s was boobs!" he announced,
sarcastically.

Angela at that instant opened her eyes and took her fingers from her ears.
Enough time had elapsed, she thought, for the worst to have happened.

"Has it gone off yet?" she naively asked.

"Has what gone off?" from Pell.

"Why, the gun, of course!" Angela replied.

"Gun?"

She looked at "Red." "He had one, and I thought maybe he'd shoot you, or
maybe you'd shoot Gilbert, or maybe--Aren't you going to shoot him?"

"What for?"

"I thought that was what husbands always did!"

Pell smiled. "Not sensible husbands, my dear." Then he faced Gilbert again.
"To go back to where we were: I will admit that there is a possibility of
oil in this property. But it is only a possibility." The strain was broken.
Everyone looked relieved. Lucia moved for the first time--she had been like
a frightened bird under the spell of a serpent. "I'm a business man," Pell
went on, suavely. "I'm willing to gamble twenty thousand dollars."

"You will?" cried Uncle Henry. There was no quieting him. His life was one
long question-mark.

"It's a fair proposition, and, as far as I can see, your only way out,
Jones." He had paid no attention to the old man's interruption. But the
latter broke in once more:

"Why don't you lend _us_ the ten thousand and let _us_ gamble?"

Pell was in no wise disconcerted by the query. He replied with another
question--always the shrewd man's way out of a difficulty, "Would you, in
my place?"

"Sure I would!" came from the wheel chair.

"Oh, you would--"

"Yes, _sir_!"

Pell had nothing further to say to him, but addressed himself to Gilbert
again.

"However, if you don't think that offer fair, I'll give you twenty thousand
cash and assume the mortgages."

"Twenty thousand?" Uncle Henry's eyes opened wide.

"Well, what do you say?" Pell wanted to know, still addressing Gilbert. He
had no taste for Smith's constant interruptions.

But Hardy broke in, confounded by this talk. He saw himself slipping out of
the transactions. "If you think you're going to ..."

Pell paid no heed to what he said. "If I were in your place," he remarked
to young Jones, "it wouldn't take me long to decide. You see, from me you
get twenty thousand dollars clean. Otherwise, the place goes to him." He
nodded toward Hardy. "And you get nothing. It's mighty plain--as plain as
the nose on your face. I'm a plain man, and I don't quibble. I've made you
a direct offer. Nothing could be