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.”

“But Glen—­what I saw with my own eyes——­”

“Can’t help it.  Nothing doing!” he interrupted as before.  “If Searle showed you any such letter as that he wrote it him—­hold on, I wrote him for a grub-stake, fifty dollars at the most, but I haven’t even seen a mine that any man would buy, that the other man would sell, and Searle sure got my first before I was bug-house from that wollop on the block.”  He put his hand to the sore spot on his head and rubbed it soothingly.

Beth was pale.  She failed to observe his gesture, so absorbed were all her faculties in the maze of facts in which she was somewhat helplessly struggling.

“Could Searle have written such a letter as that?” she said.  “What for?”

“For money—­if he wrote it,” said Glen.  “Did he touch you for a loan?”

Beth’s eyes were widely blazing.  Her lips were white and stiff.

“Why, Glen, I advanced thirty thousand dollars—­I thought to help you buy a mine.  Searle was to put in a like amount—­but recently——­”

“Searle!  Thirty thousand bucks!” said Glen.  “He hasn’t got thirty thousand cents!  The man who drove me up last night knows the bank cashier, Mr. Rickart, like a brother—­and Rickart told him Searle is a four-flusher—­hasn’t a bean—­and looks like a mighty good imitation of a crook.  Searle!  You put up thirty—­stung, Beth, stung, good and plenty!”

Beth’s hand was on her cheek, pressing it to whiteness.

“Oh, I’ve been afraid that something was wrong—­that something terrible——­ Why, Glen, that would be forgery—­obtaining money under false pretences!  He may have done anything—­anything to get the ‘Laughing Water’ claim!  He may have done something—­said something—­written something to make Van—­Mr. Van Buren think that I——­ Oh, Glen, I don’t know what to do!”

Her brother looked at her keenly.

“You’re in trouble, Sis,” he hazarded.  “Is ‘Van’ the candy boy with you?”

She blushed suddenly.  The contrast from her paleness was striking.