oked again she was examining the point of her
pencil; he decided that his eyesight had played him a strange prank.

"By the way, Miss Kilgour," he informed her, "you need not remain. Make
two typewritten copies--the judge will need one."

Richard Dodd arose when she left her chair, but she did not glance
at him. He began to speak before she had reached the door, unable to
restrain his jealous temper longer.

"Uncle Symonds, pass the word to that old Provancher, through the
superintendent of the Gamonic, that unless he comes across with all the
stuff he knows about that Farr he'll be fired. And I've got a hunter out
on my own account. It will be easy enough to catch the skunk and strip
off his pelt."

Miss Kilgour closed the door behind her with a sharper click than she
had ever given its latch before. She hurried to her typewriter in her
little room and began to work with all her energy.

She was so busy and her machine clattered so viciously that she did not
hear Richard Dodd when he entered. He leaned over her.

"Have you talked with your mother yet? Has she given you some
advice?" he asked. His jealousy still fired him and his tone was not
conciliatory.

The contempt in the glance she flung upward at him roused him to
passion. In the state of mind in which he then was he made no allowances
for her ignorance of conditions in her mother's case. He knew what he
had done for Mrs. Kilgour's sake, and this attitude on the daughter's
part pricked him like wilful ingratitude.

He put his hands on the keyboard of the typewriter and stopped her work.
"I love you, Kate, and you have known it for a long time. I tried to
show you how much I loved you. I know I did a foolish thing. But I loved
you." He almost sobbed the protestation. "I've been in hell's torment
since it happened. I've been a fool all the way through, but I won't be
a fool any more if you'll take pity on me."

She did not speak. Her silent, utter contempt stung more deeply and
surely than words.

"If you insist on being so high above, I'm going to bring you down a
little," he sneered. "I hate to do it, but you've got to be shown
where your real friends are. I have given your mother a chance to say
something to you, and say it right. But she hasn't done it, and I don't
propose to be made the goat." In his anger he was not choice in his
language. "You go home and ask her whether or not she owes me five
thousand dollars. Oh, you needn't open your eyes at