a
step nearer.

"I ain't tellin' this everywhere, Miss Cordelia, and I don't want you to
say nothin'. You're goin' to Texas, they tell me."

"Yes, Mr. Hodges, I am." Cordelia tried to make her voice sound properly
humble, but pride would vibrate through it.

"Well, I--" The man hesitated, looked around again suspiciously, then
blurted out a storm of words with the rush of desperation. "I--years
ago, Miss Cordelia, I let a man in Boston have a lot of money. He said
'twas goin' into an oil well out in Texas, and that when it came back
there'd be a lot more with it a-comin' to me. So I let him have it. I
liked Texas, anyhow--I'd been there as a boy."

"Yes," nodded Cordelia, smiling as she remembered the prairie schooner
that was Fred's "boat."

"Well, for a while I did get money--dividends, he called 'em. Then it
all stopped off short. They shut the man up in prison, and closed the
office. And there's all my money! They do be sayin', too, that there
ain't no such place as this oil well there--that is, not the way he said
it was--so big and fine and promisin'. Well, now, of course I can't go
to see, Miss Cordelia--an old man like me, all the way to Texas. But you
are goin'. So I thought I'd just ask you to look around a little if you
happened to hear anything about this well. Maybe you could go and see
it, and then tell me. I've written down the name on this paper,"
finished the man, thrusting his trembling fingers into his pocket, and
bringing out a small piece of not over-clean paper.

"Why, of--of course, Mr. Hodges," promised Cordelia, doubtfully, as she
took the paper. "I'd love to do anything I could for you--anything! Only
I'm afraid I don't know much about oil wells, you see. Do they look just
like--water wells, with a pump or a bucket? Bertha's aunt has one of
those on her farm."

"I don't know, child, I don't know," murmured the old man, shaking his
head sadly, as he turned away. "Sometimes I think there ain't any such
things, anyhow. But you'll do your best, I know. I can trust _you_!"

"Why, of course," returned Cordelia, earnestly, slipping the bit of
paper into the envelope of Genevieve's letter in her hand.

In her own room that night Cordelia Wilson got out her list marked
"Things to do in Texas," and studied it with troubled eyes. She had now
one more item to add to it--and it was already so long!

She had started the list for her own benefit. Then had come the request
from queer old Hermit Joe