Gordon paid Valentine Simmons eighty-nine thousand dollars for the latter’s share of the timber options they had held in common. They were seated in the room in which Gordon conducted his peculiar transactions. He turned and placed Simmons’ acknowledgment, the various papers of the dissolved partnership, in the safe.

“That finishes all I had in Stenton,” he observed.

Valentine Simmons made no immediate reply. He was intent, with tightly-folded lips, on the cheque in his hand. His shirt, as ever, was immaculately starched, the blue button was childlike, bland; but it was cold without, and hot in the room where they sat, and the color on his cheeks resembled dabs of vermilion on buffers of old white leather; the tufts of hair above his ears had dwindled to mere cottony scraps.

“Prompt and satisfactory,” he said at last. “I tell you, Gordon, you can see as far as another into a transaction. Promises are of no account but value received...” he held up the cheque, a strip of pale orange paper, pinched between withered fingers.

Suddenly he was in a hurry to get away; he drew his overcoat of close-haired, brown hide about his narrow shoulders, and trotted to the door, to his buggy awaiting him at the corner of the porch.