"Hey? It was in seventy-eight.... The secretary of the Board announced our suspension at ten in the morning. If the Board had not voted to make wheat in the cars 'regular'--" He went on and on, in an impassive monotone, repeating, word for word, the same phrases he had used for so long that they had lost all significance. "Well," broke in Jadwin, at last, "it was Scannel your partner, did for you. Scannel, I say. You know, Dave Scannel." The old man looked at him confusedly. Then, as the name forced itself upon the atrophied brain, there flashed, for one instant, into the pale, blurred eye, a light, a glint, a brief, quick spark of an old, long-forgotten fire. It gleamed there an instant, but the next sank again. Plaintively, querulously he repeated: "It was in seventy-eight.... I lost three hundred thousand dollars." "How's your little niece getting on?" at last demanded Jadwin. "My little niece--you mean Lizzie? ... Well and happy, well and happy. I--I got"--he drew a thick bundle of dirty papers from his pocket, envelopes, newspapers, circulars, and the like--"I--I--I got, I got her picture here somewheres." "Yes, yes, I know, I know," cried Jadwin. "I've seen it. You showed it to me yesterday, you remember." "I--I got it here somewheres ... somewheres," persisted the old man, fumbling and peering, and as he spoke the clerk from the doorway announced: "Mr. Scannel." This latter was a large, thick man, red-faced, with white, short whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He had a small, gimlet-like eye, enormous, hairy ears, wore a "sack" suit, a highly polished top hat, and entered the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant trumpeting "Well, how do, Captain?" Jadwin nodded, glancing up under his scowl. "Hello!" he said. The other subsided into a chair, and returned scowl for scowl. "Oh, well," he muttered, "if that's your style." He had observed Hargus sitting by the other side of the desk, still fumbling and mumbling in his dirty memoranda, but he gave no sign of recognition. There was a moment's silence, then in a voice from which all the first bluffness was studiously excluded, Scannel said: "Well, you've rung the bell on me. I'm a sucker. I know it. I'm one of the few hundred other God-damned fools that you've managed to catch out shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What's the figure? What do you say?" "I got a good deal to say," remarked Jadwin, scowling again. But Hargus had at last thrust a photograph into his hands. "There it is," he said. "That's it. That's Lizzie." Jadwin took the picture without looking at it, and as he continued to speak, held it in his fingers, and occasionally tapped it upon the desk. "I know. I know, Hargus," he answered. "I got a good deal to say, Mr. David Scannel. Do you see this old man here?" "Oh-h, cut it out!" growled the other.