yesterday in which he says that he is sorry to hear that I made such an awful blunder—because of course he thinks like every one else does that I’m guilty—but that, notwithstanding my arrest, and knowing that probably I’ll need money to defend myself, he is still willing to pay me a thousand dollars for my claim. You can’t call that unfriendly, can you?”

“Oh, no! Not at all!” David said with considerable sarcasm and then, winking over Ray’s head at his partner, got to his feet and said, “Well, Goliath and I must be going now; but all I ask you to do is this, leave things to us and don’t under any circumstances sell that claim unless we tell you to. You’d better give me that letter Shaughnessy wrote—for safe-keeping. I’ll see him in a day or two and may want to talk the matter over with him. I reckon you can trust us, can’t you?”

“I’ve heard so much about you two that I’d trust you with my life,” Ray blurted as he produced the letter and handed it to David, who carefully pocketed it.

They gave him a few more words of encouragement, told him that if it came to money for defense they would find it for him, and after he had been returned to his cell by a deputy went outside to the waiting sheriff.

“Sheriff,” said David, “we promised to tell you anything we could find out about this Ray case. Well, we’re going to do it; but to save repeating it, we’d like to have you go with us to the prosecuting attorney’s office so he can hear what we have to say at the same time. Is that good enough?”

“Sure. I’ll go right over to Hillyer’s office with you now,” the sheriff said. “He’ll be glad to see you two fellows any way, because he’s a right smart admirer of yours and a good friend, isn’t he?”

“Hope so,” Goliath growled with a grin as he recalled a past episode in their career where the prosecuting attorney had turned a blind eye on their manipulation of a Sky Gap election which worked for an improvement in law and order. And he proved so when David sat and painstakingly detailed all that he had discovered and expounded his theory.

“Shaughnessy’s got hold of some boobs back East who want to buy a mining property. The fact that there has been a little gold found on Torren’s Gulch makes that the ideal ground to sell to any but the old-timers at the mining game who know the one color of gold in a pan doesn’t make a paying mine, and that there are gulches which are as spotted as a fawn. Everything goes well until Shaughnessy tried to buy out 

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