"Well," said Colonel Witham after some ten minutes had passed, "Suppose you didn't get me down here just to smoke. What d'ye want?" "Oh, I'm coming to that right away," replied Ellison, still writing. "You know what I want, I guess." He turned abruptly in his seat, and his keen face shaded with anger. He pointed a long lean finger in the direction of the town of Benton. "You know 'em, Dan Witham," he said, "as well as I do. Though you didn't get skinned as I did. You didn't go down to town, as I did twenty odd years ago, with eight thousand dollars, and come back cleaned out. You didn't invest in mines and things they said were good as gold, and have 'em turn out rubbish. You didn't lose a fortune and have to start all over again. But you know em, eh?" Colonel Witham nodded assent, and added mentally, "Yes, and I know you, too. Benton don't have the only sharp folks." "And now," added James Ellison, "when I've got some of it back by hard work, you know how I keep it from them, and from others, too. Well, here's some more of the papers. The mill and a good part of the farm and some more land 'round here go to you this time. All right, eh? You get your pay on commission. Here's the deeds conveying it all to you--for valuable consideration--valuable consideration, see?" The miller gave a prodigious wink at his visitor, and laughed. "You don't mind being thought pretty comfortably fixed, eh--all these properties put in your name? Don't do you any harm, and people around here think you're mighty smart. Your deeds from me are all recorded, eh? People look at the record, and what do they see? All this stuff in your name. Well, what do I get out of that? You know. There are some claims they don't bother me with, because they think I'm not so rich as I am. There's property out of their reach, if anything goes wrong with some business I'm in. "Why? Well, we know why, all right, you and I. Here's the deeds of the same property which you give back to me. Only I don't have them put on record. I keep them hidden--up my sleeve--clear up my sleeve, don't I?" "You keep 'em hidden all right, I guess," responded Colonel Witham; and made a mental observation that he'd like to know where the miller really did hide them. "So here they are," continued the miller. "It's a little more of the same game. The property's all yours--and it isn't. You'll oblige, of course, for the same consideration?" Colonel Witham nodded assent, and the business was closed. And, some time later, as Colonel Witham plodded up the road again, he uttered audibly the wish he had formed when he had sat in the miller's office.