f Plenty," and she
thought with a pang how fast it was going up. The thought haunted her
all day long, but she could not leave Jim to take any steps toward
retrieving her opportunity, and after that first visit Inches did not
come in again. She took out her big check once or twice in the course of
the day and looked at it resentfully; and as she brooded upon the
matter, it was borne in upon her with peculiar force that she had made a
fatal blunder in exchanging her "chances" for that fixed, inexpansive
sum. Had it not been cowardly in her to yield so easily? Supposing
Dayton himself had lacked courage at the critical moment; where would
his four-in-hand have been to-day? She was sure that no timid speculator
had ever made a fortune; on the contrary, she had often heard it said
that a flash of courage at the right moment was the very essence of
success in speculation. She remembered the expression "essence of
success."

[Illustration: "THEY LOOKED OUT AT THE PEAK."]

By the time evening came the fever of speculation was high in her veins,
and urged on by her own brooding fancies, uncontradicted from without,
unexposed to the light of day, she did an incredible thing.

As she drew forth her writing materials in order to put her new and
startling resolution into execution, she paused and looked about the
familiar little shop with a feeling of estrangement. There was an
incongruity between the boldness of the thing she was about to do, and
the hard and fast limitations of her lot, which the sight of those
humble properties brought sharply home to her. The first pen she took up
was stiff and scratchy; the sound of it was like a challenge to the
outer world to come and pass judgment upon her. She flung the pen to one
side in nervous trepidation, and then she searched until she found one
that was soft and pliable, and went whispering over the paper like a
fellow-conspirator.

This was what she wrote:

"DEAR MR. DAYTON,

"I want to go into the 'Horn of Plenty' again, and I can't get away
to attend to it. I enclose your check, and one of my own for $400.
Please buy me what the money will bring. They say it isn't a
swindle, and any way I want some. You said to come to you, and
that was the same as saying you'd do it, if I asked you to. I don't
care what you pay; get what you can for the money.

"Yours truly,