been lending money on farm mortgages for ten years. Pay-day on
many mortgages was coming due, and of the fifteen thousand dollars he
checked out to pay Adrian Brownwell's debt, thirteen thousand dollars
was money that belonged to the Eastern creditors of the company--men
and women who had sent their money to the company for it to lend; and
the money checked out represented money paid back by the farmers for
the release of their mortgages. Some of the money was interest paid by
farmers on their mortgages, some of it was partial payments--but none
of it was Colonel Culpepper's money.

"Molly," said the colonel, as his daughter came into the office, "I've
given a check for that--that money, you know, to Adrian--paid it in
full, my dear. But--" the colonel fumbled with his pencil a moment
and added, "I'm a trifle shy--a few thousand in point of fact, and I
just thought I'd ask--would you borrow it of Bob, if you were me?"

He looked at her closely, and she coloured and shook her head
vehemently as she replied: "Oh, no, father--no, can't you get it
somewhere else? Not from Bob--for that! I mean--oh--I'd much rather
not."

The colonel looked at his daughter a moment and drew a deep breath,
and sighed, and smiled across his sigh, and took her hand and put it
around his neck and kissed it, and when she was close to him he put
his arm about her, and their eyes met for a fleeting instant, and they
did not speak. But in a moment from across his desk the daughter
spoke, "Why don't you go to John or Carnine, father?"

"Well, Gabe--you know Gabe. I'm borrowed clear to the limit there,
now. And John--you know John, Molly--and the muss, the disagreeable
muss,--the row, in point of fact, we had over that last seventy-five
dollars settling up the College Heights business--you remember? Well,
I just can't go to John. But," he added cheerfully, "I can get it
elsewhere, my dear--I have other resources, other resources, my
dear." And the colonel smiled so gayly that he deceived even his
daughter, and she went home as happy as a woman with eyelids as red as
hers were that day might reasonably expect to be.

As for the colonel, he sat figuring for an hour upon a sheet of white
paper. His figures indicated that by putting all of his property
except his home into the market, and reserving all of his commissions
on loans that would fall due during the three years coming, he could
pay back the money he had taken, little by little, and be squ