"An' Snellin'?" "He is in Mr. Galbraith's employ, yes." "An'--an'--you let 'em come here--" began the old man bewildered. "You let 'em come here to steal Willie's idee," interrupted Janoah, wheeling on Bob. "You helped 'em to come, after his takin' you into his home an' all!" "I didn't know what they meant to do," Robert Morton stammered. "I just thought they were going to lend us a hand at working up the thing." "A likely story!" sniffed Janoah with scorn. "No siree! You came here as a tool--you were paid for it, I'll bet a hat!" "You lie." "Prove it," was the taunting response. "I--I--can't prove it," confessed the young man wretchedly, "but Willie knows that what you accuse me of isn't so." With face alight with hope he turned toward the old man at his elbow; but no denial came from the expected source. Willie had sunk down on a pile of boards and buried his face in his hands. "An' I thought they were my friends," they heard him moan. Robert Morton hesitated, then bent over the bowed figure, and as he did so Janoah, casting one last look of gloating delight at the ruin he had wrought, slipped softly from the room. As he went out he heard a broken murmur from the inventor: "I'll--I'll--not--believe it," asserted he feebly. But despite the brave words, the seed of suspicion had taken root, and Robert Morton knew that Willie's confidence in him had been shaken. Still the little old man clung with dogged persistence to his sanguine declaration: "_I'll not believe it_!" CHAPTER XVII A GRIM HAND INTERVENES The next morning saw a grave change in the household on the bluff. Delight, with violet-circled eyes and cheeks whose rose tints had faded to pallor, listened with dread for the sound of the Galbraith's motor. What the day would bring forth she feared to speculate. Willie and Bob also showed traces of a sleepless night. Although they had guarded from the others the happenings of the previous evening, between them loomed a barrier of mutual amazement and reproach. Beneath his attempted optimism Willie was wounded and indignant that he should have been deceived by those in whose kindness he had believed so whole-heartedly. He fought the facts with loyalty, obstinately trusting that some satisfactory explanation would be forthcoming, but he did not understand, and the dumb question that spoke in his eyes hurt Robert Morton more than any formulated reproach could have done. It was human, the young man owned, that the inventor should resent having been tricked. He himself, throughout the weary watches of the night, had twisted and turned Janoah's damning testimony, struggling to explain it away by some simple and harmless interpretation; yet he was compelled to admit that the facts pointed in but one direction. And if he was baffled in his search for a way out, how much more so must Willie be? Why, he would be almost superman if he did not surrender his faith before such convincing evidence.