siness. Is there anything I can do for you over there?"

"There really is, Alfred." She parted the clinging briers and came quite
close to him in one of the fence corners which was infested with the
wild growth. She had drawn off her gloves, and now thrust a pink hand
into her pocket and got out a handkerchief, in a corner of which were
tied some coins. "I want you to step into the book-store and get me a
Second Reader--the sort they use in the public schools over there. It's
for little Joe. I'm learning him to read, and he's doing it as fast as a
dog can trot."

"I wish you'd let me pay for the book," Henley ventured, as she put the
money into his hand. "You know I've got twenty-five dollars of your
cash, anyway. That old cage wasn't worth anything."

"You mean I've got twenty-five dollars of _your_ money," she retorted.
"Why, I've been ashamed to look you in the face. I didn't act right
about it, and I hardly know why I done it. As a friend to you I ought to
have told you about the chance I saw and not set in to gain myself. I
don't feel right about it. I'd rather you'd have it--I can't feel like
it's mine. You'd made money out of all the other things, and you ought
to have made a clean sweep of the whole job."

"You are forgetting two main things," he said, gravely, his eyes
averted. "You forget that you paid me all I asked for the blame thing,
and that if it hadn't been for you I'd not have been at the sale of the
circus, anyway."

"You mean--" She flushed knowingly, and avoided his earnest gaze.

"That you stopped me that night, and kept me from doing the biggest fool
thing a sensible man ever was guilty of. I've thanked you in my heart,
Dixie, thousands and thousands of times. It would have ruined me for
life, but you looked ahead and saw it and saved me."

"Oh, well, that's past and gone," Dixie said, touched by a certain new
and deep quality in his voice. "I'll keep the money if you want me to. I
really need it. Old Welborne got hopping mad at me for ousting his
tenant, and simply rowed me up Salt River. Some day I may come to you
for legal advice. I want you to look over the document he got me to
sign. I want to know more about it than I do. There are too many
'aforesaids' and 'herebys' in it to suit me. I bought that farm with my
eyes shut. I was so anxious to own land that I was willing to take the
property on any terms. Welborne is getting to be like that old man in
the fairy-book that stuck to the fe