n belief
that money would secure faithful service.

The Young Doctor had told him that his powerful medicine had brought
back the bloom to his young wife's cheeks and the light to her eyes, but
how much he believed, he could not himself have said. One thing he did
know: it was that Orlando seemed quite indifferent to everything except
his mother, the state of the crops and the reports on his own cattle.
Also Orlando had made a good impression when he resented with a funny
little oath and a funnier little giggle, but with some heat in his
cheek, Joel's ostentatious proposal to pay the Young Doctor's bill for
attendance.

The offer had been made when Louise was standing in the doorway; but the
old man did not notice that Louise coloured in sympathy with the flush
in Orlando's face. It was as though a delicate nerve had been touched
in each of them; but it was a nerve that had never been sensitive until
they had met each other for the first time. Orlando's mother dealt with
the situation in her own way. She said in a somewhat awkward pause,
following the old man's proposal, that a doctor's bill was a personal
thing, and she would as soon allow some one else to pay it as to pay for
her washing. At this Orlando giggled again, and ventured the remark that
no doctor could dispense enough medicine in a year to pay her laundry
bill for a month--which pleased the old lady greatly and impelled her to
swing her skirt kittenishly.

It was at this point that Li Choo came knocking at the open door with a
message for Mazarine. It related to a horse-accident at what was known
as One Mile Spring; and Mazarine, having frowned his wife out of the
doorway, made his way downstairs and prepared for his short journey to
the Spring. Before he left, however, he called Li Choo aside, and what
he said caused Li Choo to answer: "Me get money, me do job. Me keep eyes
open. Me tell you."

From a window Louise had watched the colloquy, and she knew, as well as
though she stood beside them, what was being said. Li Choo had told the
truth: he had got the cash, and he would do the job. But not alone from
Joel Mazarine did he get money. Only two mornings before, Louise, for
all the extra work he had had to do during Orlando's illness and without
thought of bribery, had given him a beautiful gold ten-dollar-piece with
a hole in it. If the piece had been minus the hole, Li Choo would have
returned it to her, for he would have served her for nothing till