"That's the talk!" joyously cried Hawke. His heart bounded in a
fierce thrill. "By God! Simpson shall be 'done up' in short order.
The drunken old dog. He cut off the payment of my drafts with his
blabbing tongue!
"Yes, over the cliffs he goes, and we will make sure of
him--forever--before he takes his last tumble! Jack! Jack! You are
a hero!" he mused, as the triumphant words of Jack Blunt's great
discovery were read again and again. And then, he carefully burned
the letter, before the astonished eyes of the tempting companion of
his waiting hours. "These fools of employers!" cheerfully muttered
Alan Hawke. "They always think that 'Servant's Hall' has no eyes.
That the maid in her cap and apron has not the same burning passions
as idle Madame in her silks and laces. That the man has not his own
easy-going vices just as alive and masterful as the base appetites
of the swell master."
While Alan Hawke thus exulted at Granville, there was gloom and
jealousy in the heart of Prof. Alaric Hobbs, of Waukesha University,
Wisconsin, U. S. A.
A tall, lank, bespectacled "Westerner," nearly thirty-five years
of age, the blue-eyed country boy had dragged himself up from the
obscurity of a frontier American farm into the higher life. Uncouth,
awkward, and yet resolute and untiring, he had justified his first
instructor's prediction:
"He has the head of a horse, and will make his mark!" Newspaper
trainboy, chainman, assistant on Government frontier surveys, and
frontier scout, he early saved his money so as to complete a sporadic
university curriculum.
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