timber will be worth, with
what you throw on the market hawking up and down ... problematic."

Gordon Makimmon hesitated, a plan forming vaguely, painfully, in his mind.
Finally, "I might buy you out," he suggested; "if you didn't ask too dam'
much. Then I could do as I pleased with the whole lot."

"Now that," Valentine Simmons admitted, dryly cordial, "is a plan worth
consideration. We might agree on a price, a low price to an old partner.
You met the Company's agents, heard the agreement outlined; a solid
proposal. And, as you say, with the timber control in your own hands, you
could arrange as you pleased with the people concerned."

He grew silent, enveloped in thought. Then:

"I'll take a hundred thousand for all the options I bought, for my
interest in the partnership."

"I don't know as I could manage that," Gordon admitted.

An unassumed astonishment marked the other's countenance. "Why!" he
ejaculated, "Pompey left an estate estimated at--" he stopped from sheer
surprise.

"Some of the investments went bad," Gordon continued; "down in Stenton
they said I didn't move 'em fast enough. Then the old man had a lot laid
out in ways I don't hold with, with people I wouldn't collect from. And
it's a fact a big amount's got out here lately. Of course it will come
back, the most part."

Simmons' expression grew skeptical.

"I know you too," Gordon added; "you'll want the price in your hand."

"I'm getting on," the storekeeper admitted; "I can't wait now."

"I don't know if I can make it," Gordon repeated; "it'll strip me if I
do."

Valentine Simmons swung back to his desk. "At least," he observed, "keep
this quiet till something's settled."

Gordon agreed.

XIII

Even if he proved able to buy out Simmons, he thought walking home, it
would be a delicate operation to return the timber rights to where he
thought they belonged. He considered the possibility of making a gift of
the options to the men from whom they had been wrongfully obtained. But
something of Simmons' shrewd knowledge of the world, something of the
priest's contemptuous arraignment of material values, lingering in
Gordon's mind, convinced him of the potential folly of that course. It
would be more practical to sell back the options to those from which they
had been purchased at the nominal prices paid. He had only a vague idea of
his balances at the Stenton banks, the possibilities of the investments
from which he received profi