sed that the owner
had done some hasty sorting and straightening of his affairs. He
sighed, and his blue eyes hardened for a minute. Then Billy Louise
moved from the door and went over to kneel comfortingly beside Marthy,
and Seabeck looked at the two and sighed again, though his eyes were no
longer stern. He pulled a sheet of paper toward him and wrote steadily
in a prim, upright chirography that had never a flourish anywhere, but
carefully crossed t's and carefully dotted i's and punctuation marks of
beautiful exactness.

"You will please sign here, Mrs. Meilke," he said calmly, coming over
to them with the sheet of paper laid smoothly upon a last-year's
best-seller and with Charlie's fountain pen in his other hand. "And if
Miss MacDonald will also sign, as an endorser, I think I can safely do
away with any mortgage or other legal security."

Billy Louise stood up and gave him one look--which Seabeck did not
appreciate, because he did not see it.

"I'd ruther give a mortgage," Marthy said uneasily, sitting up suddenly
and looking from one to the other. "I don't want Billy Louise to git
tangled up in my troubles. She's got plenty of her own. Her maw's
just died, Mr. Seabeck. And I'll bet there was a hospital 'n' doctor's
bill bigger 'n this cattle note, to be paid. I don't want to pile on--"

"Now, Marthy, you be still. I'm perfectly willing to sign this note
with you. If it will satisfy Mr. Seabeck, I'm sure it's the very least
we can do--or--expect." Billy Louise, bless her heart, was trying very
hard to be grateful to Seabeck in spite of the slump he had suffered in
her estimation.

"Well, I'll want your written word that yuh won't prosycute Charlie nor
help nobody else prosycute him," stipulated Marthy, with sudden
shrewdness. "If me 'n Billy Louise signs this note, we'll pay it; and
we want some pertection from you, fer Charlie."

"Hmm-mm--I see!" He turned and went back to the littered desk and
wrote carefully again upon another sheet of paper. "I think this will
be quite satisfactory," he said, and handed the paper to Marthy.

"Git my specs, Billy Louise--off 'n the shelf over there," she said,
and read the paper laboriously, her lips forming the letters of every
word which contained more than one syllable. Marthy, remember, was a
plainswoman born and bred.

"I guess that'll do," she pronounced at last, pushing the spectacles up
on her lined forehead. "You read it, Billy Louise, 'n' see