“Well,” said Mr. Moreland, “my dear friends and my devoted neighbours are beginning to make me feel that I’m none too popular in this community. That little ape of a Spellman, feeling and flecking and scraping, could make himself a commanding and respected figure, and I thought I’d done it, but I’m none too sure that I have. I’m none too sure that it wouldn’t take only one more little slip on my part to have every dog in the county worrying at my throat. I understand that Albert Rich, Peter Potter, and Jason Peters, are pooling issues against us. They’re doing everything in their power to find some hook or crook by which they can clear Mahala, and if the thing happens, and happens to our discredit——” The Senior Moreland paused and drew fine lines down the side of a blotter with a sharp pencil. Junior stood waiting, studying him intently. At last the elder Moreland resumed: “If the thing happens, and happens to our _discredit_, I’m not any too sure that things won’t go pretty rough with us.” Junior laughed outright, but it wasn’t a hearty laugh, and not a mirthful one. “Don’t you think it!” he cried. “Don’t you think it!” Martin Moreland drew a line so deep that it cut through the blotter. “I don’t think it,” he said with a terse, cold incision that arrested Junior’s deepest attention. “I don’t think it. _I know it._” Junior stiffened slightly and stood studying him. “There’s just one thing that can save the situation,” said the elder Moreland. “If you’re ready to go to work, go to work now on the task of finding out where that pocket book went. Find it in such a way that it will be a credit to _us_ to have found it. Find it in such a way that it will turn public opinion in our favour. Give me the chance to be the leader in doing anything that could be done to reinstate Mahala.” As he finished, Junior laughed again, this time more naturally. “That’s something of a job that you’ve set for me, Pater,” he said. “I haven’t an idea in ten states where that pocket book is, but if that’s the way you feel about it, I’ll get on the job and see if I can resurrect it, or duplicate it, or do something. And in the meantime, is there anything you want me to do in connection with putting a small slice of the fear of God into the hearts of Albert Rich, and old Potter and Jason?” The Senior Moreland thought intently a few minutes and then he said quietly: “Right there you had better stay your hand. They happen to be on the popular side right now. You had better just drop that and evade it, and get around it the best you can, and in the meantime, you had better spend some time and money on seeing how popular you can make yourself in this town right now.”