hampers, I am Leigh Shirley
from the Cloverdale place on Grass River," she said, looking earnestly up
at him.

Darley Champers was no ladies' man, but so far as in his coarse-grained
nature lay, he was never knowingly rude to a woman, and Leigh's manner and
presence made the atmosphere of his office comfortingly different from the
place he had just quitted. The white lilac bush in the yard behind the
office whose blossoms sent a faint odor through the rear door, seemed to
double its fragrance.

"Sit down, madam. I'm pleased to meet you. Can I be of any service to you
today?" he said with bluff cordiality.

"Yes, sir. I want to buy the quarter section lying southeast of us. It was
the old Cloverdale Ranch once. It belongs to Champers & Co. now, the
records show, and I want to get it. It was my Uncle Jim Shirley's first
claim."

Darley Champers stared at the girl and said nothing.

"What do you ask for it?" Leigh inquired.

Still the real estate dealer was silent.

"Isn't it for sale? It is all weed-grown and hasn't been cultivated for
years."

The tremor in the girl's voice reached the best spot in Darley Champers'
trade-hardened heart.

"Lord, yes, it's for sale!" he broke out.

A sense of relief at this sudden opportunity, combined with the intense
satisfaction of getting even with Thomas Smith, overwhelmed him. Smith
would rave at the sale to a Shirley, yet this sale had been demanded.
Champers had written Smith's name into too many documents to need the
owner's handwriting in this transaction. Smith would leave town in the
evening. The whole thing was easy enough. While Leigh waited, the real
humaneness of which Champers so often boasted found its voice within him.

"I'll sell it for sixteen hundred dollars if I can get two hundred down
today and the rest in cash inside of two weeks. But I must close the
bargain today, you understand."

He had fully meant to make it seventeen hundred fifty dollars. It was the
unknown humane thing in him that cut off his own commission.

"It's worth it," he said to himself. "Won't Thomas Smith, who's got no
name to sign to a piece of paper, won't he just cuss when it's all did!
It's worth my little loss just to get something dead on him. The tricky
thief!"

"I'll take it," Leigh said, a strange light glowing in her eyes and a firm
line settling about her red lips.

Champers couldn't realize an hour later how it was all done, nor why with
such a poor bargain for him