“Then there was a woman,” he said with more difficulty. “I thought--she made me believe she cared for me. I was young. She got me into a fake stock proposition with some confederates, and they fleeced me.” “Whoof!” Molly blew an imaginary thistledown from her dainty fingers. “She was a light thing.'T was your bank account she hurt, not your heart.” Suddenly Miles Morse realized that this was so. It wasn't wholly pleasant, however, to have his cherished grudges thus lightly dismissed. “There's nothing else worth speaking of,” he said, a bit sullenly, “except a bit of boy's silliness that you'd laugh at.” “Tell it to me.” “It was when I was seven years old and we lived in the country. My father was a hard sort of man; he saw no sense in play or such nonsense, and when Fourth of July came he'd give me no fireworks nor let me draw any of my little money out of the bank. All the other boys had firecrackers but me. So I got a spool and filled it with sand and put a bit of string in it and I lighted the end. When it didn't go off I ran away and hid and felt pretty bad. I've always laid that up against things. Foolish, isn't it!” The little woman opposite lifted eyes which had grown suddenly bright and soft with a disturbing hint of tears. “Ye poor lamb!” she said. “Tut-tut!” gruffly retorted the Meanest Man in Our Square, who had never before been called a poor lamb. He spoke without conviction. “But that shouldn't make ye hate the world,” argued Molly earnestly. “It should only make ye hate what's mean and unfair in the world.” “Well, there's D. Wiggett,” replied the other hopefully. “I think I could learn to hate him. In fact, I think I'll make a trial of it by calling on him to-day.” “Oh, don't do that,” she implored tremulously. “He'll do ye harm. He's a terrible man, and twice the size of ye!” “This will be a strictly peaceable errand,” he averred, meaning what he said. By no means reassured, Molly Dunstan made her way, at the hour when she thought that her employer would call upon D. Wiggett & Co., to a spot in St. Mark's Square which gave her a good view of the real-estate office. After an hour's wait, devoted to the most dismal forebodings, she saw her employer stride around the corner and enter the door. Had she actually summoned the nerve to interpose, as she had vaguely designed to do, there was no time. Her brief and alarmed glimpse of Miles Morse had oppressed her with a quality hitherto unknown in him. He was clad in his accustomed neat and complete black, even to the black string tie. His big blue glasses were set as solemnly level as usual upon his ample nose. His spare figure was held stiffly erect, in its characteristic attitude. But there was something about the way he walked which suggested an arrow going to keep an important engagement with a bull's-eye. Three minutes later Mr. Miles Morse emerged.