"What a damn disreputable business your commerce is, anyway! John, I can't afford to lose that property--or I'd be a pauper, sir, a pauper peddling organs and sewing-machines and maybe teaching singing-school." The colonel's face caught a rift of sunshine as he added, "You know I did that once before I was married and came West--taught singing-school." "Well, Colonel--let's see about it," said Barclay, absently.

And the two men sat at the table and figured up that the colonel's liabilities were in the neighbourhood of twelve thousand, of which ten thousand were pressing and the rest more or less imminent.

At the end of their conference, Barclay's mind was still full of his own affairs.

But he said, after looking a moment at the troubled face of the big black-eyed man whose bulk towered above him, "Well, Colonel, I don't know what under heavens I can do--but I'll do what I can." The colonel did not feel Barclay's abstraction.

But the colonel's face cleared like a child's, and he reached for the little man and hugged him off his feet.