ty-five thousand--"

"If you offered a million, I would believe you just as easily," said
Dick. "I know you for just what you are, Mike Hallo! You're a low down
liar and cheat and swindler, and I wouldn't believe you under oath. If I
accepted your proposition, you'd never pay me a cent, and you'd do your
best to get me into prison here besides."

"No--no--I'm telling you the truth, Dick! I will do it, I swear it! Do
you think I have no gratitude? It is of the greatest possible importance
that I should be free at once to attend to some pressing business!"

"It isn't half so important as you think, Mike," said Dick, with a
laugh. "And you're attending to some very pressing business right now,
too. The most pressing business you ever had in your life is to keep
right on walking the way I tell you to and moving as fast as you can,
too."

"But, Dick, I tell you I shall be ruined if you make me go on! How can I
pay back the money you came for if I am ruined?"

"I don't know--and I'm not trying to guess riddles to-night. It seems to
agree with you pretty well to be ruined, though. You made a lot of money
out of being ruined in New York, didn't you?"

"Dick, I have known you since you were a baby! Your father was my best
friend--"

"Don't remind me of that!" said Dick, angrily. He had been a little
amused by Hallo's desperate pleading, but this reference to his father,
whom the man before him had treated so outrageously, revived his anger.
"The best chance you've got to get through right now is for me to forget
about how friendly you were with my father and how you began to cheat
him as soon as he was dead and couldn't watch you any longer!"

"Dick, I will make a last appeal! In the safe in my office there is
money--a great sum of money! You can have all of it--every florin! There
is much more there than you ever said I owed your mother! The
combination of the safe is written in the pocket book in my right hand
pocket. Take it out--go back and get the money. I will write out an
order for you to take it--I will write out an admission that I cheated
your family! Only, let me go before it is too late!"

"No--nothing doing! Straight ahead!"

Perhaps there was a certain note of finality in Dick's voice; perhaps
Hallo was just trying to think of some new temptation to put before him.
He was silent, at any rate and so, for a minute, was Dick. Dick was
really greatly amused by Hallo's pleadings. And now he could not resist