from the beginning, to pay to John Rountree the invoices of each week; and Lew, taking over from his father, continued the practice. Evidently he had left signed checks to be filled in and countersigned by the treasurer, during his absence; so upon each Monday morning, Ellen took from an Alban envelope Lew's draft for twelve thousand or fifteen thousand dollars.
The amount, whichever it happened to be, now exceeded the total income from all other sources. It met Rountree bills, provided the Rountree payroll and supplied what profit there was. Never, since the very start, had the firm been so completely dependent on the faithfulness of the friendship of the man, old and bedridden now and slowly failing, in his home in the little town of central Illinois.
Mr. Rountree phoned him daily and went down on weekends, at fortnight intervals; whereat Di laughed, after report of these visits reached her through the Slengels.
"Mr. Rountree goes because he cares; I hear him when he phones," Ellen declared. "He's not hypocritical."
"I'll scream to the sunny sky that he's not," granted Di. "I bet not a sincerer prayer for long life ever lifted to the Gates than Mr. Rountree sends up at that bedside."
"Who've you got down there?" demanded Ellen.
"Oh, Art," said Di. "But he's only lookin' through their plant. Lew asked him to make suggestions. Art hasn't been up to the house; he says he's never developed a Baptist bedside manner." Di stretched languorously, but Ellen was trembling.
The prospect of old Stanley's end precipitated her into
