ibly be done."

"That's so," he admitted. "But I'd hate to make a hoss-trade by such
figuring as that. The feller would back out or the hoss would git too
old."

The conversation languished. He had a feeling that she might object to
his closeness to her, and yet he hardly knew how to draw away without
attracting undue attention to the act, so he took the book into his
hands and began to look through it. And then he remembered what Mrs.
Hart had said about Dixie's desire to sell her farm, and a slow twinkle
of a set purpose began to burn in his eyes. "It might work," he said to
himself. "Anyways, that debt notion has got to be got out of the way or
I'll never make any progress.

"I was just wondering whether I oughtn't to give you a piece of advice,
in a business sort of a way," he said to her, his fingers rapidly
twirling the pages of the book. "You see, a feller that trades as much
as I do in all sorts of things is calculated to know the drift of the
market better, maybe, than a girl like you. You was speaking about how
you hated the idea of being in debt just now, and your mother says you
want to sell your farm--the fact is, I don't see why you don't sell it
and quit working like an ox in a yoke. It's plumb wrong; you oughtn't
to do it, that's all."

"Sell it? Why, Alfred," and she looked at him eagerly, "I'd only be too
glad to do it if I knew any one who would pay anything near its worth.
You see, it's cost me first and last something over two thousand
dollars, and if I could get that much--"

"That much!" he sniffed contemptuously. "Why, you'd be crazy to sell at
a figure like that. You see, I know the field pretty well. I rub against
moneyed men every day who are simply itching for something to invest in.
The most of 'em believe the new railroad will eventually strike Chester
on its way to hook on to the trunk-line through Tennessee and North
Carolina, and they are willing to bet on it. You know old Welborne
wanted your farm, and it nearly killed him to lose his hold on it.
But--while I ain't exactly free to use names--I know a man right now who
wants your property. He'd pay you three thousand dollars in cash right
down."

"Oh, Alfred, you don't mean it--surely you don't!"

"You say you'll take it," Henley laughed, though the edges of his mouth
were drawn tensely from some inner cause, "and I'll close the deal
before you can say Jack Robinson."

"Take it?" Dixie cried, and in her eagerness and gratitude