The fellow's face paled slightly as he replied: "I told you once that I didn't tip your mit." "Don't keep that up!" cried Boyd, his much-tried temper ready to give way. "I can put up with anything but a lie." Noting the signs of a rising storm, Clyde scrambled out of his chair, saying: "Well, I think I'll be going." He picked up his hat and stick, and hurriedly left the room, followed in every movement by the angry eyes of Fraser, who seemed on the point of an explosion. "I don't believe Fraser gave out the story," said Cherry, at which he flashed her a grateful glance. "You can make a book on that," he declared. "I may be a crook, but I'm no sucker, and I know when to hobble my talk and when to slip the bridle. I did five years once when it wasn't coming to me, and I can do it again--if I have to." He jammed his hat down over his ears, and walked out. "I really think he is telling the truth," said the girl. "He is dreadfully hurt to think you distrust him." "He and I have threshed that out," Emerson declared, pacing the room with nervous strides. "When I think what an idiotic trifle it was that caused this disaster, I could throttle him--and I would if I didn't blame myself for it." He paused to stare unseeingly at her. "I'm waiting for the crash to come before I walk into room 610 at the Hotel Buller and settle with 'Mr. Jones, of New York.'" "You aren't seriously thinking of any such melodramatic finish, are you?" she inquired. "When I first met you in Kalvik, I said I would stop at nothing to succeed. Well, I meant it. I am more desperate now than I was then. I could have stood over that wretch at the dock, the other day, and watched him drown, because he dared to step in between me and my work, I could walk into Willis Marsh's room and strangle him, if by so doing I could win. Yes!" he checked her, "I know I am wrong, but that is how I feel. I have wrung my soul dry. I have toiled and sweated and suffered for three years, constantly held down by the grip of some cursed evil fortune. A dozen times I have climbed to the very brink of success, only to be thrust down by some trivial cause like this. Can you wonder that I have watched my honor decay and crumble?--that I've ceased to care what means I use so long as I succeed? I have fought fair so far, but now, I tell you, I've come to a point where I'd sacrifice anything, everything to get what I want--and I want that girl." "You are tired and overwrought," said Cherry, quietly. "You don't mean what you say. The success of this enterprise, with any happiness it may bring you, isn't worth a human life; nor is it worth what you are suffering." "Perhaps not, from your point of view," he said, roughly, then struck his palm with closed fist. "What an idiot I was to begin all this--to think I could win with no weapons and no aid except a half-mad fisherman, an addle-brained imbecile, a confidence man--"