. "That air a pile of money. I bet I earn it!...
What'd ye bet?"

She turned impetuously to Deforrest Young, and he laughed.

"I hope you may!" was all he said.

Tess was all eagerness now, her cheeks flaming and her eyes dancing.

"But I wouldn't know the man if I seen 'im in any of the squatter's
huts, huh?"

She flung this at Waldstricker, more of a question than a statement.

"He's a dwarf," he answered immediately, "and very small--like this.
Sandy Letts knows him and is looking for him, too."

At his statement, Tessibel's quick imagination pictured Sandy's brutal
face and greedy eyes, and for a moment her flaming courage almost
faltered.

"If a dwarf sneaks down here," she observed with a sweep of her hand
toward the door, "I'd get 'im easy. I know everybody."

"But would I have to halve up with Sandy, eh?" she continued, as though
struck with a new thought.

"Not unless Sandy helped you find him," Ebenezer replied genially. "You
could do as you pleased about that."

"Oh, Sandy couldn't help me, not a bit," Tess argued earnestly. "Sandy
ain't liked any too well 'round here."

"Well, manage it as you choose."

Waldstricker smiled at his success with the girl. "I don't care for
Sandy myself," he continued. "All I want is to get Andy Bishop." His
face hardened with hate as he pronounced the dwarf's name.

Tess put her hands under the curls over each shoulder and drew them
together beneath her chin.

"Five thousand dollars!" she ruminated. "I'd have a bully time a
spendin' it, wouldn't I?... I'd buy my Daddy a new overcoat every day
fer a year, an' I'd git 'im four new beds--one fer every corner of this
here kitchen, an' I'd git 'im a flannel shirt thick as a board to keep
the pains from 'is bones.... Then, I'd buy me a cow an' a calf an' a
horse an' a little baby pig an' a few cats an' a lot of dogs, an' I'd
let all the squatter brats play in my flower garden--"

Helen broke off this chatter with an amused laugh.

"Then mebbe I'd go to school a while," Tess kept on, "an' learn myself a
lot out o' books, an' after that I'd take singin' lessons an' I'd sing
to everybody what asked me--Then mebbe--" She dropped back for lack of
words. "I wonder if that'd take the hull of the five thousand."

Waldstricker stood up.

"You've got the right idea of spending money," he laughed. "And now,
young lady, we'll leave you, and if you hear that this dwarf is in any
of your friends' huts, you let me know, and