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pen, and thrust the first under her nose, the second into her hand. "Sign!"

Worried about it without knowing why, for the written agreement differed in no way from the verbal one, she slowly signed.

He immediately possessed himself of the signed paper and stowed it away in his pocket. The inside of his baggy coat was all pockets, some of them pinned with brassy safety pins, converting him into a perambulating set of lock boxes.

"Did you bring the hundred dollars advanced on the crop?" she asked, to hurry him to a conclusion and get through with him.

"I brought the hundred dollars, yes. Advanced on the crop, no!"

He banged out the last word like a gavel.

"No?" she questioned wearily. "Why not?"

"Suppose there comes a freeze first, heh? Then you have the hundred dollars and I get the freeze. No, I advance the hundred dollars on this furniture, old as it is."

His belittling eye was on the spindly, queer table.

"It's a Chippendale," she told him, angered into excitement. "It has been in our family for years! I could sell it for twice a hundred!"

"Very well, sellut," he permitted scornfully, adding with a sarcastic leer, "Who to?"

To whom indeed! The Carters, maybe!

"On the furniture then," finally consented the girl, after miserably convincing herself that her helplessness was fully as great as her need.

"Sign," he said immediately, flashing out a second document.

She took it a long-winded, bulky paper, bafflingly

worded-and, spreading it before her on the table, tried hard to understand its complete tenor. There was a confusing amount of "whereas," and a labyrinthian repetition of "parties" of separate "parts." Also eight per cent occupied positions of distinguished prominence, and a "neglect" of something entailed a "forfeiture" of something else. Not only did "furniture" appear, but "books, rugs, pictures, and household appurtenances." One might almost imagine that the extremely undomestic-looking Mr. Herman Selig had his future eye upon the McAllister pots and pans, but of course this could not be so.

Intense silence settled down over the lamp-lit room, and sometimes intense silence can be more distracting than a little normal noise.

"I can't make this out," Laurie said at last, desisting from the vain attempt. "I know I ought, but I'm too tired."

"Put your name to it-that's all I asked."

She took the fountain pen again, then with a woman's widespread doubt of the article, tried it first on her thumb-nail to see if it worked. It did.

The thickset moneylender watched her feminine performance with narrowing eyes. It was not often that the meshes of his web were approached by creatures so young and inexperienced.

"Is it safe to sign a paper that you don't understand?" she asked.

Selig scraped the stubbles of his beard with four discolored finger nails.

"It depends."

"Upon what, Mr. Selig?"

"Upon who drew up the paper."

"Oh," she breathed, her face clearing magically,

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"I'm glad of that. I'm sure you wouldn't take advantage of anybody who is as ignorant of business as I. I've already got into enough difficulty by relying on my own judgment. It turns out I haven't any, so I'm going to rely on yours instead. Give your word that this paper is safe and sensible for me to sign, and I'll do it. Is it ?"

He frowned down at the document and frowned down at her trustful face, seeming to find the one as annoying as the other. Then he walked softly across the room and assayingly pressed his thumbnail into the ebony frame. When satisfied of its integrity he glanced back at the girl, who was waiting for the assurance of his word.

"If you want the safed curtly.

money you can sign," he vouch

After a disconsolate weighing of this she signed. The mortgage was immediately taken away from her and stowed into a lock box-one with a safety pin.

Then Selig paid into her hand a hundred dollars in soiled ten-dollar greenbacks, first folding each down the middle lengthwise, and jerking the ends to make sure that no bill was two.

The money seemed dismally inconsiderable compared with the size and scope of the mortgage.

"When do I have to repay this?" she belatedly asked. "The time was down in the deed.”

"Yes, but there was lots in the deed that I didn't see."

"When you rely on a person's word you do it fully, heh ?"

"Yes, they can rely that way on mine."

"So? It remains to be seen. Four months is when you have to pay it back."

"Four months is a short time for saving so much." "Any time is short time when money is to be paid back, but to the lender long. I take my leave."

He opened the screen door for himself and strode out upon the porch, she following him, remembering a feathered duty there.

She had been made so indefinitely unhappy by the events of the last hour that the moon no longer seemed to shine as brightly as it had, and in consequence the dark places of the grove looked very dark indeed, the shadows of the barn especially so.

"Come with me while I put the frizzly chicken to bed," she besought the money lender.

"Heh?" he asked, held up by the friendly tremor in her voice no less than by her timid touch upon his baggy sleeve. Then his slits of eyes did their usual keen duty, and, discovering the brown drowser upon the step, he understood. His worst enemy could not call him a fool, or slow. "All right," he said, pronouncing it very close to "all riot."

This was no bad term for what it really was. The frizzly, on finding itself hugged by its mistress and borne through the night, took the hour and the fact to mean that its head was going to be cut off, and squawked accordingly.

Though Selig accompanied the pair down to the chicken house, he sheared the act of much of its courtesy by availing himself to the utmost of the spying privileges afforded. To take a profitless tour was not in his nature. The yam patch drew him to its very side, and while Laurie was fastening the door upon her calmed fowl he booted open a hill of yams, and, bending down, carefully examined the output.

"I think likely tomorrow you get a letter from me,

Miss Laurie McAllister," he told her while escorting her back to the house.

"Do I have to?" she asked blankly. "Why letter?"

He refused her a reply, simply nodding her a curt farewell, then plodding onward to his car. She soon heard him pounding remorselessly through the gentle night.

Next morning brought the letter. When Laurie walked to the road-gate the whole flock of chickens, including the rooster, went with her. Meeting the mailman was a sociable affair. This particular morning was an October one, but it looked and felt like Junetime up north, for the air was hot, with bees buzzing busily everywhere and butterflies lazily wandering. And the heavenly fragrance was of June-time too-so many roses were in bloom, native ones, preferring quantity to style. One Cherokee ran along the fence for fully thirty feet, making a glossy green wall starred plentifully with tiny buds promising to be big-hearted white flowers a little later on.

Just now the most blossomy thing in the neighborhood of the Cherokee rose was The McAllister, who, clothed in glorious remnants of the wardrobe of his youth-remnants long laid away as relics of the past, but now gladly untrunked for splendid service in the present—was faithfully hoeing the fire line prescribed by Charles Roycroft. Andrew had a good cigar in his mouth, a pearl-colored Fedora hat upon his head, and a white belt around his middle, to say nothing of an astonishingly well-preserved linen suit upon his person.

The frizzly chickens kinked their necks at him doubtfully, possibly thinking that a man with a hoe, though admirable in poetry, might be unsafe when turned loose.

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