ld marry, he told her, he must be able to support a wife on what he
earned, without her having to accept money from her father, and until
he received "a minimum wage" of five thousand dollars they must wait.

"What is the matter with my father's money?" Barbara had demanded.

Thorne had evaded the direct question.

"There is too much of it," he said.

"Do you object to the way he makes it?" insisted Barbara. "Because
rubber is most useful. You put it in golf balls and auto tires and
galoches. There is nothing so perfectly respectable as galoches. And
what is there 'tainted' about a raincoat."

Thorne shook his head unhappily.

"It's not the finished product to which I refer," he stammered; "it's
the way they get the raw material."

"They get it out of trees," said Barbara. Then she exclaimed with
enlightenment--"Oh!" she cried, "you are thinking of the Congo. There it
is terrible! _That_ is slavery. But there are no slaves on the Amazon.
The natives are free and the work is easy. They just tap the trees the
way the farmers gather sugar in Vermont. Father has told me about it
often."

Thorne had made no comment. He could abuse a friend, if the friend were
among those present, but denouncing any one he disliked as heartily as
he disliked Senator Barnes was a public service he preferred to leave to
others. And he knew besides that, if the father she loved and the man
she loved distrusted each other, Barbara would not rest until she
learned the reason why.

One day, in a newspaper, Barbara read of the Puju Mayo atrocities, of
the Indian slaves in the jungles and back waters of the Amazon, who are
offered up as sacrifices to "red rubber." She carried the paper to her
father. What it said, her father told her, was untrue, and if it were
true it was the first he had heard of it.

Senator Barnes loved the good things of life, but the thing he loved
most was his daughter; the thing he valued the highest was her good
opinion. So when for the first time she looked at him in doubt, he
assured her he at once would order an investigation.

"But, of course," he added, "it will be many months before our agents
can report. On the Amazon news travels very slowly."

In the eyes of his daughter the doubt still lingered.

"I am afraid," she said, "that that is true."

That was six months before the directors of the Brazil and Cuyaba Rubber
Company were summoned to meet their president at his rooms in the
Ritz-Carlton. They