undary.
Go over it--to hell or the devil."

"You don't expect me to walk ten miles when I've got a horse, do you? I
left one at your place, and, incidentally, a tooth-brush."

Le Sage by this time was reduced to exhausted speechlessness. He could
only glare helplessly. Not wishing to exasperate him further and
needlessly, Wyvern had refrained from saying that he had no intention of
going until he had seen Lalante once more. She would be on the look-out
for their return, he knew that, would probably come forth to welcome--
him, Le Sage would have no power to prevent their meeting.

So they walked back these two, as they had come, in silence.

CHAPTER NINE.

"NUMBER ONE."

Gilbert Warren, attorney-at-law, was seated in his office looking out
upon the main street of Gydisdorp.

He was an alert, straight, well-set-up man, not much on the further side
of thirty, handsome, too, in the dark-haired, somewhat hatchet-faced
aquiline type. He was attired in a cool, easy-fitting suit of white
duck, for the day had been hot, and still wore his broad-brimmed hat,
for he had only just come in.

Now he unlocked a drawer in his table, somewhat hastily, impatiently
might almost have been said. Thence he extracted a bundle of documents,
and began eagerly to peruse them. Among them were deeds of mortgage.

"A damn rotten place," he said to himself. "These fools have got bitten
this time, and serves 'em right. I advised them against touching it.
Now to me it doesn't matter. I don't mind dropping a little on it to
get _him_ out. If I take it over, why then he'll have to go--and it's
worth it. I will--Come in."

This in reply to a knock. A clerk entered.

"It's Ripton, about that committal judgment. Will you see him, sir?"

"--To the devil, willingly," replied Warren sharply. "Tell him to go
there."

The clerk went out, tittering, to inform the individual in question that
Warren was very busy, and couldn't possibly find time to attend to him
to-day, an intimation which had the effect of sending that much harassed
and debt-hung waggon-maker slouching down the street, gurgling forth
strange profanities, and consigning lawyers in general, and Warren in
particular, to the care of precisely the same potentate to whom Warren
had just consigned him; only in far more sultry, and utterly
unprintable, terms.

"Yes, I'll take it over," the attorney's thoughts ran on, as he scanned
the papers. "I can afford a loss on