AN ERROR IN
saved if you had only referred us to your legal representative." The lawyer looked appealingly around the room. The dead-lock was complete.
"Wilton," I asked, "may I try my hand now?"
"Anything you like," said Wilton. "It seems I can't talk English. I won't build any wall, though." He threw himself back in his chair.
"Gentlemen," I said deliberately, for I perceived that the doctor's mind would turn slowly, "Mr. Sargent has very large interests in the chief railway systems of his own country."
"His own country?" said the lawyer.
"At that age?" said the doctor.
"Certainly. He inherited them from his father, Mr. Sargent, who was an American."
"And proud of it," said Wilton, as though he had been a Western Senator let loose on the Continent for the first time.
"My dear sir," said the lawyer, half rising, "why did you not acquaint the Company with this fact—this vital fact—early in our correspondence? We should have understood. We should have made allowances."
"Allowances be damned. Am I a Red Indian or a lunatic?"
The two men looked guilty.
"If Mr. Sargent's friend had told us as much in the beginning," said the doctor, very severely, "much might have been saved." Alas! I had made a life's enemy of that doctor.
"I had n't a chance," I replied. "Now, of course,
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