in me. You go home. I'll come to you the very minute it is
settled."

"And you won't--oh, Alfred, please don't--please don't--for my sake,
don't have trouble with him. You're hot-tempered, and I've let you get
wrought up. Don't you see that it don't make any odds to me?"

"All right, then," he said, smiling, and yet she saw that his smile was
only on the surface. "I promise we won't fight about it. I'll try to
bring him to his senses in some other way. Now, go home. I'll come out
as soon as I possibly can."

It was after nightfall before he saw her again. As he was nearing her
cottage in the vague starlight he saw a figure of some one in the
fence-corner of her pasture which touched the road near his own land. He
surmised that it was she, and that she was there waiting for him, though
her head was bowed to the top rail of the fence and he couldn't see her
face. There was a strip of grass on the roadside, and he walked upon it
that it might deaden his tread till he was close upon her. As it was, he
reached her side without attracting her attention. Then something
clutched all his senses and held him like a dead thing in his tracks,
for he heard her praying in a sweet, suffering voice that lifted him
with it to the very throne of thrones.

"Oh, God, my Maker, my Saviour, my Redeemer," he heard her saying, "give
me the strength to bear it and let no harm come to my dear, dear friend.
I can bear the loss of my home, but not to have harm come to him. Oh,
Lord, help--" She raised her head, and their eyes met and clung
together. He had a folded paper in his hand, and he extended it to her.
His voice rose and broke in a wave of huskiness: "Here is the deed,
Dixie, little girl," he said. "The farm is yours. The transaction is
recorded at the court-house. Nothing can take it from you now."

"Mine, Alfred, mine, did you say?"

"Yes, I had trouble; he died hard; he saw it was all up with him after
he'd signed that agreement, but it was like pulling eye-teeth to get the
deed made out. He'd write a line, and then throw down the pen and cry
and whine like a baby. I'm ashamed to say it, but once I got mad and
caught him by that slim neck of his and pushed him down under his desk
and held him there. My thumb was in his throat. I clutched too tight. I
thought I'd killed him. The Lord must have restrained me. He was black
in the face and as limber as a rag. It was then that he give in. He'd
have held out to the end, but I was holdin