thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's."

"Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed.

But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine. Come, don't be
foolish. If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho,
take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things."

Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly:

"No, no! We couldn't take it. I don't want any new clothes. If Dan
doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't. I don't want anything in the
world but just to go with Dan."

At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms
unfolded; he put them around her.

"That's all right, little girl." His tone thrilled through Bulstrode
more than the woman's tears had done. He understood why she wanted to
go to him, and how she could be drawn. He had at times in his life
lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before.
In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out
his hand to Bulstrode.

"That's all right, sir. When a fellow travels thousands and thousands
of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he
runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he
thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy--just crazy!"

"I see"--Bulstrode sympathetically understood--"and I don't at all
wonder."

They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said:

"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey."

Dan Gregs grinned.

"Don't," he said, "don't look at it. It's what made all the trouble.
When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand
dollars--why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty
cents for it.' That made her mad at first. Then she told me you
thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet
on her. I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound
to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd
clear out."

His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as
with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman
whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty
golden hair.

When in a few seconds Bulstrode took leave of them, Miss Desprey, in
her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace
of the big Dan Gregs. From where he stood by the door Bulstrode could
see the white corner of his _fiancailles_ bo