Barclay looked at the colonel through little beady green eyes and replied,--he knew not what. He merely dipped an oar into the talk occasionally, he did not steer it, and not until he emerged from his calculations twenty minutes after the colonel's greeting did Barclay realize that the colonel was in great pain. He was saying when Barclay's mind took heed: "And now, sir, I say, now, having forced his unwelcome and, I may say, filthy lucre upon me, the impudent scalawag writes me to-day to say that I must liquidate, must--liquidate, sir; in short, pay up. I call that impertinence. But no matter what I call it, he's going to foreclose." Barclay's eyes opened to attention. The colonel went on. "The original indebtedness was a matter of ten thousand--you will remember, John, that's what I paid for my share of the College Heights property, and while I have disposed of some,--in point of fact sold it at considerable profit,--yet, as you know, and as this scoundrel knows, for I have written him pointedly to that effect, I have been temporarily unable to remit any sum substantial enough to justify bothering him with it. But now the scamp, the grasping insulting brigand, notifies me that unless I pay him when the mortgage is due,--to be plain, sir, next week,--he proposes to foreclose on me." The colonel's brows were knit with trouble. His voice faltered as he added: "And, John--John Barclay, my good friend--do you realize that that little piece of property out on the hill is all I have on earth now, except the roof over my head? And may--" here his voice slid into a tenor with pent-up emotion--"maybe the contemptible rapscallion will try to get that." The colonel had risen and was pacing the floor. "What a damn disreputable business your commerce is, anyway! John, I can't afford to lose that property--or I'd be a pauper, sir, a pauper peddling organs and sewing-machines and maybe teaching singing-school." The colonel's face caught a rift of sunshine as he added, "You know I did that once before I was married and came West--taught singing-school." "Well, Colonel--let's see about it," said Barclay, absently. And the two men sat at the table and figured up that the colonel's liabilities were in the neighbourhood of twelve thousand, of which ten thousand were pressing and the rest more or less imminent. At the end of their conference, Barclay's mind was still full of his own affairs. But he said, after looking a moment at the troubled face of the big black-eyed man whose bulk towered above him, "Well, Colonel, I don't know what under heavens I can do--but I'll do what I can."