sighed.

"Oh, dear, it is so lonely since poor Tom Barnett died."

Uncle Jim puffed on--he had some faint knowledge of the poor deceased
Tom.

"Do you know, Uncle Jim, I made a discovery to-day. The man who kept
my poor husband from making a fortune was that person."

"What person?" growled the old chap looking straight ahead.

"That Rogeen person you are trusting your money to."

Jim Crill bit his pipe stem to hide a dry grin. He had often heard the
story of the bursted mine sale. He had some suspicions, knowing
Barnett, of what the mine really was.

"And, Uncle Jim, of course you won't keep him. Besides, he insulted me
this morning."

"How?" It was another grunt.

Evelyn went into the painful details of her humiliation at the bank.
"When she got through Uncle Jim turned sharply in his chair.

"Did you do that?"

"Do what?" gasped Evelyn.

"Try to interfere with his loans?"

"Why, why, yes." She was aghast at the tone, ready to shed protective
tears. "Didn't you tell me--wasn't I to have charge of the little
things?"

"Oh, hell!" Uncle Jim burst out. "Little things, yes--about the house
I meant. Not my business. Dry up that sobbing now--and don't monkey
any more with my business."

Uncle Jim got up and stalked off downtown.

CHAPTER XVII

Early one morning in March Bob picked Noah Ezekiel Foster up at a lunch
counter where the hill billy was just finishing his fourth waffle.

"Want you to go out and look at two or three leases with me," said
Rogeen as they got into the small car.

Bob had not lost his job with Crill over the Chandler loan. He was
still lending the old gentleman's money and doing it without Mrs.
Barnett's approval. But the widow had, he felt sure, done the moist,
self-sacrificing, nagging stunt so persistently that her uncle had
compromised by advancing much more money to Reedy Jenkins than safety
justified. Crill had never mentioned the matter, but Bob knew Jenkins
had got money from somewhere, and there certainly was no one else in
the valley that would have lent it to him. For Reedy had managed to
pick his cotton and gin it at the new gin on the Mexican side, where
the bales were still stacked in the yards.

"Why do you suppose," asked Bob as they drove south past the Mexican
gin, "Jenkins has left his cotton over on this side all winter?" Bob
had formulated his own suspicions but wanted to learn what Noah Ezekiel
thought, for Noah picked up a lot of sh