me?" Phipps demanded hoarsely.

"Why not?" Wingate replied. "It's been a long duel between us, Phipps,
and I mean this to be the final bout."

Phipps moved his position a little uneasily. He was keeping himself under
control, but the veins were standing out upon his forehead, his frame
seemed tense with passion.

"Tell me, Wingate, is it still the girl?"

Wingate looked across at him. His face and tone were alike relentless,
his eyes shone like points of steel.

"You did ill to remind me of that, Phipps," he said. "However, I will
answer your question. It is still the girl."

"She was nothing to you," Phipps muttered sullenly.

"One can't make your class of reptile understand these things," Wingate
declared scornfully. "She came to me in New York with a letter from her
father, my old tutor, who had died out in the Adirondacks without a
shilling in the world. He sent the girl to me and asked me to put her in
the way of earning her own living. It was a sacred charge, that, and I
accepted it willingly. The only trouble was that I was leaving for Europe
the next day. I put a thousand dollars in the bank for her, found her a
comfortable home with respectable people, and then considered in what
office I could place her during my absence. I had the misfortune to meet
you that morning. Time was short. Every one knew that your office was
conducted on sound business lines. I told you her story and you took her.
I hadn't an idea that a man alive could be such a villain as you turned
out to be."

"You'd be a fine fellow, Wingate," Phipps said, with a touch of his old
cynicism, "if you weren't always sheering off towards the melodramatic.
The girl wanted to see life, she attracted me, and I showed it to her.
I'd have done the right thing by her if she hadn't behaved like an
hysterical idiot."

"The girl's death lies at your door, and you know it," Wingate replied.
"It has taken me a good many years to pay my debt to the dead. I did my
best to kill you, but without a weapon you were a hard man to shake the
last spark of life out of.--There, I am tired of this. I have let you
talk. I have answered your useless questions. Be so good as to leave me."

The shadow of impending disaster seemed to have found its way into
Phipps' bones. He seemed to have lost alike his courage and his dignity.

"Look here," he said, "the rest of the things which lie between us we can
fight out, but I want my nephew. What will his return cost me i