“Huh!” he said, suddenly and with a sneer, “that's it! I can see through a millstone if it has a big enough hole in it. Huh, yes, that's it! I'd bet a yearling calf to a pound of butter that I am onto the game, and it is one, too, that would take in nine men out of ten.” He tapped his brow with his pencil and smiled craftily. “Deep scheme; good scheme; bang-up idea! Might have pulled the wool over my eyes _once_. But a burnt child dreads the fire, and I've certainly been burnt.” The door creaked. Toby Lassiter, with the letter quivering in his excited hand, approached. His lethargic face was filled with emotion; his mild eyes were glowing ecstatically. “I always thought--I mean I always _hoped_, Mr. Walton--that it would turn out this way.” He started to say more, but checked himself as his glance fell on the parchment-like face craftily upturned to his. “Yes, I know, Toby!” Simon snarled, as he took the letter and put it into his desk drawer. “You always thought the scamp had sprouting wings, and now you are sure they are full size. That is why you have never risen higher in life, Toby. Your eyes are too easily closed. Leave it to you, and we'd never foreclose a mortgage on a widow with a full stocking hid away under her hearth. Believing in heaven on earth has held many a man back from prosperity.” “Then you don't think--you don't actually believe that Fred--” “Set down in that chair, Toby. Me and you are the only folks in Stafford that know how that boy buncoed me, and I reckon it's only natural for me to be willing to talk about it when there is anything to say. I endured several years of that fellow's devilment, and I'm not calculated to be fooled as easily as others might who never had him on their hands. You see,” the banker went on, as his clerk lowered his thin person timidly into a chair and leaned forward--“you will note that he writes that he's got a good, substantial job with a rich man, who, while he knows all about the boy's devilment here at Stafford, has completely overlooked it. Huh! we all know the world is full of men of capital who are ready to take in a runaway thief and hand over three thousand cool plunks to him just to show good-will and the like! To begin with, Toby, _that_ is an underhanded slap at me; it is saying, in a roundabout way, that a plumb stranger is giving a son of mine a chance that he never had at home. But the tale, from start to finish, is a lie out of whole cloth, as I have good and private reason to know.” “Do you think so, Mr. Walton?” Lassiter's fallen countenance sank even lower.