The girl jumped up from her seat, and exclaimed incredulously:
"True! Father, it can't be true!"
He waved her back again to her chair, took a fresh cigar, lighted it, and then said squarely:
"It's the Gospel truth. With just one exception—an immaterial correction that I want to make—what you have said is fact, only you've got the wrong sow by the ear."
"The what!" stammered the girl.
Wilkinson waved a deprecating hand.
"I should have said that your story is all right, but it's told about the wrong man," he explained.
Leslie's eyes sparkled.
"Then you mean to say——"
"I mean to say," interrupted her father grimly, "that the man who concocted that very clever scheme was not myself, but quite another person."