"Don't you? Then I'll tell you. You have been pinching this town for the lion's share ever since we came here--shaking it down as you used to shake down the"--she broke off short, and again the indomitable will got the better of the seething passions. "We'll let the by-gones go, and come down to the present. What if some of the things you are doing here and now should get into print?" "For instance?" he suggested, when she paused. "This Raymer affair, for one thing. You don't own the _Wahaskan_--yet: supposing it should come out to-morrow morning with the true story of this disgraceful piece of buccaneering, telling how you tried first to squeeze him through the bank loan, and when that failed, how you bribed his workmen to make trouble?" "You go to Randolph and try it," said the gray wolf, jeeringly. "In the first place, he wouldn't believe it--coming from you. He wouldn't forget that you're my daughter, however much you are trying to forget it. In the next place he'd want proof--damned good proof--if he was going to make a fight on me. He'd know that one of two things would happen; if he failed to get me, I'd get him." The daughter who had asked for bread and had been given a stone put her face in her hands and moved toward the door. But at the last moment she turned again like a spiteful little tiger-cat at bay. "You think I can't prove it? That is where you fall down. I can convince Mr. Randolph if I choose to try. And that isn't all: I can tell him how you have planned to sell Mr. Galbraith a tract of 'virgin' pine that has been culled over for the best timber at least three times in the past five years!" Jasper Grierson started from his chair and made a quick clutch into smoky space. "Madge--you little devil!" he gritted. But the grasping hands closed upon nothing, and the sound of the closing door was his only answer. * * * * * When she had unhitched the little Morgan and had driven away from the bank, Miss Grierson did a thing unprecedented in any of her former grapplings with a crisis--she hesitated. Twice she drove down Sioux Avenue with the apparent intention of stopping at the _Daily Wahaskan_ building, and twice she went on past with no more than an irresolute glance for the upper windows beyond which lay the editorial rooms and the office of Mr. Carter Randolph, the owner of the newspaper. But on the third circuit of the square, decision had evidently come to its own again. Turning the mare into Main Street, she drove quickly to the Winnebago House and drew up at the carriage step. A bell-boy ran out to hold the horse, but she shook her head and called him to the wheel of the phaeton to slip a coin into his hand and to give him a brief message. Two minutes after the boy's disappearance, Broffin came out and touched his hat to the trim little person in the basket seat. "You wanted to see me, Miss Grierson?" he said, shelving his surprise, if he had any.