“Then there’s nothing more to say,” finished the lawyer. “You put yourself in her hands. Has she broken faith? Did she ever promise you in word or writing any money or other valuable consideration for those leases? No? Was there any verbal understanding with you respecting them?” “I told her I’d pledge ’em with Judge Hollaby, but when they were drawn she insisted they be made out to her,” Mr. Hand explained. He was dazed. “She threatened to back out at the last moment. She--she didn’t exactly promise anything. She said they must be leased to her. She said she’d lend me $5,000 on my note of hand.” “As nearly as I can make out,” observed Lucius Brown, “Miss Smiley talked little and made no engagements. You can’t prove anything by what she said, and you can’t prove anything by what she thought. You might succeed in proving your own lack of brains; in fact, you have satisfied me that you haven’t any.” Mr. Hand said no more. With a look of actual agony on his face he turned and drooped away in the direction of the door. But with the tenacity of a drowning man--drowning in grief, rage, mortification, and dismay--he clutched at a straw. Pausing at the doorway of the lawyer’s office he took a half step back. “But--now--there’s that option on the Smiley tract,” he stammered. “I might buy that. I’ve been thinking for a long time of buying a likely piece of land. How long’s that option for, and how much would you want for it?” Mr. Brown considered. “Twenty thousand dollars,” he said, finally. Mr. Hand, recoiling, sneered. “Twenty thousand! Nonsense! Why, the land itself ain’t worth more’n ten. I’d be buying it twice over.” “Well, it seems to be a passion with you to buy things twice over,” said the lawyer, reflectively. “It’s an option to buy only, and must be exercised in six months, otherwise it is forfeit. But you must consider that in buying this option you practically do away with the Luscious Oyster Corporation. All our plans are predicated upon dredging Blue Port oysters from a few beds and preparing and shipping them from this nearest available site, working up the shells for commercial purposes. If you buy our option we cannot go on. There is no other site, and there are no other beds except the free beds, unsuitably located for our purpose and yielding inferior oysters. You might as well buy our capital stock, patent rights, and everything, lock, stock, and barrel, as buy that option. Naturally we have to ask a high price for it, even if we only paid $1,000 to get it.” “You figure your assets, outside the option, at $19,000,” deduced Richard Hand. “Option, $1,000; leases of beds, $5,000; patents and prospects and lawyer’s fees”--here he sneered--“$14,000. I’m to pay you $20,000 and then pay Keturah Smiley $5,000 more for part of that $20,000 worth.”