afternoon!" he mused.

"Mr. Gresham," called Polly sharply, "how do you come to know about
this so quickly?"

Gresham cursed himself and the blind hatred which had led him into
making this slip; and he was the more uncomfortable because not only
Loring and Polly but Constance had turned upon him gravely
questioning eyes.

"Such things travel very rapidly in commercial circles," he lamely
explained.

"I had no idea that you were a commercial circle," retorted Polly.
"I wonder who's crooked." Gresham laughed shortly. "It isn't
Johnny!" she indignantly asserted. "I know how Johnny's fifteen
thousand was saved from this attachment, but I wouldn't tell where
it is--even here."

Polly and Loring looked at each other understandingly.

"I suppose that was an old Gamble-Collaton account," Loring surmised
with another speculative glance at Gresham. "I am quite certain that
Johnny knows nothing whatever of this claim--let alone the
attachment. The operations of his big irrigation failure were so
extensive that, with the books lost, he can never tell when an
additional claim may be filed against him. If suit is made in an
obscure court, and Collaton, who hasn't a visible dollar, answers
summons and confesses judgment for the firm, Johnny has no
recourse."