Guinea Gold

ot to have a partner," said Scott, lifting his eyes to Dence's face and fixing him with a steady look. The man with a hidden history and a false name met that look fairly. It waked a pinching pain somewhere or other in his battered personality: there had been a time, though he could scarce believe it now, when he too was twenty-something; steady and straight and diamond-clear down to the bottom of his young soul. . . . Those waters were muddied now. Still, he could answer the unspoken question honestly. The eyes of English blue and the eyes of Northern grey read each other for a pregnant instant. Then Scott stretched out his hand, with an action as deliberate as the signing of a bond. Dence took it, and the rough pressure he gave was his promise. " I've come here on business," said Scott. ( T ) " Stop a bit," said the other, letting himself down on the grass and leaning against a palm-trunk. " I begin to think there was something after all in what that reptile Clay said to Anderson and myself. We didn't pay much attention to him: we only thought he was spyin' about because it was his nature to, and I had an idea you might be carryin' your money on your person?so I meant fo give you a hint. But let me tell you what he said." Scott, seated on the grass alongside, with his pipe going, listened, and nodded his head once or twice. " Not so far out," he said, when the recital was done. " I'm sorry it happened: I did think I was old enough to take ca...