"No right,--no right!" Margrave panted. "You damned miserable fool, what do you know or mean by right or wrong either? I can take my medicine as well as the next man, but when a friend does me up, then I throw up my hands. Why did you tell me you knew what Porter was doing, and lead me to think--" "Mr. Margrave," said Wheaton, "I didn't come here to be abused by you. If I've done you any injury, I'm not aware of it." "I guess that's right," said Margrave ironically. "What I want to know is what you let me think Porter wasn't taking hold of Traction for? You knew I was going into it. I told you that with the fool idea that you were a friend of mine. You told me the old man had stopped buying--" "And when I did I betrayed a confidence," said Wheaton, virtuously. "I had no business telling you anything of the kind." "When you told me that," Margrave went on in bitter derision, shaking his finger in Wheaton's face,--"when you told me that you told me a damned lie, that's what you did, Jim Wheaton." "You can't talk to me that way," said Wheaton, sitting up in his chair resentfully. "When I told you that, I believed it," and he added, with a second's hesitation, "I still believe it." "Don't lie any more to me about it. I can take my medicine as well as the next man, but--" swaying his big head back and forth on his fat shoulders,--"when a man plays a dirty trick on Tim Margrave, I want him to know when Margrave finds it out. I never thought it of you, Jim. I've always treated you as white as I knew how; I've been glad to see you in my house,--" "I don't know what you're driving at, but I want you to stop abusing me," said Wheaton, with more vigor of tone than he had yet manifested. "I never said a word to you about Mr. Porter in connection with Traction that I didn't think true. The only mistake I made was in saying anything to you at all; but I thought you were a friend of mine. If anybody's been deceived, I'm the one." Margrave watched him contemptuously. "Let me ask you something, Jim," he said, dropping his blustering tone. "Haven't you known all these weeks when I've been seeing you every few days at the club, and at my own house several times,"--he dwelt on the second clause as if the breach of hospitality on Wheaton's part had been the grievous offense,--"haven't you known that the old man was chasing over the country in his carpet slippers buying all that stock he could lay his hands on?" "On my sacred honor, I have not. When we talked of it I knew he had been buying some, but I thought he'd stopped, as I let you understand. I'm sorry if you were misled by anything I said."