"I suppose he'll take a partner; they always do, don't they? Anyway, I want to make it enough so that he can if he chooses. Please tell me how much." "Well, if he knows how to cut the corners and how to outfit so as to make the most of what he has, he'd ought to be able to do it on a couple of hundred or so. But I don't know if that ain't pretty liberal," he added, as if upon second thought. Myra went quickly to the table under the lamp, and wrote upon a slip of paper. Elliott thought she was making a note of her information; and when she put the check into his hands he took it mechanically. But her hurried explanation drove the firing-pin of intelligence. "It's for you--you are the man, Uncle Stephen; and if it isn't enough, it's your own fault." She said it with one eye on the two in the next room, and with nerves taut-braced for the shock of refusal. The shock came promptly. "Oh--say--here! Myra, girl; I can't take this from you!" He was on his feet, trying to give back the check; and as she eluded him he followed her about the room, protesting as he went. "It's just like you to offer it, but I can't, don't you see? I'll rope somebody else in; somebody that knows the chances. Here, take it back,--I'm getting pretty old, and just as like as not I won't find anything worth assaying. Come, now; you be a good girl, and"-- He had driven her into a corner, and it was time for the _coup de main_. So she put her arms about his neck and her face on his shoulder, and if the attack pathetic were no more than a clever bit of feigning, Stephen Elliott was none the wiser. "I--I'd like to know what I have done!" she quavered. "You'd take it from a stranger--you said you would--and you've made me just the same as your own daughter, and now you wo--won't let me do the first little thing I've ever had a chance to do!" There were more strong solvents of a similar nature in reserve, but they were not needed. The good old man was helplessly soluble in any woman's tears, real or invented; and his fine resolution melted and the bones of it became as water. "There, there, little girl, don't you take on like that. I'll keep it. See? I've chucked it right down into the bottom of my pocket"--he was stroking her hair and otherwise gentling her as if she were a hurt child. "Don't you fret a little bit. I'll spend it--every last cent of it--just the way you want me to. You mustn't cry another tear; Dick'll think I've been abusing you, and he'll fire the old uncle out of one of these high windows. Haven't you got any handkerchief?"