lackie.

Wallingford chuckled.

"Not yet," he admitted. "I'd like to see him when he finds it out."

Blackie also grinned.

"That little Blakeville episode was the happiest period of my life,"
he declared. "By the way, J. Rufus, what was your game down there? I
never understood."

"As simple as a night-shirt," explained Wallingford. "I merely hunted
through the postal guide for the richest little town I could find that
had no bank. Then I went there and had one started so I could borrow
its money."

Blackie nodded comprehendingly.

"Then you bought a piece of property and raised it to a fictitious
value to cover the loan," he added. "Great stunt; but it seems to me
they can get you for it. If they catch you up in one lie they can
prove the whole thing to have been a frame-up. Suppose they find
out?"

Wallingford swelled up with righteous indignation.

"Vittoreo Matteo," he charged, "you are a rascally scoundrel! I met
you in New York and you imposed upon me with a miserable pack of lies.
I have investigated and I find that there is no Etrusca, near Milan,
Italy, no Etruscan black pottery, no Vittoreo Matteo. You induced me
to waste a lot of money in locating and developing a black mud-swamp.
When you had gained my full confidence you came to me in Blakeville
with a cock-and-bull story that your mother was dying in Genoa, and on
the strength of that borrowed a large sum of money from me. You are
gone--I don't know where. I shall have to make a clean breast of this
matter to Jonas Bubble, and tell him that if I can not pay that note
when it falls due he will have to foreclose. You heartless villain!
Waiter, ice us another bottle of that ninety-three."

When Wallingford returned to his wife he found her very thoughtful.

"When are we going to Blakeville, Jim?" she asked.

He studied her curiously for a moment. She would have to know him some
time or other. He had hoped to put it off while they were leading this
unruffled existence, but now that the test had come he might as well
have it over with.

"I'm not going back," he declared. "I'm through with Blakeville.
Aren't you?"

"Yes," she admitted, pondering it slowly. "I could be happy here
always, or, if not here, wherever you are. But your business back
there, Jim?"

He chuckled.

"I have no business there," he told her. "My business is concluded. I
borrowed forty-five thousand dollars on that forty acres of sticky
mud, and I think I'll just let the