ays land has gone down in value, and that
he needs the money he's put in, and that I must buy him out, or him me,
he don't care which, but a transfer has to be made. He says if I hain't
got the money, and refuse his liberal cash offer, the property will have
to be put up at public outcry and settled that way."

"Look here, Dixie, little friend," Henley said, his tense face furrowed
with sympathy, "you've been in powerful bad hands. Your Uncle Tom never
gave the matter a minute's consideration--all he was after was getting
away to his new home, and that young lawyer that advised you didn't have
the sense of a gnat, or was in old Welborne's pay. The paper is a legal
one, I know, for that old hog has never done a thing he could be handled
for. You've committed yourself into the hands of the slyest, most
unprincipled old thief that ever blinked under the eye of justice. He is
telling you the truth. He can sell you out, according to law, whenever
either he or you are dissatisfied with the contract. He knows you've
improved that place till it is worth double what you paid for it, and
he thinks you are in such a tight place that you'll give up in despair
and let him have what you've made by such hard licks. I know that trick,
and it is the lowest and meanest one among traders. He's got you in a
worse fix than you may imagine."

"But how can the farm be worth as much as you say it is when he says he
is willing to take eight hundred for _his_ half, which cost originally a
thousand?" Dixie wanted to know.

"That's the old 'give-or-take' dodge," Henley explained. "He's kept his
eye on you, and he's satisfied that you can't possibly raise eight
hundred dollars, and that you will take his eight and be glad to get it.
I could help you out of this in a minute--clean out, for I've got the
idle money and it would tickle me to death to advance it to you, but he
wouldn't sell. He's telling you he'll give or take, but he wouldn't
_take_; that ain't his dirty game."

"So he really can sell me out at auction?" Dixie groaned.

"Yes, but that would be his last resort," Henley said. "He thinks he's
got you under his thumb, and that he'll scare you into accepting his
cash. Wait, keep your seat; let me study over it; there must be some
way. The Lord Almighty wouldn't let a grasping old skunk like that rob a
helpless girl like you. Welborne didn't make you the give-or-take offer
in writing--I'm sure he didn't; he's too slick for that?"

"No,