; you have grown a lot in these last few weeks: what is your
diet?"

"Hard work--and a determination to make my brag good."

"To down the ring, you mean?"

"Yes; to down the ring."

"Are you any nearer to it than you were when you began?"

"A good many parasangs."

"By Jove! I more than half believe you've got hold of something
ded-definite at last!"

"I have, indeed. Hildreth, I have evidence--printable evidence--enough to
dig a dozen political graves, one of them big enough to hold Jasper G.
Bucks' six-feet-two."

"Let me see it!" said the night editor, eagerly; but Kent laughed and
pushed him toward the door.

"Go home and go to bed. I wouldn't show it to you to-night if I had it
here--as I have not. I don't go around with a stick of dynamite in my
pocket."

"Where is it?" Hildreth asked.

"It is in a safety-deposit box in the vault of the Security Bank; where it
is going to stay until I am ready to use it. Go home, I say, and let me go
to bed. I'm ragged enough to sleep the clock around."

In spite of his weariness, which was real enough, Kent was up betimes the
next morning. He had a wire appointment with Blashfield Hunnicott and two
others in Gaston, and he took an early train to keep it. The ex-local
attorney met him at the station with a two-seated rig; and on the way to
the western suburbs they picked up Frazee, the county assessor, and Orton,
the appraiser of the Apache Building and Loan Association.

"Hunnicott has told you what I am after," said Kent, when the surrey party
was made up. "We all know the property well enough, but to have it all
fair and above-board, we'll drive out and look it over, so that our
knowledge may be said to be fully up to date."

Twenty minutes afterward the quartet was locating the corners of a square
in Gaston's remotest suburb; an "addition" whose only improvements were
the weathered and rotting street and lot stakings on the bare, brown
plain.

"'Lots 1 to 56 in Block 10, Guilford & Hawk's Addition,'" said Kent,
reading from a memorandum in his note-book. "It lies beautifully, doesn't
it?"

"Yes; for a chicken farm," chuckled the assessor.

"Well, give me your candid opinion, you two: what is the property worth?"

The Building and Loan man scratched his chin.

"Say fifty dollars for the plot--if you'll fence it."

"No, put it up. You are having a little boom here now: give it the top
boom price, if you like."

The two referees drew apart and laid the