"And they said nothing?"
"Nothing! What could they say?"
Gray answered gruffly: "They might have said a good deal. They might have told you how they paid off your men and saved a walk-out when I had no money."
O'Neil stared incredulously. "What are you talking about?" he demanded.
When he had the facts he rose with an exclamation of dismay.
"God! Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't they speak out? I—I—why, that's loyalty of the finest kind. All the money they had saved, too—when they thought I had failed! Jove! That was fine. Oh, I'm sorry! I wonder what they think of me? I can't let Dan go after that. I—" He seized his cap and hurried out of the building.
"It's hardly right—when things were going so well, too!" said Dan. He was sitting crumpled up in a chair, Eliza's arm encircling his shoulders. "I didn't mean to give up any secrets, but—I'm not myself when I'm with Natalie."
"We must take our medicine," his sister told him, gravely. "We deserve it, for this story may spoil all he's done. I didn't think it of her, though."
Dan groaned and bowed his head in his hands. "I don't know which hurts worse," he said—"his anger or her action. She—couldn't do such a thing, Sis; she just couldn't!"
"She probably didn't realize—she hasn't much sense, you know. But after all he's suffered, to think that we should injure him! I could cry. I think I shall."