help his daughter carry out her plans. She wants to get a position with
us, if possible, in some sort of capacity, secretary, confidential clerk,
or, as she puts it, any sort of place that will justify her being in the
office. She tells me she is good at shorthand, on the machine, or at
correspondence, also that she has been a contributor to the magazines. If
this can be arranged, she says she will on her own responsibility select
the time and the stock, and hurl the last of the Sands fortune at the
market, and, Jim, she is game. The blow seems to have turned this child
into a wonderfully nervy creature, and, old man, I am beginning to have a
feeling that perhaps the cards may come so she will win the judge out. You
and I know where less than sixty thousand has been run up to millions more
than once, and that, too, without the aid she will have, for I'll surely
do all I can to help her steer this last chance into spongy places."

Bob in his enthusiasm had completely lost sight of the fact that he was
indorsing a project that but a moment previously he had pronounced insane,
and with a start I realised what this sudden transformation betokened.
Inevitably, if the project he outlined were carried out, Bob and the
beautiful Southern girl would be thrown into close association with each
other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the startling influence
Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily sane and cool-headed
comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with an ardour as unaccustomed
as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my heartstrings at thought of the
sudden cross-roading of his life's highway. But I, too, was filled with
the glamour of this girl's wondrous beauty, and her terrible predicament
appealed to me almost as strongly as it had to Bob. So, although I knew it
would be fatal to any chance of his weighing the matter by common sense, I
burst out:

"Bob, I don't blame you for falling in with the girl's plans. If I were in