able and twisted the glass
bowl that held my nasturtium-buds about, to the end that the telltale
word of "Salt" embossed on its side would not betray the fact that it
had been commandeered from the kitchen-cabinet. Then I turned up the
lamp and smilingly waited until my lord and master seated himself at
the other side of the table, grateful beyond words that we had at
least that evening alone and were not compelled to act up to a part
before the eyes of strangers.

Yet it was anything but a successful meal. Dinky-Dunk's pretense at
eating was about as hollow as my pretense at light-heartedness. We
each knew that the other was playing a part, and the time came when to
keep it up was altogether too much of a mockery.

"Dinky-Dunk," I said after a silence that was too abysmal to be
ignored, "let's look this thing squarely in the face."

"I can't!"

"Why not?"

"I haven't the courage."

"Then we've got to get it," I insisted. "I'm ready to face the music,
if you are. So let's get right down to hard-pan. Have they--have they
really cleaned you out?"

"To the last dollar," he replied, without looking up.

"What did it?" I asked, remaining stubbornly and persistently ox-like
in my placidity.

"No one thing did it, Chaddie, except that I tried to bite off too
much. And for the last two years, of course, the boom's been
flattening out. If our Associated Land Corporation hadn't gone
under--"

"Then it _has_ gone under?" I interrupted, with a catch of the breath,
for I knew just how much had been staked on that venture.

Dinky-Dunk nodded his head. "And carried me with it," he grimly
announced. "But even that wouldn't have meant a knock-out, if the
government had only kept its promise and taken over my Vancouver
Island water-front."

That, I remembered, was to have been some sort of a shipyard. Then I
remembered something else.

"When the Twins were born," I reminded Dunkie, "you put the ranch here
at Casa Grande in my name. Does that mean we lose our home?"

I was able to speak quietly, but I could hear the thud of my own
heart-beats.

"That's for you to decide," he none too happily acknowledged. Then he
added, with sudden decisiveness: "No, they can't touch anything of
_yours_! Not a thing!"

"But won't that hold good with the Harris Ranch, as well?" I further
inquired. "That was actually bought in my name. It was deeded to me
from the first, and always has been in my name."

"Of course it's yours," he s