"Well, I have, Larry. I'm an old sentimentalist, when you know me proper. I took a fancy to you, and while I can't show my feelings as many can, I have stood by you and you've been a proposition, off and on. I bought those mines because I saw the chance they offered, and I shared with you. I've got big men interested. I've let you carry results to them--but the results are slow, Rivers, and they're getting restive. I'm afraid some one of them has blabbed and this Northrup is the result. Why, man, I've got inventions over at the mines that will revolutionize this rotten, lazy Forest. I wanted to win the folks--but they wouldn't be won. I wanted to save them in spite of themselves, but damn 'em, they won't be saved. In a year I could make Heathcote a rich man, if he'd wake up and _keep_ an inn instead of a kennel. But I've got to have this Point. I want to build a bridge from here to the railroad property on the other shore--this is the narrowest part of the lake; I want to build cottages here, instead of--of rat holes. I've got to get this Point by hook or crook--and I can't shilly-shally with this Northrup on to the game." Suddenly, while he was talking, Maclin's eyes fell upon the untidy mass of papers on the table. He pulled his fat hands out of his tight pockets and let them fall like paperweights on the envelopes and sheets. "What are these?" he asked. Larry started guiltily. "Old letters," he said. "What you doing with them?" As he spoke Maclin was sorting and arranging the papers--the old he put to one side; the newer ones on the other. Some of the new ones were astonishingly good copies of the old! "Playing the old game, eh?" Maclin scowled. "I thought you'd had enough of that, after----" "For God's sake, Maclin, shut up." "Been carrying these mementos around with you all these years?" Maclin was reading a letter of Larry's father--an old one. "No, I brought them with me from the old house. Mary-Clare had them, but they were mine." Larry's face was white and set into hard lines. "Sure, so I see." And Maclin was seeing a great deal. He saw that Rivers had torn off, where it was possible, half pages from the old and yellowed letters; these were carefully banded together, while on fresh sheets of paper, the old letters in part, or in whole, were cleverly copied. There was one yellowed half sheet in the old doctor's handwriting bearing a new form of expression--there was no original of this. Maclin made sure of that. He read this new form once, twice, three times. "If the time should ever come, my girl, when you and Larry could not agree, he'll give you this letter. It is all I could do for him; it will prove that I trust you, at every turn, to do the right and just thing. Stand by Larry, as I have done." Maclin puffed out his cheeks. They looked like a child's red balloon. "What in hell!" he ejaculated. Larry's face was gray. Guilt is always quick to hold up its hands when it thinks the enemy has the drop on it.