“Yes, but we didn’t go into it at his figures.”

“No,” said Barker, with an eager smile, “but you sold at his figures, for I knew that when I found that you, my old partner, was in it; don’t you see, I preferred to buy it through your bank, and did at 110.  Of course, you wouldn’t have sold it at that figure if it wasn’t worth it then, and neither I nor you are to blame if it dropped the next week to 60, don’t you see?”

Stacy’s eyes hardened for a moment as he looked keenly into his former partner’s bright gray ones, but there was no trace of irony in Barker’s.  On the contrary, a slight shade of sadness came over them.  “No,” he said reflectively, “I don’t think I’ve ever been foolish or followed out my own ideas, except once, and that was extravagant, I admit.  That was my idea of building a kind of refuge, you know, on the site of our old cabin, where poor miners and played-out prospectors waiting for a strike could stay without paying anything.  Well, I sunk twenty thousand dollars in that, and might have lost more, only Carter—­Kitty’s father—­persuaded me—­he’s an awful clever old fellow—­into turning it into a kind of branch hotel of Boomville, while using it as a hotel to take poor chaps who couldn’t pay, at half prices, or quarter prices, privately, don’t you see, so as to spare their pride,—­awfully pretty, wasn’t it?—­and make the hotel profit by it.”

“Well?” said Stacy as Barker paused.

“They didn’t come,” said Barker.

“But,” he added eagerly, “it shows that things were better than I had imagined.  Only the others did not come, either.”

“And you lost your twenty thousand dollars,” said Stacy curtly.

“Fifty thousand,” said Barker, “for of course it had to be a larger hotel than the other.  And I think that Carter wouldn’t have gone into it except to save me from losing money.”

“And yet made you lose fifty thousand instead of twenty.  For I don’t suppose he advanced anything.”

“He gave his time and experience,” said Barker simply.

“I don’t think it worth thirty thousand dollars,” said Stacy dryly.  “But all this doesn’t tell me what your business is with me to-day.”

“No,” said Barker, brightening up, “but it is business, you know.  Something in the old style—­as between partner and partner—­and that’s why I came to you, and not to the ‘banker.’  And it all comes out of something that Demorest once told us; so you see it’s all us three again!  Well, you know, of course, that the Excelsior Ditch Company have abandoned the Bar and Heavy Tree Hill.  It didn’t pay.”

“Yes; nor does the company pay any dividends now.  You ought to know, with fifty thousand of their stock on your hands.”

Barker laughed.  “But listen.  I found that I could buy up their whole plant and all the ditching along the Black Spur Range for ten thousand dollars.”