up to her neck."

Old Welborne ceased smoking; his dim, blue eyes twinkled. "I'll bet a
dollar to a ginger-cake I know who you mean," he said, eagerly.

"Well, maybe you do and maybe you don't," Henley said. "But I've had
enough of her foolishness and promising and never coming to time. I'm
not in business for my health. She's a neighbor of mine, and I always
admired her plucky fight, but charity begins at home. I'm not running
an orphan asylum, nor an old woman's home. Jim misunderstood me, anyway.
I told 'im her account was all right, and for him not to bear down too
hard on her, and I went to Texas and forgot all about it. But, holy
smoke! when I got home and looked at the books I was fairly staggered at
the figures. She's over there at the store now, and I had to talk to her
straight, and she won't get a bit deeper in my debt. I've got to call a
halt."

"I think I might set your mind at rest on what she owes you," Welborne
said, with an unctuous smile. "There is no use beating about the bush,
Henley, you know she's in debt to me, and you've come over to see if I
can help you out. Well, I can. I am in the shape to do it. Me 'n you
have clashed several times in our deals and had hard feelings, but there
is no use keeping up strife. We can work together now. Me and her own
that farm in partnership, and I've had enough of it. I've made a fair
give-or-take offer, and nothing is to prevent her from closing out and
paying you what she owes you. I've got eight hundred dollars in cash
ready to hand her at any minute."

"You don't say!" Henley's look of gratified surprise was perfect. "Well,
she's in a better fix than I thought. She ain't much of a hand to tell
her business, and I thought she had--well, about run through her pile."

"She can get the money if she will have common-sense," said Welborne;
"but women never know how to 'tend to business, and she may act stubborn
to the end and force me to put up the land for sale. It wouldn't fetch
much, and you and me'd both lose by it. The best thing to do is to make
her have sense, and if you will--if you will talk straight to her about
your debt, maybe she'll sell out and be done with it."

"Well, I can talk straight enough, if you'll leave it to me," Henley
said, with what looked like a frown of chronic resentment. "It makes me
mad to think she'll keep me out of my money while you are offering her
enough to square off."

"Well, go over to the store and see what you can