“You mean that the Bishops are ready to--” Wilson began again on another breath--“to pay us the twenty-five thousand dollars?” “And the interest for six months,” quietly added Miller, reaching for a match on the desk. “I reckon you've got the note here. I don't want to miss my train.” Wilson was a good business man, but his Puritanical training in New England had not fitted him for wily diplomacy; besides, he had not expected to meet a diplomat that day, and did not, even now, realize that he was in the hands of one. He still believed that Miller was only a half-educated country lawyer who had barely enough brains and experience to succeed as a legal servant for mountain clients. Hence, he now made little effort to conceal his embarrassment into which the sudden turn of affairs had plunged him. In awkward silence he squirmed in his big chair. “Of course, they can take up their note to-day if they wish,” he said, with alarmed frankness. “I was not counting on it, though.” He rose to his feet. Miller's watchful eye detected a certain trembling of his lower lip. He thrust his hands into his pockets nervously; and in a tone of open irritation he said to the young man at the typewriter: “Brown, I wish you'd let up on that infernal clicking; sometimes I can stand it, and then again I can' t. You can do those letters in the next room.” When the young man had gone out, carrying his machine, Wilson turned to Miller. “As I understand it, you, personally, have no interest in the Bishop property?” “Oh, not a dollar!” smiled the lawyer. “I'm only acting for them.” “Then”--Wilson drove his hands into his pockets again--“perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me if the Bishops are on trade with other parties. Are they?” Miller smiled and shook his head. “As their lawyer, Mr. Wilson, I simply couldn't answer that question.” The blow was well directed and it struck a vulnerable spot. “I beg your pardon,” Wilson stammered. “I did not mean to suggest that you would betray confidence.” He reflected a moment, and then he said, in a flurried tone, “They have not actually sold out, have they?” Miller was silent for a moment, then he answered: “I don't see any reason why I may not answer that question I don't think my clients would object to my saying that they have not yet accepted any offer.” A look of relief suffused itself over Wilson's broad face. “Then they are still open to accept their offer to me?” Miller laughed as if highly amused at the complication of the matter. “They are bound, you remember, only so long as you hold their note.” “Then I tell you what to do,” proposed Wilson. “Go back and tell them not to bother about payment, for a few days, anyway, and that we will soon tell them positively whether we will pay their price or not. That's fair, isn't it?”