ght up, ma'am, so's
I could catch the Wenatchee train this afternoon. Your name goes here
above mine."

She took the paper and started buoyantly to the secretary, but the little
man stopped her. "Read it over, read it over," he cautioned. "All square,
isn't it? And sign this duplicate, too. That's right. You're quite a
business woman."

He laughed his high, mirthless laugh, and, taking a check from the
bill-book, added some bright gold pieces which he stacked on the table
carefully beside the package he had brought. "There's your three
thousand," he said.

"It's out of a little bunch of dust I just turned in at the assay office."

"Thank you." She stood waiting while he folded his duplicate and put it
away, but he did not rise to go, and after a moment, she went back to her
chair by the scarlet azalea.

"They are doing really wonderful things in the Wenatchee Valley," she said
graciously, willing to make conversation in consideration of that little
pile of clean, new coin that had come so opportunely, "the apples are
marvelous. But"--and here her conscience spoke--"you understand this tract
is unreclaimed desert land; you must do everything."

"Yes, ma'am, I understand that; but what interests me most in that pocket
is that it belonged to David Weatherbee. He mapped out a project of his
own long before anybody dreamed of Hesperides Vale. He told me all about
it; showed me the plans. That piece of ground got to be the garden spot of
the whole earth to him; and I can't stand back and see it parcelled out to
strangers."

He paused. The color deepened a little in her face; she looked away
through the west window. "I thought an awful lot of Dave," he went on.
"I'd ought to. Likely you don't know it--he wasn't the kind to talk much
about himself--but I owe my life to him. _It_ had commenced"--he held up
the crippled hand and smiled grimly--"when Dave found me curled up under
the snow, but he stayed, in the teeth of a blizzard, to see me through.
And afterwards he lost time, weeks when hours counted, taking care of me,--
operated when it came to it, like a regular doctor, my, yes. And when I
got to crawling around again, I found he'd made me his partner."

"He had made a discovery," she asked, "while you were ill?"

"Yes, and you could bank on Dave it was a good one. He knew the gravel
every time. But we had to sell; it was the men who bought us out that
struck it rich. You see, Dave had heavy bills pressing him down