"Don't speak to me of loyalty! I have been as narrow and as _mean_ as--as _you_ have!" "My dear girl, you are overwrought. The sooner we learn that William Carmody has ceased to exist the better it will be for both of us. I bid you good-night." The girl sank into the depths of her big chair and watched the sputtering little jet-flames lick futilely at the artificial logs of the fireplace. Believing herself alone, she was startled by the sound of footsteps hurrying noisily across the room. The next instant a tousle-headed boy with eyes ablaze was at her side working her hands like pump-handles. "By Jimmy, Eth, you're a brick--the way you gave it to him! You bet I'll tell Bill how you stuck up for him." "Charlie Manton! You were listening--eavesdropping." "I didn't! I wasn't! I mean I couldn't help hearing! The door of the den was open and I was in there studying. Old man Carmody is an old liar!" "Charlie!" "Well, he is, and you know it! I hate him! You bet he wouldn't dare call Bill a thief to his face! Bill could lick forty-seven like him with one hand tied behind his back. Bill is square. He wouldn't swipe a million dollars--let alone a rotten, measly fifty thousand!" "Charlie Manton! What kind of talk is that? You ought to be ashamed!" "Well, I ain't--so there! And I'm Bill's friend, and I ain't afraid to say so, either. You do love Bill--and you know it! You can claim you hate him till you're black in the face, but you can't fool _me_! What did you stick up for him for if you hated him? I bet old man Carmody swiped the bonds himself!" "Stop right there! Aren't you ashamed to speak so disrespectfully of Mr. Carmody? He was an old friend of father's." "I don't care if he was. I'm an old friend of Bill's, too. And Bill _ain't_ a thief, no matter what he says!" "You go to bed this minute. I am surprised and mortified to think that you would be so contemptible as to listen to other people's affairs." "'Taint any worse than lying!" The boy stamped angrily from the room, and the girl sat long by the fire and, one by one, fed letters to the flames. CHAPTER VI THE CROOKED GAME "Clickity-click, clickity-click, clickity-click," the monotonous song of the rails told off the miles as the heavy train rushed westward between the endless cornfields of a flat middle State. To the well-built athletic young man who was one of the four occupants of the little end-room, smoking compartment, the outlook was anything but cheerful. As far as the eye could reach long rows of shriveled husks, from which the season's crop of yellow ears had been torn, flapped dejectedly against their dried and broken stalks. Here and there a square of rich, black loam, freshly turned, bespoke the forehanded farmer; while in the fields of his neighbors straggling groups of cattle and hogs gleaned half-heartedly in the standing roughage.