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"I shall always be proud of your friendship, and remember these days in Limasito as the most wonderful I have ever known " Thode checked himself once more. "Good-bye, Billie. When next I see you, it will be Miss Willa Murdaugh who will greet me, but it is Gentleman Geoff's Billie who will linger in my thoughts always. Will you say once again what you said to me in the lane: 'Buena suerte'?"

She turned to Kearn Thode, who drew forth a folded paper which he handed to Mason North. "It is a confession, signed and witnessed, from the forger Starr Wiley employed to manufacture that false article of adoption," he announced. "The child who died in the trapper's cabin was his own daughter and it was Willa Murdaugh who went on with Gentleman Geoff.

"I have a good deal of respect for her clear-headed ability to take care of herself; nevertheless, I sha'n't feel easy until she is found. I've taken more comfort in her than in my own daughter, Mason. My wife doesn't need Willa's share of the Murdaugh money and I wish young Wiley had never unearthed the truth!" The attorney had picked up the little note. "'My dear Mrs. Halstead, he read.

In the beginning the Murdaugh name had meant nothing to her and the inheritance merely a means to an end, but now with Angie's scornful words heard through the closed door ringing in her ears, she made up her mind to fight!

Miss Murdaugh, I may be an accessory after the fact, but I felt sure you would not want the forger punished, and I gave him time to sell out his ranch and disappear. I am under the impression that he has gone to Canada to enlist, and if so " Willa shook her head. "No.

He adopted her, without legal form, and took her with him on his wanderings." "Then I I " Billie stammered, aghast. "I am not " "You are Willa Murdaugh." "Holy Christopher!" Jim Baggott passed his hand across his dazed forehead, and then all three were silent for a space. The girl sat as if in a dream, her face flushed, her eyes vacant and fixed, and North forebore to intrude upon her reverie.

I did not know until this morning the whole story of the Lost Souls' Pool transaction, but I suspected it. Starr Wiley had a strong motive for getting Miss Murdaugh out of the way if she did not prove amenable to his schemes, and he provided himself with a strong weapon, but he overlooked one salient point.

"It was taken from her neck when they found her after the fire," Klondike Kate said softly. "Jake gave it to me to keep for you. Here's what she prized most of anything she had; she put it in my hands herself to keep for her." The yellowed paper, unfolded, proved to be the certificate of marriage of Violet Ashton and Ralph Murdaugh, dated January 2, 1896.

I do believe in your friendship, but how many of the rest bothered with me because of myself alone? It was the Murdaugh position they accepted, the Murdaugh interests. I'm not cynical, but I try to look things squarely in the face. How many would admit within their circle the waif adopted by a gambler?" Winnie drew a deep breath.

"Daniel Morrissey, Miss." "I'm Willa Murdaugh." She gave no heed to the man's respectful stare. "I'll give you a hundred a week flat. You throw up your job, meet me to-morrow at the Circle at ten in the morning and we'll go and buy a good car, light and strong and fast. Can you drive a racer?" "Anything on wheels but a locomotive!" "All right.