his way of living.

"I think," remarked Chandler, reflectively, "at the end of the month
I'll let Chang Lee go. I think I can some way manage the rest of the
season alone."

"Perhaps," assented Imogene, soberly, as she began to pick up the
knives and forks and plates. She had not told him that when Chang
Lee's wages for June were paid it would leave them less than twenty
dollars to get through the summer on. "I've been learning to irrigate
the cotton rows and I can help," she said. "It will be a lot of fun."

The ex-professor was vaguely troubled. He knew in a remote sort of way
that their finances were at a low ebb. Imogene always attended to the
business.

"Do you suppose, daughter," he asked, troubled, "that it is practical
for us to continue in our present environment for another season?"

"Surest thing, you know," she laughed reassuringly. "Run along now to
bed; you are tired." He sighed with a delicious sense of relief and
sleepiness, and went.

But Imogene was not tired enough either to sit still or to sleep. She
got up and walked restlessly round the camp. Known problems and
unknown longings were stirring uneasily in her consciousness.

She stood at the edge of the field where the long rows of cotton
plants, freshly watered, grew rank and green in the first intense heat
of summer. There was a full moon to-night--a hazy, sleepy full moon
with dust blown across its face creeping up over the eastern desert.

Just a little while ago and it was all desert. Two years ago when they
first came this cotton field was uneven heaps of blown sand, desert
cactus, and mesquite--barren and forbidding as a nightmare of thirst
and want. It had taken a year's work and nearly all their meagre
capital to level it and dig the water ditches. And the next year--that
was last year--the crop was light and the price low. They had barely
paid their debts and saved a few hundred for their next crop. Now that
was gone, and with it six hundred, the last dollar she could borrow at
the bank. Just how they were going to manage the rest of the summer
she did not know. And worst of all were these vague but persistent
rumours and warnings that the ranchers were somehow to be robbed of
their crops.

She turned and walked back into the yard of the little shack and stood
bareheaded looking at the moon, the desert wind in her face. Another
summer of heat was coming swiftly now. She had lived through two
seasons of that te