"You are asking me to sign my own death warrant." He lifted his shoulders. "It is your reputation or Essie Tisdale's." The name seemed to prick her like a goad. Her hands and body twitched nervously and then he saw swift decision arrive in her face. "I'll not do it!" As moved by a common impulse they arose. "It's the lesser of two evils." "I don't care!" She reiterated in a kind of hopeless desperation, "I don't care--I'll fight!" He eyed her again with a recurrence of his impersonal professional scrutiny. "You can't go through it, Doc; you haven't the stamina, any more. You don't know what you're up against, for I haven't half showed my hand. I have no personal grievance, as you know, but the wrongs of my countrymen are my wrongs, and for your brutality to them you shall answer to me. Fight if you will, but when you're done you'll not disgrace your profession again in this or any other State." While this scene was occurring in Doctor Harpe's office, Andy P. Symes in his office was toying impatiently with an unopened letter from Mudge as Mr. Percy Parrott, hat in hand, stood before him. "It's not that I'm worried at all, Mr. Symes"--every line of Parrott's face was deep-lined with anxiety as he spoke--"but, of course, I've made you these loans largely upon my own responsibility, I've exceeded my authority, in fact, and any failure on your part----" Mr. Parrott finding himself floundering under Symes's cold gaze blurted out desperately, "Well, 'twould break us!" "Certainly, certainly, I know all that, but, really, these frequent duns--this Homeseekers' Excursion has put me behind with my work, but as soon as things are straightened out again----" "Oh, of course. That's all right. I understand, but as soon as you conveniently can----" Mr. Parrott's lengthened jaw rested between the "white wings" of his collar as he turned away. It might have reached his shirt-stud had he known the number of creditors that had preceded him. Even Symes's confident assurances that the complete failure of the Homeseekers' Excursion was relatively a small matter, could not entirely eradicate from the minds of Crowheart's merchants the picture presented by the procession of excursionists returning with their satchels to the station, glowering at Crowheart's citizens as they passed and making loud charges of misrepresentation and fraud. When the door closed behind him Symes dropped the catch that he might read Mudge's bulky letter undisturbed. Mudge's diction was ever open to criticism, but he had a faculty for conveying his meaning which genius well might envy. The letter read: MY DEAR SYMES: Are you the damnedest fool or the biggest scoundrel out of jail? Write and let me know. I told you there was something wrong; that some outside influence was queering us all along the line and I let myself be talked out of my conviction by you instead of getting busy and finding out the truth.