“This Lewis above me?”

“Yes.”

Hollister laid the documents before MacFarlan.  He ran through them, laid them down and looked reflectively at Hollister.

“I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “you are making your move too late.”

“Why?” Hollister demanded uneasily.

“Evidently you aren’t aware what has happened to Lewis?  I take it you haven’t been reading the papers?”

“I haven’t,” Hollister admitted.  “What has happened?”

“His concern has gone smash,” MacFarlan stated.  “I happen to be sure of that, because I’m acting for two creditors.  A receiver has been appointed.  Lewis himself is in deep.  He is at present at large on bail, charged with unlawful conversion of moneys entrusted to his care.  You have a case, clear enough, but——­” he threw out his hands with a suggestive motion—­“they’re bankrupt.”

“I see,” Hollister muttered.  “I appear to be out of luck, then.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” MacFarlan continued.  “You could get a judgment against them.  But it would be worthless.  Simply throwing good money after bad.  There will be half a dozen other judgments recorded against them, a dozen other claims put in, before you could get action.  Of course, I could proceed on your behalf and let you in for a lot of costs, but I would rather not earn my fees in that manner.  I’m satisfied there won’t be more than a few cents on the dollar for anybody.”

“That seems final enough,” Hollister said.  “I am obliged to you, Mr. MacFarlan.”

He went out again into a street filled with people hurrying about their affairs in the spring sunshine.  So much for that, he reflected, not without a touch of contemptuous anger against Lewis.  He understood now the man’s troubled absorption.  With the penitentiary staring him in the face—­

At any rate the property was not involved.  Whatever its worth, it was his, and the only asset at his command.  He would have to make the best of it, dispose of it for what he could get.  Meantime, Doris Cleveland began to loom bigger in his mind than this timber limit.  He suffered a vast impatience until he should see her again.  He had touches, this morning, of incredulous astonishment before the fact that he could love and be loved.  He felt once or twice that this promise of happiness would prove an illusion, something he had dreamed, if he did not soon verify it by sight and speech.

He was to call for her at two o’clock.  They had planned to take a Fourth Avenue car to the end of the line and walk thence past the Jericho Club grounds and out a driveway that left the houses of the town far behind, a road that went winding along the gentle curve of a shore line where the Gulf swell whispered or thundered, according to the weather.

Doris was a good walker.  On the level road she kept step without faltering or effort, holding Hollister’s hand, not because she needed it for guidance, but because it was her pleasure.