"you say you'll buy it back!"

"Certainly," said Thorpe. "That's what I said."

"I--I never heard of such a thing!" the other faltered with increasing
agitation. "No--you can't mean it. It isn't common sense!"

"It's common decency," replied the big man, in his most commanding
manner. "It's life and death to you--and it doesn't matter a flea-bite
to me. So, since you came to grief through me, why shouldn't I do the
fair thing, and put you back on your legs again?"

Tavender, staring now at those shrunken legs of his, breathed heavily.
The thing overwhelmed him. Once or twice he lifted his head and essayed
to speak, but no speech came to his thin lips. He moistened them
eventually with a long deliberate pull at his glass.

"This much ought to be understood, however," Thorpe resumed, reflecting
upon his words as he went along. "If I'm to buy back a dead horse, like
that, it's only reasonable that there should be conditions. I suppose
you've seen by this time that even if this concession of ours was
recognized by the Government there wouldn't be any money in it to speak
of. I didn't realize that two years ago, any more than you did, but it's
plain enough now. The trade has proved it. A property of rubber trees
has no real value--so long as there's a wilderness of rubber trees all
round that's everybody's property. How can a man pay even the interest
on his purchase money, supposing he's bought a rubber plantation, when
he has to compete with people who've paid no purchase money at all, but
just get out as much as they like from the free forest? You must know
that that is so."

Tavender nodded eloquently. "Oh yes, I know that is so. You can prove it
by me."

Thorpe grinned a little. "As it happens, that aint what I need to have
you prove," he said, dryly. "Now WE know that a rubber property is no
good--but London doesn't know it. Everybody here thinks that it's a
great business to own rubber trees. Why, man alive, do you know"--the
audacity of the example it had occurred to him to cite brought a
gratified twinkle to his eyes as he went on--"do you know that a man
here last year actually sold a rubber plantation for four hundred
thousand pounds--two millions of dollars! Not in cash, of course, but
in shares that he could do something with--and before he's done with
it, I'm told, he's going to make twice that amount of money out of it.
That'll show you what London is like."

"Yes--I suppose they do those things," rem