Morley on the steps."

She was evidently not disappointed, for Noah, standing at the window waiting to catch the last flutter of her feather as she passed up the street, had to wait five agonizing minutes, at the end of which Don spoke to him from the door.

"Hello, Wick. Is Mr. Gooch here?"

"He was a minute ago."

"Is he coming back?"

"I don't know, I'm sure."

Noah made the answers in a tone that discouraged further conversation, and Donald after a sharp glance at him, shrugged his shoulders and picked up a book. He had not long to wait before Mr. Gooch returned.

"I've been telephoning all over town for you," said the lawyer testily. "Is this rumor true that you have bought back your bank stock?"

"It is. It was the only honest thing I could do."

"Not at all," complained Mr. Gooch, who became passionately attached to the contrary opinion the moment he ascertained yours. "It was a most quixotic, a most reckless course to take. I suppose you know of the double liability?"

"Yes, I know," Donald flung out impatiently.

"You are singularly fortunate, Mr. Morley, to be able to indulge these magnanimous whims. Your resources I presume--"

"My resources consist in a piece of real estate and a couple of race horses. That's about all that's left."

"The real estate?" Mr. Gooch looked encouraged. "City property?"

"No, it's a farm."

"Where?"

"On the Cane Run Road."

Noah's head appeared above the desk for the first time during the conversation and he looked surprised, as if he had made a discovery.

"Adjoining your sister's property, I judge?" continued Mr. Gooch. "That's good, very good. It ought to bring about--?"

"It's not for sale," said Donald shortly.

Mr. Gooch, who had emerged to the rim of his shell, promptly went in again.

"You see, Mr. Gooch," said Donald, leaning forward and speaking earnestly, "when you took this case I had no need to think of the financial end of it. I wanted to get the affair straight, and I didn't care a hang what it would cost. Since then things have changed. I think it's only fair to tell you that after I sell my horses and settle things up, there won't be more than a thousand dollars left. Will that cover your fee?"

Mr. Gooch was visibly offended. "It is not my custom, sir, to name a sum in advance. There's a great deal of work on this case, of a very annoying nature. We might try to come under the amount stipulated, and in a pinch of course you could sell the real estate."

"No," said Donald, "I shall not sell it. And I've got to know to-day what your terms will be. I've got work with the _Herald-Post_ as temporary correspondent at the Capitol. I'm going up there to-morrow, and will probably stay on until my case is called. I'd like to have your definite answer at once."

"Well, I didn't want the case in the beginning," said Mr. Gooch. "It's the sort of thing I don't care for. I might be able to finish it for a thousand dollars, but I don't know that I'd care to commit myself."

"Very well," said Donald, rising with spirit. "That means that I'll have to get another lawyer."

"You'll be making a mistake," said Mr. Gooch, twisting his small features into a hard knot, and watching Donald closely. "It's a great risk to change lawyers in the middle of a case. There's a great deal at stake. You oughtn't to stand back on a question of money at a critical time like this."

"Good Lord, man! I'm not standing back on a question of money! I'd put up all I had if it was a million. Do you suppose I would have taken a job in Frankfort for ten dollars a week if I had any money?"

"But you still hold property!"

"I do, Mr. Gooch, and for reasons you could never understand I shall continue to hold it. Good day."

"Stop a minute!" Noah Wicker unfolded himself in sections, and got to his feet.

"Suppose you let me take your case."

Donald and Mr. Gooch looked at him with equal amazement.

"I haven't had much experience," Noah went on slowly and grimly. "I didn't even know a reputable lawyer could throw a case over in the middle when a client lost his money. I've got a lot to learn. But I do know this case from end to end, and I know you, Don Morley. If I can't clear you with or without money, I'd better give up the practice of law right here and now. Do you think you'd be willing to trust me?"

Donald hesitated for a moment, glancing from Noah's honest, homely face to Mr. Gooch's sneering one, then he jumped to a decision.

"It's a go, Wick! And the fee--"

Noah extended a hand, the breadth of whose palm has already been commented upon.

"The fee be damned," he drawled.

CHAPTER XXIV

Donald Morley packed his few belongings and went on his small mission for the _Herald-Post_ with a determination worthy of a larger cause. The remuneration was less than he had been in the habit of paying his stable boy, but failure to secure a position, together with a depleted bank account, had chastened his spirit, and he was ready to grasp at anything that would give him a chance to justify the belief of his friends.

When he first arrived at the sleepy little town where the state transacted its business, he took two rooms at the hotel. Later he moved to a boarding-house, and by the end of the third week he was in a small, bare room in an office building, eating his breakfasts at the depot, his luncheons at a restaurant, and his dinners at the hotel. For in his determination to square himself with the world he had managed to dispose of nearly all he had, excepting a thousand dollars which he had secretly deposited to Noah's account.

At first poverty was a somewhat diverting novelty; it served to keep his mind off those pursuing terrors that had filled his horizon. For the first time in life he was economizing for a purpose. But to make the usual expenditure of a day extend over a week requires forethought and judgment, neither of which qualities Donald possessed. He had counted on augmenting the small sum received from the _Herald-Post_ by writing feature articles for other papers, but his efforts had met with small success. In vain he arranged his article after the exact plan laid down by Cropsie Decker. He clipped, pasted and pinned, looked up statistics, verified statements and ruthlessly weeded out every little vagrant fancy that dared intrude on the solemn company of facts. But his efforts when finished bore the same relation to Cropsie's that a pile of bricks does to a house.

Only once had he set Cropsie and his lapboard literature aside, and followed his own impulse. It was after his first call at the Queeringtons', when the Doctor had advised him to choose a congenial theme and let his fancy have full rein. A word of encouragement was all he needed to begin a series of tales that had burned for utterance ever since he left India. They were the adventures related to him by his Mohammedan bearer, Khalil Samad, who had sat on his heels many a night before the young sahib's fire, and spun yarns of marvelous variety. Donald had only to close his eyes to see the keen, subtle face surmounted by its huge white turban, and to hear the torrent of picturesque broken English that poured from the lips of one of the few Mohammedans in India who could curse the various natives in their own vernacular from the Khyber Pass to Trichinopoli.

But the story of Khalil's adventures having been launched into unknown waters, had not yet been heard from, and Donald patiently returned to his feature articles, holding himself down to the actual and being bored as only a person with a creative imagination can be bored by the naked, unadorned truth.

His one consolation these days was in the fact that Miss Lady would not have to give up Thornwood. Through an agent he had leased the place to the Queeringtons for the next two years at an absurdly low sum, and the thought of her in the midst of her beloved surroundings went far to reconcile him to the meagerness of his own.

His dingy little room boasted only an iron bed and washstand, the rest of the floor space being principally occupied by his imposing brass- bound steamer-trunk covered with foreign labels. On the dusty shelf over the washstand stood an incongruous array of silver-mounted, monogramed toilet articles; around the wall ran a dado of shoes, while from the gas-pipe depended a heavy bunch of neckties. The chief inconvenience in being poor, Donald had decided, was in not knowing what to do with one's things.

It was not only his things, however, that he found difficulty in disposing of. For a given number of hours a day a man can hold himself down to the task of sitting at a small deal table, covering yellow tablets with words that will probably never be read, but after too long a stretch nature is apt to rebel. At such times Donald raged like a pent lion. His mind involuntarily flew to the possibility of this