“I couldn't accept it, Mrs. Windlebird,” he said. “I can't tell you how deeply I appreciate your wonderful kindness, but I really couldn't. I bought the shares with my eyes open. The whole thing is nobody's fault, and I can't let you suffer for it. After the way you have treated me here, it would be impossible. I can't take your money. It's noble and generous of you in the extreme, but I can't accept it. I've still got a little money left, and I've always been used to working for my living, anyway, so--so it's all right.” “Mr. Bleke, I implore you.” Roland was hideously embarrassed. He looked right and left for a way of escape. He could hardly take to his heels, and yet there seemed no other way of ending the interview. Then, with a start of relief, he perceived Johnson the groom coming toward him with the evening paper. “Johnson said he was going into the town,” said Roland apologetically, “so I asked him to get me an evening paper. I wanted to see the lunch scores.” If he had been looking at his hostess then, an action which he was strenuously avoiding, he might have seen a curious spasm pass over her face. Mrs. Windlebird turned very pale and sat down suddenly in the chair which Roland had vacated at the beginning of their conversation. She lay back in it with her eyes closed. She looked tired and defeated. Roland took the paper mechanically. He wanted it as a diversion to the conversation merely, for his interest in the doings of Surrey and Yorkshire had waned to the point of complete indifference in competition with Mrs. Windlebird's news. Equally mechanically he unfolded it and glanced at front page; and, as he did do, a flaring explosion of headlines smote his eye. Out of the explosion emerged the word “WILD-CATS”. “Why!” he exclaimed. “There's columns about Wild-cats on the front page here!” “Yes?” Mrs. Windlebird's voice sounded strangely dull and toneless. Her eyes were still closed. Roland took in the headlines with starting eyes. THE WILD-CAT REEF GOLD-MINE ANOTHER KLONDIKE FRENZIED SCENES ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE BROKERS FIGHT FOR SHARES RECORD BOOM UNPRECEDENTED RISE IN PRICES Shorn of all superfluous adjectives and general journalistic exuberance, what the paper had to announce to its readers was this: The “special commissioner” sent out by The _Financial Argus_ to make an exhaustive examination of the Wild-cat Reef Mine--with the amiable view, no doubt, of exploding Mr. Geoffrey Windlebird once and for all with the confiding British public--has found, to his unbounded astonishment, that there are vast quantities of gold in the mine.