pendleton," he said, "you will remember. The people built these walls
for a church. It burned, but the stone walls could not burn; they
remained overgrown with creeper. Then, finally, old Wellington Monroe
built a house into the walls for the young wife he was about to marry,
but he went to the coffin instead of the bride-bed, and the house
stood empty. It fell into the courts with the whole of Monroe's tangled
business and finally Zindorf gets it at a sheriff's sale."

The big man now confronted the young blood with decision.

"Mr. Lucian Morrow," he said, "if you are finished with your fool talk,
I will bid you good morning. I have decided not to sell the girl."

The face of Morrow changed. His voice wheedled in an anxious note.

"Not sell her, Zindorf!" he echoed. "Why man, you have promised her to
me all along. You always said I should have her in spite of your cursed
partner Ordez. You said you'd get her some day and sell her to me.
Now, curse it, Zindorf, I want her... I've got the money: ten thousand
dollars. It's a big lot of money. But I've got it. I've got it in gold."

He went on:

"Besides, Zindorf, you can have the money, it'll mean more to you. But
it's the girl I want."

He stood up and in his anxiety the effect of the liquor faded out.

"I've waited on your promise, Zindorf. You said that some day, when
Ordez was hard-pressed he would sell her for money, even if she was
his natural daughter. You were right; you knew Ordez. You have got an
assignment of all the slaves in posses