n exclamation half halted on his lips.

Gentleman Geoff nodded slowly.

"Name Rendell," he said. "Class of '84. I haven't mentioned it this
quarter of a century and I'm going to ask you to forget it now,
but--you'll do what you can for my girl?"

"On my honor, Sir," Thode reaffirmed solemnly. "It is a sacred charge."

"Jim Baggott will sell out the Blue Chip and give her the proceeds. It
ought to bring her a comfortable sum and the bank deposits are in her
name already. I'm not afraid she will throw it away; she has a level
head on her young shoulders, but I want to be sure she will have the
best of everything; all that she has missed. You'll see to it?"

The reappearance of the doctor precluded other answer on Thode's part
than a long hearty handclasp, but Gentleman Geoff understood.

Later his vigilant mind wandered and the watchers averted their faces.

"Best I could for her, Vi! Kept her like you--clean and true and
God-Almighty sweet! Never knew--not my own. . . ."

Still later, when the sun like a glowing ball of fire had sunk beneath
the wall of the patio, his lips moved again.

"Tell the boys I'm not cashing in--just passing this deal. I'm in on
the next one. . . . Billie . . . square, always----"

"I'm here, Dad!" The girl's voice choked with sobs breathed close to
his ear, but Gentleman Geoff did not hear. He had slipped into the
silence.

In the days that followed, Kearn Thode pondered long and deeply upon
his trust. The arrangement with his sister would be an easy matter to
adjust, he knew, but the immediate task confronting him was more
difficult of solution. The suggestion of a guardian thrust upon her
would meet with scant complacency in the girl's independent spirit and
secretly he quailed before the thought of her displeasure. Her
comrades of a lifetime, the rough, staunch men of Limasito, might well
resent the intrusion of a stranger, an alien, into what was evidently
to them a family affair; still less would they be able to understand
and appreciate the fact that Billie belonged to another world than
theirs.

He decided at length to lay the matter before her frankly in detail,
eliminating only the admission of Gentleman Geoff's identity. He
respected the dead man's confidence, but it only precipitated him into
a fresh quandary.

Billie's naive surprise when the question of her surname arose brought
the matter to a crisis in his mind.

"Why, I'm just 'Billie,' I suppose