The gentleman put his wallet back hurriedly as if some one had laughed at it, and cast a quick, hurt look at his broker. 'You haven't been thinking of selling me out--after all the business I've given you?' Cargan nodded. Incredulity, horror, resolve, passed over Waldron's face. 'You cannot! It's impossible!' he said firmly. The assertion in his tone was irritating. 'What's goin' to stop us?' Cargan asked coolly; shoved his hands into his pockets, and puffed clouds from his cigar. Different worlds of imagination revolved in the two men's minds. Theophilus Waldron thought of the children, and of his father the governor, and of the family pride. Sudden poverty was as bad as disgrace. 'I didn't mean it that way,' he answered hurriedly. 'I'm in temporary difficulties. My house is mortgaged. I've borrowed money from my wife--and other places.'--He was too proud to add, 'This is confidential.'--'My boy's just entered college, my girl's just come out. It isn't just the money--' a gush of emotion reddened his face--'You've got to pull me through, Cargan. It's impossible; it's out of the question for me to break now!' But Cargan was remembering how he lost his job in the department store and couldn't pay the rent. When he was kicked out, nobody said it was impossible! Nobody said it was impossible when they went into the top of a tenement! The contrast made him bitter; but it was the thought that he had never felt it to be impossible, the inescapable inferiority always forced upon him in the presence of Waldron, which roused his temper. 'Business is business, Mr. Waldron,' he said curtly. 'Ab-so-lute-ly, we won't take the risk.' They were rattling through coal-sheds and grain-elevators at the edge of a town. Waldron got up stiffly and carefully brushed the cinders from his coat. 'This is Bloomfield, I think,' he said coldly. 'I'm meeting my family here. Mr. Cargan, there are considerations above business.' His voice failed a little. 'This is a matter of life and death.' Cargan had heard that bluff before. 'What d' you mean?' he grunted. Mr. Waldron was staring fixedly out of the window. 'I mean,' he faltered, 'that I may not be able to stand up under it.' And then his voice resumed its desperate certainty. 'I mean, sir, that what you propose is impossible. I mean that ab-so-lute-ly you cannot sell me out.' He bowed and felt his way down the corridor. 'I can't, can't I!' Cargan flung after him; then jerked a sheet from the telegraph pad in the rack beside him and wrote: 'Sell out Waldron at noon to-morrow unless 5000 collateral.' 'Something'll drop for you, old boy,' he growled, addressed the telegram to his partner, and gave it to the porter.