"Not on your half-tone," Glen assured her. "What's all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I'm groping like a blind snail in the mulligatawny."
Beth sat down as before and leaned her chin in her palm in an attitude of concentration.
"Don't you know what Searle has done—taking the 'Laughing Water' claim?—Mr. Van Buren's claim?"
"I don't know anything!" he told her convincingly. "I'm a howling wilderness of ignorance. I want to know."
"Let's start at the very beginning," she said. "Just as soon as Searle brought your letter—the first one, I mean—in which you asked for sixty thousand dollars to buy a mine——"
"Whoap! Jamb on the emergency!" Glen interrupted. "I never wrote such a letter in my life!"
She looked at him blankly.
"But—Glen—I saw your letter. I read it myself—at this very table."
Glen knitted his brows and became more serious.
"A letter from me?—touching Searle for sixty thou? Somebody's nutty."