?"

Glen was surprised at her agitation. He glanced at her blankly.

"Nothing," he said. "He read me nothing--as I remember--about your
friend. Was it something in particular?"

She arose again abruptly and wrung her hands in a gesture of baffled
impatience.

"Oh, I don't know what it all means!" she said. "To think of Searle
being there, and intercepting my letter!--daring to read it!--burning
it up!--reading you only a portion! Of course, he didn't read you my
suspicions concerning himself?"

"Not on your half-tone," Glen assured her. "What's all this business,
anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail in the
mulligatawny."

Beth sat down as before and leaned her chin in her palm in an attitude
of concentration.

"Don't you know what Searle has done--taking the 'Laughing Water'
claim?--Mr. Van Buren's claim?"

"I don't know anything!" he told her convincingly. "I'm a howling
wilderness of ignorance. I want to know."

"Let's start at the very beginning," she said. "Just as soon as Searle
brought your letter--the first one, I mean--in which you asked for
sixty thousand dollars to buy a mine----"

"Whoap! Jamb on the emergency!" Glen interrupted. "I never wrote such
a letter in my life!"

She looked at him blankly.

"But--Glen--I saw your letter. I read it myself--at this very table."

Glen knitted his brows and became more serious.

"A letter from me?--touching Searle for sixty thou? Somebody's nutty."

"But Glen--what I saw with my own eyes----"

"Can't help it. Nothing doing!" he interrupted as before. "If Searle
showed you any such letter as that he wrote it him--hold on, I wrote
him for a grub-stake, fifty dollars at the most, but I haven't even
seen a mine that any man would buy, that the other man would sell, and
Searle sure got my first before I was bug-house from that wollop on the
block." He put his hand to the sore spot on his head and rubbed it
soothingly.

Beth was pale. She failed to observe his gesture, so absorbed were all
her faculties in the maze of facts in which she was somewhat helplessly
struggling.

"Could Searle have written such a letter as that?" she said. "What
for?"

"For money--if he wrote it," said Glen. "Did he touch you for a loan?"

Beth's eyes were widely blazing. Her lips were white and stiff.

"Why, Glen, I advanced thirty thousand dollars--I thought to help you
buy a mine. Searle was to put in a like amount--but recently