w, had held physical possession of the Paymaster.
Every great iron-bound door was locked and padlocked and the Huff family
held the keys, but in all those ten years Holman had never come near it
and Blount had merely seized it on a labor lien. The very title to the
mine was shrouded in mystery, for no one could locate the shares, and to
openly lay claim to it and produce a majority of the stock would be
equivalent to a confession of treachery. All that anyone knew surely was
that some one of the three original owners--or some unsuspected party
outside--had bought in and sequestered the almost valueless stock and
was patiently biding his time. Since the Huffs did not own the stock
themselves they knew for a certainty that it was held by either Holman
or Blount.

As Virginia sat on the gallery, listening subconsciously for the
drumming of Wiley's racing motor up the road, she ran over in her mind
the circumstances of his visit; and she could explain them all but one.
Why, after failing of his mission, and narrowly escaping her mother's
gun, had he waved his hand and smiled so gayly as he thundered away up
the street? Had he other schemes more subtle; or was he simply reckless,
regarding even this adventure as a joke? As a boy he had been both--a
crafty schemer and reckless doer--but now he was grown to a man. And if
the lines about his mouth were any criterion he would soon be coming
back to carry out by stealth what he failed to accomplish by assault. So
she, too, waited patiently, to foil his machinations and uphold the
honor of the Huffs.

In the good old days it had never been forgotten that the Huffs belonged
to the Virginia quality, while the Holmans came from Maine; hence the
Colonel's relations with Honest John Holman had at first been strictly
business. John Holman was a Northerner, with no social graces and
abstemious to a fault, but when his commercial honor upon a certain
occasion had saved the Colonel from bankruptcy he had cast the
traditions of the South to the winds and taken Honest John as his
friend. "My friend," he called him and neither his wife nor his enemies
could shake the Colonel's faith in his partner. Then, after years of
mutual trust, the panic had come on, and the crash in Paymaster stock;
and as their fortunes went tumbling and ugly rumors filled the air they
had broken their friendship completely. Yet so great was his love for
his old-time friend that he had never openly accused him; and Ho