You will have a perfect right to tell it: the only result would be that I should be discredited with my employers; and there is nothing to warrant me in supposing that you would be deterred by that." "I don't ask to know your secret: I think you had better say no more." Freeman shook his head.

"I must speak," said he.

"I don't care what becomes of me, so long as I stand right in your opinion,--your father's and yours.

I am here to find out whether this desert can be flooded,--irrigated,--whether it's possible, by any means, to bring water upon it.

If my report is favorable, the company will purchase hundreds, or thousands, of square miles, and, incidentally, my own fortune will be made." "Why, that's the very thing----" She stopped.
"The very thing your father had thought of! Yes, so I imagined, though he has not told me so in so many words.