Suddenly she threw both arms around his neck, and drawing his face down
to her, kissed him again and again, and pressed her wet cheek to
his--tear-stained like her own.

"It's going to be all right, dear," he said, as she stood from him,
though still holding his hand. "It's going to be all right."

"Yes, yes, all right, all right," she assented. "I never seemed to
realise it till this minute. From the first I must have loved you
without knowing it. And I've been cold and hard to you, and now I'm
sorry, sorry. You were wrong, remember that time in the library, when
you said I was undemonstrative. I'm not. I love you dearly, dearly, and
never for once, for one little moment, am I ever going to allow you to
forget it."

Suddenly, as Jadwin recalled the incident of which she spoke, an idea
occurred to him.

"Oh, our bargain--remember? You didn't forget after all."

"I did. I did," she cried. "I did forget it. That's the very sweetest
thing about it."

VI

The months passed. Soon three years had gone by, and the third winter
since the ceremony in St. James' Church drew to its close.

Since that day when--acting upon the foreknowledge of the French import
duty--Jadwin had sold his million of bushels short, the price of wheat
had been steadily going down. From ninety-three and ninety-four it had
dropped to the eighties. Heavy crops the world over had helped the
decline. No one was willing to buy wheat. The Bear leaders were strong,
unassailable. Lower and lower sagged the price; now it was
seventy-five, now seventy-two. From all parts of the country in solid,
waveless tides wheat--the mass of it incessantly crushing down the
price--came rolling in upon Chicago and the Board of Trade Pit. All
over the world the farmers saw season after season of good crops. They
were good in the Argentine Republic, and on the Russian steppes. In
India, on the little farms of Burmah, of Mysore, and of Sind the grain,
year after year, headed out fat, heavy, and well-favoured. In the great
San Joaquin valley of California the ranches were one welter of
fertility. All over the United States, from the Dakotas, from Nebraska,
Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois, from all the wheat belt came steadily the
reports of good crops.

But at the same time the low price of grain kept the farmers poor. New
mortgages were added to farms already heavily "papered"; even the crops
were mortgaged in advance. No new farm implements were bought.
Throughou