e broad shoulders
that towered opposite.

"I'm sorry, Bob," he affirmed with a sweetness as winning as a woman's.
"You mustn't mind what Jan said. He's gettin' old an' a mite crabbed,
an' he's kinder foolish about me, mebbe. I wouldn't 'a' had him hurt
your feelin's--"

Robert Morton caught the expression of pain in the troubled face and
cut the apology short.

"It's all right, Mr. Spence," he cried. "Don't give it another
thought. So long as you remain my friend I don't care what Mr.
Eldridge thinks. We'll pass it off as jealousy and let it go at that."

The old man tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth drooped and he
sighed instead. To have Janoah's weaknesses thus nakedly set forth by
another was a very different thing from recognizing them himself, and
instinctively his loyalty rose in protest.

"Mebbe 'twas jealousy," he replied. "Folks have always stood out that
Janoah was jealous. But somehow I'd rather think 'twas tryin' to look
after me an' my affairs that misled him. S'pose we call it a sort of
slab-sided friendliness."

"We'll call it anything you like," assented Bob, with a happy laugh.

This time Willie laughed also.

"So she stood by you, did she?" queried he with quick understanding.

"Yes."

"'Twas like her."

"It was like both of you."

The old man raised a hand in protest against the gratitude the remark
implied.

"Delight ain't often wrong; she's a fair dealer." Then he added
significantly, "Them as ain't fair with her deserve no salvation."

"Hanging would be too good for the man who was not square with a girl
like that," came from Robert Morton with an emphasis unmistakable in
its sincerity.

CHAPTER X

A CONSPIRACY

On Sunday morning, when a menacing east wind whipped the billows into
foam and a breath of storm brooded in the air, the Galbraiths' great
touring car rolled up to Willie's cottage, and from it stepped not only
Robert Morton's old college chum, Roger Galbraith, but also his father,
a finely built, middle-aged man whose decisive manner and quick speech
characterized the leader and dictator.

He was smooth-shaven after the English fashion and from beneath shaggy
iron-gray brows a pair of dark eyes, piercing in their intensity,
looked out. The face was lined as if the stress of living had drawn
its muscles into habitual tensity, and except when a smile relieved the
setness of the mouth his countenance was stern to severity. His son,
on the