t operators.

"I intended to take this long hidden matter up on my return from
this trip, but I have been carried on, into a premature confidence.

"Just take care of yourself and bide your time! I want Worthington
to consummate the whole deal. I wish the marriage and the election
to take place undisturbed by clamor. For Worthington has put a
fancy price on the land. It is to-day only worth a million at market
rates. We, however, get immediate possession and pay in hauling,
but the real extra million comes out of the pockets of the Cattle
Trust, for as President, Worthington sells his own land really to
the Cattle Company for two million dollars.

"He has duties as a Trustee to all the stockholders of the cattle
association. When all is over, when Ferris is his son-in-law,
I will have Senator Durham connected with this matter. The young
couple will set up in royal style.

"I will then open out on Hugh Worthington, lay all the uncontested
facts before him, and bring him to bay! I will soon squeeze out of
him a fortune for you and also one for me. I only want twenty-five
per cent. of the recovery. That will be a guarantee against my
losing my place as railroad attorney. But old Hugh will never dare
to "squeal." He wants social quiet, and he does not care to have
his toga of respectability ripped up."

"Your motive?" agnostically demanded Clayton. I am poor, friendless;
you will risk much in this."

"There's a sweet little dark-eyed French-descended angel in
Detroit, whom I will then marry at once," smilingly answered Jack
Witherspoon, "that is, as soon as Papa Worthington has given me the
sinking fund. Any college man is a fool now who marries in these
days unless he has the assured income on the principal of a quarter
of a million."

"Money is the one thing, my boy," sighed Jack. "Without it, Venus
herself, ever young and ever fair, would be a millstone around
any man's neck, in these later days. Great God! How you missed it!
If I had only stumbled on this discovery sooner. You could have
antedated Ferris' crafty game.

"You could have easily married Alice. She has often told my Francine
that you were the noblest of men."

But the moody Randall Clayton had tired already of hearing Miss
Francine Delacroix's praises in divers keys.

"Poor Little Sister," muttered Randall Clayton. "Traded off
to a senator's nephew, for an illicit government pull. Damn all
treachery!" he growled, as he stalked off to