to Hume.

"All right as far as it goes," Hume said when at length he had finished
his careful examination of the documents and had tossed them to the
table. "You haven't got the Norfolk place nor the Ettinger place.
What's the matter? They are more important to us than all the rest put
together. Did they smell a rat?"

"I don't know. I am confident of closing with Norfolk in a few days,
although I may have to pay him five dollars an acre more than I offered
any one else. Ettinger is holding out for seventy-five thousand
dollars, cash."

"Then he does smell a rat!" Hume's fist came crashing down upon the
mantelpiece. "By God, somebody's been talking too much!"

"Mr. Hume," Leland reminded him sternly, "may I call to your attention
the fact that nobody knows a thing about this matter excepting
yourself, Garth and me? I haven't so much as told my wife--"

"You?" cried Hume hotly. "Who said that you had? You've got brains
enough to hold your tongue. That's why I came to you in the first
place. But Conway here--"

He swung suddenly upon Garth, his eyes flaming, his face distorted with
wrath. Before either of the two men had guessed his purpose he strode
swiftly across the room, and gripping Conway's shoulders with his two
big hands jerked him to his feet.

"Conway," he snarled, his face close to the others, his eyes burning,
his breath hot in Garth's blanched face, "you queer this deal with your
infernal gab and I'll--"

He broke off sharply, flinging Conway backward from him so that the
smaller man's body crashed against the wall.

"Hume!" cried Leland angrily. "I'll have no quarrelling in my house.
If you can't act--"

"I haven't come here to-day for a love feast," sneered Hume, already
forgetting Conway as he whirled upon Martin. "What I've got to say
I'll say my way whether you and your cursed white rat like it or not.
I say that somebody has been talking too damned much! That place of
Ettinger's as it is, without the water, isn't worth twenty-five
thousand. He'd have sold it for that a month ago and glad of the
chance to unload. Now he holds out for seventy-five thousand! What's
the answer? You've dragged Conway into this thing; I haven't. I
wanted no man in it but you and Arthur Shandon and myself. You because
you had the money, Arthur Shandon because he had the lake and the
river. I didn't want Conway. He's your pet, not mine. Now, muzzle
him if you can."

Garth's angry retort