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S the elevator in the big building was taking Rayburn Miller up to the offices of the Southern Land and Timber Company, many reflections passed hurriedly through his mind.

"You are going to get the usual cold shoulder from Wilson," he mused; "but he 'll put it up against something about as warm as he's touched in many a day. If you don't make him squirm, it will be only because you don't want to."

Wilson was busy at his desk looking over bills of lading, receipts, and other papers, and now and then giving instructions to a typewriter in the corner of the room.

"Ahl how are you, Miller?" he said, indifferently, giving the caller his hand without rising. "Down to see the city again, eh?"

Rayburn leaned on the top of the desk, and knocked the ashes from his cigar with the tip of his little finger.

"Partly that and partly business," he returned, carelessly.

"Two birds, eh?"

"That's about it. I concluded you were not coming up our way soon, and so I decided to drop in on you."

"Yes, glad you did." Wilson glanced at the papers on his desk and frowned. "Wish I had more time at my disposal. I'd run up to the club with you and show you my Kentucky thoroughbreds, but I realty am rushed, to-day particularly."

"Oh, I haven't a bit of time to spare myself! I take the afternoon train home. The truth is, I came to see you for my clients, the Bishops."

"Ah, I see." Wilson's face clouded over by some mechanical arrangement known only to himself. "Well, I can' t realty report any progress in that matter," he said. "All the company think Bishop's figures are away out of reason, and the truth is, right now, we are over head and ears in operations in other quarters, and—well, you see how it is?"

"Yes, I think I do." Miller smoked a moment. "In fact, I told my clients last month that the matter was not absorbing your attention, and so they gave up counting on you."

Wilson so far forgot his pose that he looked up in a startled sort of way and began to study Miller's smoke-wrapped profile.

"You say they are not—have not been counting on my company to—to buy their land?"

"Why, no," said Miller, in accents well resembling those of slow and genuine surprise. "Why, you have not shown the slightest interest in the matter since the day you made the loan, and naturally they ceased to think you wanted the land. The only reason I called was that the note is payable to-day, and—"

"Oh yes, by Jove! that was careless of me. The interest is due. I knew it would be all right, and I had no idea you would bother to run down for that. Why, my boy, we could have drawn for it, you know."

Miller smiled inwardly, as he looked calmly and fixedly through his smoke into the unsuspecting visage upturned to him.

"But the note itself is payable to-day," he said, closely on the alert for a facial collapse; "and, while you or I might take up a paper for twenty-five thousand dollars through a bank, old-fashioned people like Mr. and Mrs. Bishop would feel safer to have it done by an agent. That's why I came."

Miller, in silent satisfaction, saw the face of his antagonist fall to pieces like an artificial flower suddenly shattered.

"Pay the note?" gasped Wilson. "Why—"

Miller puffed at his cigar and gazed at his victim as if slightly surprised over the assumption that his clients had not, all along, intended to avail themselves of that condition in their contract.

"You mean that the Bishops are ready to—" Wilson began again on another breath—"to pay us the twenty-five thousand dollars?"

"And the interest for six months," quietly added Miller, reaching for a match on the desk. "I reckon you've got the note here. I don't want to miss my train."

Wilson was a good business man, but his Puritanical training in New England had not fitted him for wily diplomacy; besides, he had not expected to meet a diplomat that day, and did not, even now, realize that he was in the hands of one. He still believed that Miller was only a half-educated country lawyer who had barely enough brains and experience to succeed as a legal servant for mountain clients. Hence, he now made little effort to conceal his embarrassment into which the sudden turn of affairs had plunged him. In awkward silence he squirmed in his big chair.

"Of course, they can take up their note to-day if they wish," he said, with alarmed frankness. "I was not counting on it, though." He rose to his feet. Miller's watchful eye detected a certain trembling of his lower lip. He thrust his hands into his pockets nervously; and in a tone of open irritation he said to the young man at the typewriter: "Brown, I wish you'd let up on that infernal clicking; sometimes I can stand it, and then again I can' t. You can do those letters in the next room."

When the young man had gone out, carrying his machine, Wilson turned to Miller. "As I understand it, you, personally, have no interest in the Bishop property?"

"Oh, not a dollar!" smiled the lawyer. "I'm only acting for them."

"Then"—Wilson drove his hands into his pockets again—"perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me if the Bishops are on trade with other parties. Are they?"

Miller smiled and shook his head. "As their lawyer, Mr. Wilson, I simply couldn't answer that question."

The blow was well directed and it struck a vulnerable spot.

"I beg your pardon," Wilson stammered. "I did not mean to suggest that you would betray confidence." He reflected a moment, and then he said, in a flurried tone, "They have not actually sold out, have they?"

Miller was silent for a moment, then he answered: "I don't see any reason why I may not answer that question I don't think my clients would object to my saying that they have not yet accepted any offer."

A look of relief suffused itself over Wilson's broad face.

"Then they are still open to accept their offer to me?"

Miller laughed as if highly amused at the complication of the matter.

"They are bound, you remember, only so long as you hold their note."

"Then I tell you what to do," proposed Wilson. "Go back and tell them not to bother about payment, for a few days, anyway, and that we will soon tell them positively whether we will pay their price or not. That's fair, isn't it?"

"It might seem so to a man personally interested in the deal," admitted Miller, as the introduction to another of his blows from the shoulder; "but as lawyer for my clients I can only obey orders, like the boy who stood on the burning deck."

Wilson's face fell. The remote clicking of the typewriter seemed to grate upon his high-wrought nerves, and he went and slammed the partly opened door, muttering something like an oath. On that slight journey, however, he caught an idea.

"Suppose you wire them my proposition and wait here for a reply," he suggested.

Miller frowned. "That would do no good," he said. "I'm sorry I can' t explain fully, but the truth is this: I happen to know that they wish, for reasons of their own, to take up the note you hold, and that nothing else will suit them."

At this juncture Wilson lost his grip on all self-possession, and degenerated into the sullen anger of sharp and unexpected disappointment.

"I don't feel that we are being fairly treated," he said. "We most naturally assumed that your clients wanted to—to extend our option on the property for at least another six months. We assumed t............