“It meets the case,” said Burlingame in
a morose voice, rising. “If you can produce
the money before the stroke of midnight, why can’t
you produce it now? What’s the use of bluffing!
It can’t do any good in the end. Your credit—”
“My credit has been stopped by your friends,”
interrupted Crozier, “but my resources are current.”
“Midnight is not far off,” viciously remarked
Burlingame as he made for the door.
Crozier intercepted him. “One word with
you on another business before you go,” he said.
“The tar-and-feathers for which Mrs. Tynan asks
will be yours at any moment I raise my hand in Askatoon.
There are enough women alone who would do it.”
“Talk of that after midnight,” sneered
Burlingame desperately as the door was opened for
him by Crozier. “Better not go out by the
front gate,” remarked Crozier scornfully.
“Mrs. Tynan is a woman of her word, and the
hose is handy.”
A moment later, with contemptuous satisfaction, he
saw Burlingame climb the picket-fence at the side
of the house.
Turning back into the room, he threw up his arms.
“Midnight—midnight— my
God, where am I to get the money! I must—I
must have it . . . It’s the only way back.”
Sitting down at the table, he dropped his head into
his hands and shut his eyes in utter dejection.
“Mona—by Heaven, no, I’ll never
take it from her!” he said once, and clenched
his hands at his temples and sat on and on unmoving.
Who would have thought it?
For a full half-hour Crozier sat buried in dark reflection,
then he slowly raised his head, and for a minute looked
round dazedly. His absorption had been so great
that for a moment he was like one who had awakened
upon unfamiliar things. As when in a dream of
the night the history of years will flash past like
a ray of light, so for the bad half-hour in which
Crozier had given himself up to despair, his mind had
travelled through an incongruous series of incidents
of his past life, and had also revealed pictures of
solution after solution of his present troubles.
He had that-gift of visualization which makes life
an endless procession of pictures which allure, or
which wear the nature into premature old age.
The last picture flashing before his eyes, as he sat
there alone, was of himself and his elder brother,
Garnett, now master of Castlegarry, racing ponies
to reach the lodge-gates before they closed for the
night, after a day of disobedience and truancy.
He remembered how Garnett had given him the better
pony of the two, so that the younger brother, who
would be more heavily punished if they were locked
out, should have the better chance. Garnett,
if odd in manner and character, had always been a
true sportsman though not a lover of sport.
