ss of her recent trials, in something
like a loss of self-control. Her pretty head and slender figure, the
flexile white hands clasped together in nervous strain to discuss these
so vital matters, and, more than all, the departure from her habitual
cool and self-possessed manner, was touching, and appealed powerfully to
Jim. He walked up to her, as she stood ready to leave, and laid his hand
lightly on her arm.

"The way Barslow puts these property matters," said he, "you are called
upon to think that all arrangements have been made upon a cold cash
basis; and, actually, that's the fact. But you mustn't either of you
think that in dealing with you we have forgotten that you are dear to
us--friends. We should have had to act in the same way if you had been
enemies, perhaps, but if there had been any way in which our--regard
could have shown itself, that way would have been followed."

"Yes," said Mrs. Trescott, "we understand that. Mr. Lattimore said
almost the same thing, and we know that in what he did Mr. Cornish--"

"We must go now, mamma," said Josie. "Thank you both very much. It won't
do any harm for me to take a day or so for considering this in all its
phases; but I know now what I shall do. The thought of the distress that
might come to people here and elsewhere as a result of these mistakes
here is a new one, and a little big for me, at first."

Jim sat by the desk, after they went away, folding insurance blotters
and savagely tearing them in pieces.

"I wish to God," said he, "that I could throw my hand into the deck and
quit!"

"What's the matter?" said I.

"Oh--nothing," he returned. "Only, look at the situation. She comes in,
filled with the idea that it was Cornish who proposed this plan, and
that he did it for her sake. I couldn't very well say, like a boy,
''Twasn't Cornish; 'twas me!', could I? And in showing her the purely
mercenary character of the deal, I'm put in the position of backcapping
Cornish, and she goes away with that impression! Oh, Al, what's the good
of being able to convince and control every one else, if you are always
further off than Kamschatka with the only one for whose feelings you
really care?"

"I don't think it struck her in that way at all," said I. "She could see
how it was, and did, whatever her mother may think. But what possessed
Lattimore to tell Mrs. Trescott that Cornish story?"

"Oh, Lattimore never said anything like that!" he returned disgustedly.
"He tol