a lighted bomb due to explode and destroy her. That much wealth was liable to go off at any minute.

"You. Fruit," answered the Jew, briefly. He turned his book for her to see the account for herself, though she was too dizzy with delight to do any adding.

"But I had only four hundred and sixty-two grove boxes," she reminded him.

"Well," he growled, tapping a number with his blunt pencil. "Ain't that it?" Then he dropped his pretense of being a boar and said quite pleasantly, "I am paying you two dollars a box, Miss Laurie McAllister, though I would have held you fast to your contract had you tried to break it."

"And I can pay you the mortgage money and still have over seven hundred dollars left?" she asked, flushing quickly. “Oh, how that mortgage has worried me!"

He gave a grunting chuckle and scraped his bristles with his four fingers.

"Are you a fool, huh?" he asked softly. "Thinking I could hold you on a piece of paper like that, unwitnessed, unrecorded? I destroyed it that night.”

"Destroyed it?" she asked, viewing him timidly and wonderingly, beginning to feel that she was entertaining an angel unawares, and an angel in the sufficient disguise of a long, shabby, faded overcoat, a dented Derby hat, and all the facial lines that a superficial observer would consider the lines of cupidity and cruelty when they were mostly the lines of caution and self protection.

"Destroyed it," he replied. "But I had your promise you would pay. I knew that was enough. I go by the voice. Your voice is the honest one."

"What makes you so good to me?" she faltered, up

set. "Won't you please let me shake hands? Thank you. Why are you so good to me?”

"Because it is a hard world for a pretty girl," he answered, gazing almost vacantly away from her. He stood up to go, and put his hand upon the latch of the gate. “I was sorry for you from the first—you so young and with an old man to keep. Brave you were and innocent, too innocent, asking me to advise you! You were poor, but you did not cringe before me; you did not despise me as most borrowers are pleased to despise the usurer!—you trusted me. So what was there to do but to prove myself as honorable as you thought me?"

"So it is all mine," she cried, at last daring to believe it. "You are sure you haven't cheated your

self?"

"I would be the first Selig to do that," he remarked grimly, and went.

"If he did not deserve my doubts then, he will later," remarked Roycroft quite callously when Laurie cornered him in her grove and scored him. "And if you are so jubilant over a beastly seven hundred dollars, what won't you say to my piece of news?"

"More good luck?" she asked radiantly.

"Rather! The railroad is going to run in a track and put up a station."

"The noisy thing!" she remarked indifferently.

"Wake up, Miss Laurie, wake up," he urged beseechingly. "Can't you see what that means? First a station, then a store, then an hotel, then a church, then a school, then concrete pavements, an electric plant, an ice factory, lastly a little town. Don't look so unbelieving. I myself have watched the thing

actually happen in Florida almost in a night. You will be able to sell your land for thousands."

"Sell?" she asked, quite derisively. "And where would I go if I sold?"

On the point of giving a practical reply he caught a golden shaft of suggestion from the goddess of his destiny. He reddened, braced himself, and pointed in the direction where lay his own beautiful home waiting for its queen mistress.

"To me," he answered quickly. "The whole song has come true:

"For bonnie Annie Laurie I wad lay me doon and dee!"

So wide-eyed and startled that she was mystically pretty she backed away from him, backed into an orange tree and stood there in a bower of white buds and blossoms. They caught in her bright hair, they brushed her flushed cheeks, and with every move of the faint breeze they filled the gentle air with that essence of romance and love that is the perfumed soul of the orange flower.

And from a near green bough sang the nightingale of the south, the joyous mocking bird whose melody is pure gladness, owning no minor notes. When you hear it you have the feeling that something very happy has happened in the world, and that your full share is winging its way to you.

"Laurie, don't say no to me," begged Roycroft. "I know you don't care for me-you have shown that from the first-but I—I have loved you from the first.”

"You-you have kept very quiet about it," she said, rather wildly. It was news to her to learn that she disliked him.

"I have tried to speak, but you have laughed at me. If you could but know how I have longed for you -at evening when the moon is bright upon the lake." "Only then?" she asked.

"Always! But I never knew the madness of love until that night when you sang the song that has my name in it. The love in your voice came to me, touched me, kissed me!"

"Oh, don't!" she begged. "The Charlie I was singing about was the prince."

"But you thought of me!"

"I did not!" she denied vehemently. "How did you guess it?" Then, hurriedly, "Don't come near me, please. Please! I want to ask you something. But you didn't care for me when I sang! You just turned around and walked away."

"If I had not," he said tumultuously, "I might have "

He made an illustrative step.

"But you mustn't!" she cried affrightedly, waving him off.

He stopped short, hurt, bewildered.

"You always do that," he cried. "Always! You lure me on step by step, only to slap me in the face!" "Oh, I never did that, Mr. Roycroft!" she exclaimed, growing astonishingly crimson, and adding meekly, "When ?"

"The time those men, O'Connell and the rest, frightened you. After they had gone, you stood before me so small, so shaken, that I . . . oh, I cannot tell you, Laurie! But I would have given the world to be able to put my arms around you, hold you, love you."

"Then why didn't you?” she asked, almost accusingly. "Take advantage of the fright and loneliness of an

unprotected girl that trusted me?" he asked hotly. "What do you think of me?"

"I'm not saying," she murmured.

"That night I asked your grandfather's permission to to be your suitor, Laurie."

"What had grandfather to do with it?" she asked imperiously. "I was the one! Let me tell you something right now-I can worry along beautifully without too much chivalry!"

But her heart was leaping with ecstatic joy to remember that this loyal knight had always guarded her as a queen.

“Oh, Laurie, refuse me if you must, but don't laugh at me now. Try to guess what I would say. Be a little sorry for my dumbness, for I own no eloquence. I can only love you, dear, and live for you, and battle for you. I need you so. I tried to tell you on Christmas day when you blessed my lonely home with your bright presence, but you saw it coming, and you were cold to me."

"I didn't see it coming," she half sobbed. "I thought I saw it going!"

"I never understand you, Laurie," he said, making a step towards her, then pausing, with his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Does it mean that you

"It means that I am so happy I don't know what to do or say or think. I just want to cry for a little while hard."

"Then come to me, even to cry," he said, taking her in his arms.

"Now that I'm here I don't want to cry," she discovered presently.

"I'd like to ask you something, Mr. Roycroft."