d!" The bid was the veterinary's.

Wallie quavered:

"Four hundred and fifty!"

"Five hundred!" his opponent came back at him.

Wallie hesitated.

"Think of it! Going for five hundred!"

The auctioneer looked at Wallie, who could not have been paler in his
coffin.

"Five twenty-five!"

"Good! Now, sir," to the veterinary.

"Five-fifty!"

He turned to Wallie:

"Am I done, gentlemen?"

Wallie stared at him, his throat too dry to answer.

"Must I give away the best pullin' team in the State for a puny,
piddlin' five hundred and fifty dollars?" he pleaded.

"SIX HUNDRED!" Wallie cried in desperation.

With the bid Canby raised his hat and ran his fingers through his hair
casually and the veterinary stopped bidding.

"Done!" cried the auctioneer, "Sold to Mr.--the name, please--ah,
Macpherson, for six hundred dollars---- A bargain!"

Between relief and joy Wallie was speechless, while Canby congratulated
him and the crowd bestowed upon him glances of either derision or
commiseration, according to the nature of the individual.

While he stood trying to realize his good fortune and that he was the
owner of as good a pair of work-horses as ever looked through a halter, a
figure that made his heart jump came swiftly forward, and with her hands
in the pockets of her long motor coat, stopped in front of his team and
scrutinized them closely.

Helene Spenceley looked from one of the horses to the other. She saw the
dilated pupils, the abnormally full forehead, the few coarse hairs
growing just above the eyelid, and they told her what she had suspected.

"I am sorry I did not know it was you who was bidding on these horses,"
she said, turning to Wallie.

"Did you want them, Miss Spenceley? I am sorry----"

"Want them? You couldn't give them to me. They are locoed!"

"Locoed!" He could only stare at her, hoping never again to feel such
dismay as filled him at that moment.

He had only the vaguest notion as to what "locoed" meant, but it was
very clear that it was something highly undesirable. And he had been
cheated by Canby, who had known of it and advised him to buy them! Such
duplicity was without his experience, and sickened him nearly as much as
the thought of the $600 he had invested in horses so radically wrong
that Helene Spenceley would not take them as a gift.

The single thought which came to solace him as he stood humiliated and
panic-stricken was that she resented the dishonest trick that