slie, sitting
at his writing-table in the villa above the inlet, laid down his pen
and looked up gratefully at his wife, who placed a strip of stamped
paper before him. Millicent both smiled and frowned as she noticed how
greedily his fingers fastened upon it.

"It is really very good of you. You don't know how much this draft
means to me," he said. "I wish I needn't take it, but I am forced to.
It's practically the whole of the first dole your skinflint trustee
made you, isn't it?"

"It is a large share," was the answer. "Almost a year's allowance, and
I'm going to pay off our most pressing debts with the rest. But I am
glad to give it to you, Harry, and we must try to be better friends,
and keep on the safe side after this."

"I hope we shall," replied the man, who was touched for once. "It's
tolerably hard for folks like us, who must go when the devil drives, to
be virtuous, but I got hold of a few mining shares, which promise to
pay well now, for almost nothing; and if they turn up trumps, I'd feel
greatly tempted to throw over the Company and start afresh."

He hurriedly scribbled a little note, and Millicent turned away with a
smile that was not far from a sigh. She had returned from England in a
repentant mood, and her husband, whose affairs had gone smoothly, was
almost considerate, so that, following a reconciliation, there were
times when she cherished an uncertain hope that they might struggle
back to their former level. It was on one of the occasions when their
relations were not altogether inharmonious that she had promised to
give him a draft to redeem the loan Director Shackleby held like a whip
lash over him. Had Leslie been a bolder man, it is possible that his
wife's aspirations might have been realized, for Millicent was not
impervious to good influences.

Unfortunately for her, however, a free-spoken man called Shackleby, who
said that he had been sent by his colleagues who managed the Industrial
Enterprise Company, called upon Thurston and Savine together in their
city offices. He came straight to the point after the fashion of
Western business men.

"Julius Savine has rather too big a stake in the Orchard Valley for any
one man," he said. "It's ancient history that if, as usual with such
concerns as ours, we hadn't been a day or two too slow, we would have
held the concessions instead of him. Neither need I tell you about the
mineral indications in both the reefs and alluvial. N