Wiley gazed at her grimly for a moment and then he curled up his lip. "Why not come through," he asked at last, "and acknowledge that he held it out on you?" Virginia started and then she smiled wanly. "No," she said, "it wasn't quite that. And yet--well, he didn't really give it to me." "I knew it!" exploded Wiley, "the doggoned piker! But of course you made a clean-up on your other stock?" "No, I didn't! I gave that away, too! But Wiley, why won't you listen to me? I didn't intend to do it, but he explained it all so nicely----" "Didn't I tell you he would?" he raged. "Yes, but listen; you don't understand. When I went to him first I asked for Father's stock and--he must have known what was coming. I guess he saw the bills. Anyway, he told me then that he had always loved my father, and that he wanted to protect us from you; and so, he said, he was just holding my Father's stock to keep you from getting it away from us. And then he called in some friends of his; and oh, they all became so indignant that I thought I couldn't be wrong! Why, they showed me that you would make millions by the deal, and all at our expense; and then--I don't know, something came over me. We'd been poor so long, and it would make you so rich; and, like a fool, I went and did it." "Well, that's all right," said Wiley. "I forgive you, and all that; but don't let your father know. He's got old-fashioned ideas about keeping a trust and--say, do you know what he thinks? I happened to mention, the first night I got in, that a woman had thrown me down; and he just now took me aside and told me not to worry because he'd never mention the lady to you. He thinks it was somebody else." "Oh," breathed Virginia, and then she sat silent while he kicked a hole in the dirt and waited. He was willing to concede anything, agree to anything, look pleasant at anything, until the ordeal was over; and then he intended to depart. Where he would go was a detail to be considered later when he felt the need of something to occupy his mind; right now he was only thinking that she looked very pale--and there was a tired, hunted look in her eyes. She had nerves, of course, the same as he had, and the trip across Death Valley had been hard on her; but if she suffered now, he had suffered also, and he failed to be as sorry as he should. "You'll be all right now," he said at last, when it seemed she would never speak up, "and I'm glad you found your father. He'll go back with you now and take a fall out of Blount and--well, you won't feel so poor, any more." "Yes, I will," returned Virginia, suddenly rousing up and looking at him with haggard eyes. "I'll always feel poor, because if I gave you back all I had it wouldn't be a tenth of what you lost." "Oh, that's all right," grumbled Wiley. "I don't care about the money. Are they hunting me for murder, or what?"