h hands gripping the table. There was a long silence, in which the
ticking of the clock upon the wall seemed unduly loud and in which the
buzz of cross-cut saws came sounding through the evening air. Yet Tarboe
did not reply.

"Have you nothing to say?" asked Grier at last. "Won't you do it--eh?"

"I'm studying the thing out," answered Tarboe quietly. "I don't quite
see about these two wills. Why shouldn't the second will be found
first?"

"Because you and I will be the only ones that'll know of it. That shows
how much I trust you, Tarboe. I'll put it away where nobody can get it
except you or me."

"But if anything should happen to me?"

"Well, I'd leave a letter with my bank, not to be opened for three
years, or unless you died, and it would say that the will existed, where
it was, and what its terms were."

"That sounds all right," but there was a cloud on Tarboe's face.

"It's a great business," said Grier, seeing Tarboe's doubt. "It's the
biggest thing a man can do--and I'm breaking up."

The old man had said the right thing--"It's a great business!" It was
the greatness of the thing that had absorbed Tarboe. It was the bigness
made him feel life could be worth living, if the huge machinery were
always in his fingers. Yet he had never expected it, and life was a
problem. Who could tell? Perhaps--perhaps, the business would always be
his in spite of the second will! Perhaps, he would have his chance to
make good. He got to his feet; he held out his hand.

"I'll do it."

"Ain't it worth any thanks?"

"Not between us," declared Tarboe.

"When are you going to do it?"

"To-night--now." He drew out some paper and sat down with a pen in his
hand.

"Now," John Grier repeated.

CHAPTER IX. THE PUZZLE

On his way home, with Luzanne's disturbing letter in his pocket, Carnac
met Junia. She was supremely Anglo-Saxon; fresh, fervid and buoyant
with an actual buoyancy of the early spring. She had tact and ability,
otherwise she could never have preserved peace between the contending
factions, Belloc and Fabian, old John Grier, the mother and Carnac. She
was as though she sought for nothing, wished nothing but the life in
which she lived. Yet her wonderful pliability, her joyful boyishness,
had behind all a delicate anxiety which only showed in flashes now and
then, fully understood by no one except Carnac's mother and old Denzil.
These two having suffered strangely in life had realized that the girl
w