"Yes, I know; that's why he needs me," said Duncan brazenly. In his soul he remarked "O Lord!" in a tone of awe; his colossal impudence dazed even himself. "But don't you think he could get back some of the trade if the store was stocked up?" "No doubt about that at all," Sperry averred; "he'd get the biggest part of it." "You think so?" "Sure of it. You see, everybody round here likes Sam, and Sothern and Lee have always been outsiders. They'd swing to this shop in a minute, just on account of that. Fact is, I wasted a lot of talk on our firm a couple of years ago, trying to make our people give him some credit, but they couldn't see it. He owed them a bill then that was so old it had grown whiskers." "And still owes it, I presume?" "You bet he still owes it. Always will. It's so small that it ain't worth while suing for----" "Look here, Mr. Sperry, how much is this bill with the whiskers?" "About fifty dollars, I think," said the travelling man, fumbling for his wallet. "I'm supposed to ask for payment every time I strike town, you know, so I always have it with me; but I haven't had the heart to say a word to Sam for a good long time.... Here it is." Duncan studied carefully the memorandum: "To Mdse, as per bill rendered, $47.85." "I wonder..." he murmured. "Eh?" said Sperry. "I was wondering:... Suppose you were to tell your people that there's a young fellow here who'd like to give this store a boom.... Say he wants a little credit because--because Mr. Graham won't let him put in any cash----" "Not a bit of use," Sperry negatived. "I would, myself, but the house--no." "But suppose I pay this bill----" "Pay it? You really mean that?" "Certainly I mean it." Duncan produced the wad of bills which Kellogg had furnished him the night before his departure from New York. Thus far he had broken only one of the five-hundred-dollar gold certificates, and of that one he had the greater part left; living is anything but expensive in Radville. "I'm beginning to understand that I was cut out for an actor," he told himself as he thumbed the roll with a serious air and an assumed indifference which permitted Sperry to estimate its size pretty accurately. "That's quite a stack of chips you're carrying," Sperry observed. Duncan's hand airily wafted the remark into the limbo of the negligible. "A trifle, a mere trifle," he said casually. "I don't generally carry much cash about me. Haven't for five years," he added irrepressibly. He extracted a fifty-dollar certificate from the sheaf, and handed it over. "I'll take a receipt, but you needn't mention this to Mr. Graham just now." "No, certainly not." Sperry scrawled his signature to the bill. "And about that line of credit?----" "Well, with this paid, I guess you could have what you needed, in moderation. Of course----" "My name is Duncan--Nathaniel Duncan." Sperry made a memorandum of it on the back of an envelope. "Any former business connections?"