efused to pay the taxes, so I
bought in the property myself."

"Yes, but what does he _mean_?"

The Widow's voice rose to the old quarrelsome, nagging pitch, and Wiley
winced as if he had been stabbed.

"You'll have to ask _him_, Mrs. Huff, to find out for sure; but to
a man with one leg it looks like this. Whatever you can say about him,
Samuel J. is a business man, and I think he decided that, as a business
investment, the Paymaster wasn't worth eighty-three, forty-one.
Otherwise he would have bought it himself."

"Unless, of course," added the Widow scornfully, "there was some
understanding between you."

"Oh, yes, sure," returned Wiley, and went on with his eating with a
wearied, enduring sigh.

"Well, I declare," exclaimed the Widow, after thinking it over,
"sometimes I get so discouraged with the whole darned business you could
buy me out for a cent!"

She waited for a response, but Wiley showed no interest, so she went on
with her general complaint.

"First, it was the Colonel, with his gambling and drinking and inviting
the whole town to his house; and then your father, or whoever it was,
started all this stock market fuss; and from that time it's gone from
bad to worse until I haven't a dollar to my name. I was brought up to be
a lady--and so was Virginia--and now we're keeping a restaurant!"

Wiley pulled down his lip in masterful silence and set the breakfast
tray aside. It was nothing to him what the Widow Huff suffered--she had
brought it all on herself. And whenever she was ready to write to his
father she could receive her ten cents a share. That would keep her as a
lady for several years to come, if she had as many shares as she
claimed; but there was nothing to his mind so flat, stale and
unprofitable as a further discussion of the Paymaster. Indeed, with one
leg wound up in a bandage, it might easily prove disastrous. So he
looked away and, after a minute, the Widow again took up her plaint.

"Of course," she said, "I'm not a business woman, and I may have made
some mistakes; but it doesn't seem right that Virginia's future should
be ruined, just because of this foolish family quarrel. The Colonel is
dead now and doesn't have to be considered; so--well, after thinking it
over, and all the rest of it, I think I'll accept your offer."

"Which offer?" demanded Wiley, suddenly startled from his ennui, and the
Widow regarded him sternly.

"Why, your offer to buy my stock--that paper you drew