"Say? Great Caesar's Ghost! What is there to say? Wire 'em an acceptance before they get their second wind.... You don't know how good this makes me feel, Harry; I can't thank you enough for what you've done. This'll square me with Graham to some extent, and I can clear out----"
"No, you can't, Mr. Smarty! You ain't been 'cute enough."
Both men, startled by the interruption, wheeled round to discover Roland Barnette dancing with excitement in the doorway, the while he beckoned frantically to an invisible party without. "Come on!" he shouted. "Here he is!"
Nat, too happy for the money to cherish animosity even toward his one-time rival.
"You'll find out soon enough," snarled Roland. "Mr. Lockwood's got something to say to you, I guess."
And on the heels of this announcement Lockwood strode into the store, Josie clinging to his arm, Pete Willing--a trifle more sanely drunk than he had been some hours previous--bringing up the rear.
"So!" snarled Blinky, halting and transfixing Nat with the stare of his cold blue eyes. "So we've found you, eh?"
"No nonsense, young man. I ain't in the humour for foolin'." Blinky was unquestionably in no sort of a humour at all beyond an evil one. "I come here to have a word with you."
"Well, sir?" Nat's tone and attitude were perfectly pacific.
"Ah, there ain't no use beatin' 'round the bush. You've behaved yourself ever since you come to Radville, and insinooated yourself into our confidence, 'spite of the fact that nobody in town knows who you were before you came. But now Roland's laid a charge again' you, and I want to know the rights to it."
"Well," Roland interposed cockily, "I accused him of it to-night and he didn't deny it."
[Illustration: "You're a thief with a reward out for you!"]
"What's more," Lockwood continued with rising colour, "Roland says he can prove it?"
"Prove what?" Nat insisted. "Get down to facts, can't you?"
"That you're a thief with a reward out for you," said Roland. "You're that Mortimer Henry what absconded from the Longacre National Bank in Noo York."
There fell a brief pause. Nat bowed his head and tugged at his moustache, his shoulders shaking with emotion variously construed by those who watched him. Presently he looked up again, his features gravely composed.