refused, and Daylight's argument took a more painful turn.

"I can only guess that you're standing in your brother's way on account
of some mistaken idea in your head that this is my idea of courting.
Well, it ain't. You might as well think I'm courting all those
convicts I buy bridles from. I haven't asked you to marry me, and if I
do I won't come trying to buy you into consenting. And there won't be
anything underhand when I come a-asking."

Dede's face was flushed and angry. "If you knew how ridiculous you
are, you'd stop," she blurted out. "You can make me more uncomfortable
than any man I ever knew. Every little while you give me to understand
that you haven't asked me to marry you yet. I'm not waiting to be
asked, and I warned you from the first that you had no chance. And yet
you hold it over my head that some time, some day, you're going to ask
me to marry you. Go ahead and ask me now, and get your answer and get
it over and done with."

He looked at her in honest and pondering admiration. "I want you so
bad, Miss Mason, that I don't dast to ask you now," he said, with such
whimsicality and earnestness as to make her throw her head back in a
frank boyish laugh. "Besides, as I told you, I'm green at it. I never
went a-courting before, and I don't want to make any mistakes."

"But you're making them all the time," she cried impulsively. "No man
ever courted a woman by holding a threatened proposal over her head
like a club."

"I won't do it any more," he said humbly. "And anyway, we're off the
argument. My straight talk a minute ago still holds. You're standing
in your brother's way. No matter what notions you've got in your head,
you've got to get out of the way and give him a chance. Will you let
me go and see him and talk it over with him? I'll make it a hard and
fast business proposition. I'll stake him to get well, that's all, and
charge him interest."

She visibly hesitated.

"And just remember one thing, Miss Mason: it's HIS leg, not yours."

Still she refrained from giving her answer, and Daylight went on
strengthening his position.

"And remember, I go over to see him alone. He's a man, and I can deal
with him better without womenfolks around. I'll go over to-morrow
afternoon."

CHAPTER XVIII

Daylight had been wholly truthful when he told Dede that he had no real
friends. On speaking terms with thousands, on fellowship and drinking
terms with hundreds, he was a lon