et it on a place. I--let's sell enough to raise the one
we have on this eighty while we can, instead. I'm willing to live on a
little; but, oh, John, I do so want to have one place that is our own."

"There's money in those cattle," John answered sullenly. "A woman don't
know anything about such things. You'll go and get mother started on it
too, I suppose. I'm going to do as I see fit about it, anyhow. I know
there's money to be made there."

With a great sob in her throat, Elizabeth turned to the house.

"Look here, Elizabeth," John called after her peremptorily.

Elizabeth stopped respectfully to listen, but she did not return to his
side. John waited, thinking she would come to him.

"Cattle ain't like ordinary farming," he argued with a flush of anger. "A
man simply has to take time to let steers grow into money. We haven't been
at it a long enough time. Those big steers will be ready to feed this
fall, and corn's going to be cheap. We'd be cutting off our noses to spite
our own faces to sell now."

"Perhaps," the girl replied bitterly, and went on to the house.

She knew that John had argued with the hope of getting her to admit
herself in the wrong, not to hear her side of the case.

John Hunter gazed after his retreating wife in vexed petulance for a
moment and then, with a sigh of relief, turned toward the waiting cattle.

"She'll be ready when I want to go to town all the same," he reflected.

CHAPTER XIV

MORTGAGES OF SOUL

The mortgage was signed. The fine weather had brought many people to
Colebyville. Elizabeth had not been in town for a year, and the sight of
pleasant, happy folk greeting each other cordially and wandering from
store to store bartering eggs and butter for groceries and family
necessities, and exchanging ideas and small talk about their purchases,
had accentuated her isolation. Those people who knew her spoke to her
also, but with an air of suspicion and reserve. A puzzling feature of the
day had been that John had received a more cordial reception than she had.
The main suspicion had been directed against her. There seemed to be a
certain acceptance of John's "stuck-upness." He had some reason for his
attitude toward them which they were inclined to accept, but Elizabeth saw
that to this community she was a "beggar on horseback." Instead of seeing
that the man who had thrust her into this false relation was utterly
inadequate to realize it, or that if he realized it he