"I'm sorry, Bob," he affirmed with a sweetness as winning as a woman's. "You mustn't mind what Jan said. He's gettin' old an' a mite crabbed, an' he's kinder foolish about me, mebbe. I wouldn't 'a' had him hurt your feelin's--" Robert Morton caught the expression of pain in the troubled face and cut the apology short. "It's all right, Mr. Spence," he cried. "Don't give it another thought. So long as you remain my friend I don't care what Mr. Eldridge thinks. We'll pass it off as jealousy and let it go at that." The old man tried to smile, but the corners of his mouth drooped and he sighed instead. To have Janoah's weaknesses thus nakedly set forth by another was a very different thing from recognizing them himself, and instinctively his loyalty rose in protest. "Mebbe 'twas jealousy," he replied. "Folks have always stood out that Janoah was jealous. But somehow I'd rather think 'twas tryin' to look after me an' my affairs that misled him. S'pose we call it a sort of slab-sided friendliness." "We'll call it anything you like," assented Bob, with a happy laugh. This time Willie laughed also. "So she stood by you, did she?" queried he with quick understanding. "Yes." "'Twas like her." "It was like both of you." The old man raised a hand in protest against the gratitude the remark implied. "Delight ain't often wrong; she's a fair dealer." Then he added significantly, "Them as ain't fair with her deserve no salvation." "Hanging would be too good for the man who was not square with a girl like that," came from Robert Morton with an emphasis unmistakable in its sincerity. CHAPTER X A CONSPIRACY On Sunday morning, when a menacing east wind whipped the billows into foam and a breath of storm brooded in the air, the Galbraiths' great touring car rolled up to Willie's cottage, and from it stepped not only Robert Morton's old college chum, Roger Galbraith, but also his father, a finely built, middle-aged man whose decisive manner and quick speech characterized the leader and dictator. He was smooth-shaven after the English fashion and from beneath shaggy iron-gray brows a pair of dark eyes, piercing in their intensity, looked out. The face was lined as if the stress of living had drawn its muscles into habitual tensity, and except when a smile relieved the setness of the mouth his countenance was stern to severity. His son, on the other hand, possessed none of his father's force of personality. Although his features were almost a replica of those of the older man, they lacked strength; it was as if the second impression taken from the type had been less clear-cut and positive. The eyes were clear rather than penetrating, the mouth and chin handsome but mobile; even the well-rounded physique lacked the rugged qualities that proclaimed its development to have been the result of a Spartan combat with the world and instead bore the more artificial sturdiness acquired from sports and athletics.