"You're fixed to put the entire responsibility for the ruction over onto the other side of the house?" was one of the overheard sentences: it was her father's query, and she also heard the answer. "We're goin' to put 'em in bad, don't you forget it. There'll be some broken heads, most likely, and if they're ours, somebody'll pay for 'em." A little farther along it was her father who said: "You've got to quit this running to me. Keep to your own side of the fence. Murray's got his orders, and he'll pay the bills. If anything breaks loose, I won't know you. Get that?" "I'm on," said the red-faced man; and shortly afterward he took his leave. When the door had closed behind the man who looked like a ward heeler or a walking delegate, and who had been both, and many other and more questionable things, by turns, Jasper Grierson swung his huge chair to face the window. "Well?" he said, "how's Galbraith coming along?" "There is no change," was the sober rejoinder. "He is still lying in a half-stupor, just as he was last night and this morning. Doctor Farnham shakes his head and won't say anything." "You mustn't let him die," warned the man in the big chair, half jocularly. "There's too much money in him." The smouldering fires in the daughter's eyes leaped up at the provocation lurking in the grim brutality; but they were dying down again when she put the trade journal aside and said: "I didn't come here to tell you about Mr. Galbraith. I came to give you notice that it is time to quit." "Time to quit what?" "You know. When I asked you to put Mr. Raymer under obligations to you, I said I'd tell you when it was time to stop." Jasper Grierson sat back in his chair and chuckled. "Lord love you!" he said, "I'd clean forgot that you had a tea-party stake in that game, Madgie; I had, for a fact!" "Well, it is time to remember it," was the cool reply. "What was I to remember?" "That you were to turn around and help him out of his trouble when I gave you the word." The president of the Farmers' and Merchants' tilted his chair to the lounging angle and laughed; a slow gurgling laugh that spread from lip to eye and thence abroad through his great frame until he shook like a grotesque incarnation of the god of mirth. "I was to turn around and help him out of the hole, was I? Oh, no; I guess not," he denied. "It's business now, little girl, and the tea-fights are barred. I'll give you a check for that span o' blacks you were looking at, and we'll call it square." "Does that mean that you intend to go on until you have smashed him?" she asked, quietly ignoring the putative bribe. "I'm going to put him out of business--him and that other fool friend of yours--if that's what you mean." Again the sudden lightning glowed in Margery Grierson's eyes, but, as before, the flash was only momentary. There was passion enough in blood and brain, but there was also a will, and the will was the stronger. "Please!" she besought him. "Please what?"