knees
and agonize over it? Sometimes I wish I could be a boy long enough to do
just that thing, Ardea. But I can't. The mill won't grind with the water
that has passed."

"But the stream isn't dry," she asserted, taking up his figure. "What
will you do now? That is the question: the only one that is ever worth
asking."

He was frowning thoughtfully again, and the words came as an unconscious
voicing of vague under-depths.

"They took to the woods, the waste places, the deserts--those men of old
who didn't understand. Some of them went blind and crazy and died there;
and some of them had their eyes opened and came back to make the world a
little better for their having lived in it. I'm minded to try it."

She caught her breath in a little gasp which she was careful not to let
him see.

"You are going away?" she asked.

"Yes; out to the 'beyond' in northern Arizona. There is a new iron
field out there to be prospected, and Mr. Clarkson wants me to go and
report on it. And that brings us back to business. May I talk
business--cold money business--to you for a minute or two?"

"If you like," she permitted. "Only I think the other kind of talk is
more profitable."

"Wait till you hear what I have to say in dollars and cents. That ought
to interest you."

"Why should it--particularly?"

"Because you are going to marry a poor man, and--"

She turned away from him quickly and stood facing the window. But he
went on with what he had to say.

"That's all right; I can say it to your back, just as well. You know, I
suppose, that your--that the Farleys have lost out completely?"

"Yes,"--to the window-pane.

"Well, a curious thing has come to pass--quite a miraculous thing, in
fact. Chiawassee will pay the better part of its debts and--and redeem
its stock; or some of it, at least." He rose and stood beside her.
"Isn't it a thousand pities that Colonel Duxbury couldn't have held on
to his shares just a little longer?"

"Yes; he is an old man and a broken one, now." There was a sob in her
voice, or he thought there was. But it was only the great heart of
compassion that missed no object of pity.

"True; but the next best thing is to have the young woman who marries
into the family bring it back with her, don't you think? Here is a check
for what Mr. Farley's stock would have sold for before the troubles
began. It's made payable to you because--well, for obvious reasons; as I
have said, he lost out."

She turn