week?"

"True enough," answered William Jeffers. "Joe Moore is going to
foreclose. Stephen Strong has got three years behind with the interest
and Moore is out of patience. It seems hard on old Stephen, but Moore
ain't the man to hesitate for that. He'll have his own out of it."

"What will the Strongs do?" asked Gabe.

"That's the question everyone in Greenvale is asking. Lizzie Strong
has always been a delicate little girl, but maybe she'll manage to
scare up a living. Old Stephen is to be the most pitied. I don't see
anything for him but the poorhouse."

"How did Stephen Strong come to get into such a tight place?" the
stranger asked suddenly. "When I was in these parts a good many years
ago he was considered a well-to-do man."

"Well, so he was," replied William Jeffers. "But he began to get in
debt when his wife took sick. He spent no end of money on doctors and
medicines for her. And then he seemed to have a streak of bad luck
besides--crops failed and cows died and all that sort of thing. He's
been going behind ever since. He kind of lost heart when his wife
died. And now Moore is going to foreclose. It's my opinion poor old
Stephen won't live any time if he's turned out of his home."

"Do you know what the mortgage comes to?"

"Near three thousand, counting overdue interest."

"Well, I'm sorry for old Stephen," said Gabe, returning to his game.
"If anybody deserves a peaceful old age he does. He's helped more
people than you could count, and he was the best Christian in
Greenvale, or out of it."

"He was too good," said a Greenvale man crustily. "He just let himself
be imposed upon all his life. There's dozens of people owes him and
he's never asked for a cent from them. And he's always had some
shiftless critter or other hanging round and devouring his substance."

"D'ye mind that Ben Butler who used to be in Greenvale twenty years
ago?" asked a third man. "If ever there was an imp of Satan 'twas
him--old Ezra Butler's son from the valley. Old Stephen kept him for
three or four years and was as good to him as if he'd been his own
son."

"Most people out our way do mind Ben Butler," returned William Jeffers
grimly, "even if he ain't been heard tell of for twenty years. He
wasn't the kind you could forget in a hurry. Where'd he go? Out to the
Kootenay, wasn't it?"

"Somewhere there. He was a reg'lar young villain--up to every kind of
mischief. Old Stephen caught him stealing his oats one time and '