O N the afternoon of the following day Dixie came to the store. At the moment Cahews was busy with some customers on the side of the house devoted to dry-goods, and Henley was at his desk in the rear drawing a cheque to pay for some cotton he had bought from a farmer. Dixie walked straight toward him, but Henley did not see her till she was quite close, then he was struck by the unusual pallor and tense gravity of her face. He sprang up at once and proffered a chair.

"I want to talk to you," she said, her lips quivering, and she motioned toward the waiting farmer. "Finish with him; I'm in no hurry."

Henley complied, a startled concern for her rendering him all but incapable of resuming the business with the customer. He had to go out to the farmer's wagon to read the marks on the cotton-bale for record, and even as he made the notes in his book and directed the unloading of the wagon he was saying to himself: "She's in trouble—something has gone wrong. She never was knocked out like that before."

On his return he entered at the side-door, and as he was crossing the yard to reach it he caught sight of her when she thought she was unobserved. She was pressing her hands to her face, and her whole form seemed to have wilted. She heard his step and essayed to assume a light mood of greeting, but it was a poor pretence, at best. She smiled as she looked up, but it was a cold, bloodless effort.

"I may as well tell you, Alfred, that I'm in trouble," she began, tremulously, as he sat down near her. "You've always said I had a long head on me for a girl, but I reckon I can manage just so far, and not a bit farther. I can plant and sow and gather and reap, and even market small dribs of things, but I'm a fool in big business matters, and I've gone and got my foot in it. I'm up to my neck in the mire, and I'm sinking inch by inch."

"What's wrong, Dixie?" he said, consolingly. "You mustn't let yourself give up this way. It ain't like you."

"Well, it's about my farm," she said, and she paused to steady her voice, which seemed to fail her.

"I see," Henley said. "Old Welborne is charging you too high interest. You ought to shift the mortgage to somebody more human—somebody with at least a thimbleful of soul. That man is the hardest taskmaster on earth. He'd skin a flea for its hide and tallow."

"Mortgage? I'm afraid you wouldn't exactly call it a mortgage, Alfred. Listen; I've just got to tell you about it. You are my friend. I know you'll tell me the best thing to do, and I'll abide by your advice. When I bought the farm from Uncle Tom, who, you remember, wanted to sell out to move to Alabama when the trade was made, I only had a thousand dollars ready money, and the price was two thousand. Uncle Tom was anxious to close out and get away, and so he looked about for somebody that would lend me the balance. Times was awfully hard then, and nobody had any money on hand but Welborne, and he said he'd let me have it at a reasonable rate of interest. Somehow Welborne never would get ready to make out the papers and turn over the money, and Uncle Tom was nearly out of his head with worry over the delay."

"One of the old dog's tricks!" Henley said, angrily. "I know him through and through. But go on; go on."

"Well, it was the last day before Uncle Tom was to go that Welborne finally said he was ready and had us come to his office. I haven't got head enough to tell you all he said, for it was so mixed up. He went on at a frightful rate about how hard it had been for him to call in money enough to accommodate us, and finally made a proposition. He said in order to make himself plumb secure the farm must be bought in his name and mine as partners, with the understanding that whenever I got the money I could buy him out. Somehow I felt uneasy then, but Uncle Tom declared it was plumb fair. Sam Deacon, the young man who was studying law here then, was in the office, and he told me it was all right and perfectly safe, and so under all that pressure I consented. I have never told a soul about it. Somehow the longer it went on the more foolish it seemed for a girl like me to be in partnership with that old money-shark, and I was ashamed."

"Well, even then," said Henley, still perplexed, "your interest must be safe. I reckon you've had your scare for nothing."

"I haven't told you all yet," Dixie sighed. "The big rent I've had to pay him on his half has kept my nose to the grindstone, so that I'm even deeper in debt to him now than I was at the start."

"Rent?" exclaimed the storekeeper, staring blandly.

"Yes, nothing would suit Mr. Welborne but that his part was worth two hundred a year, and he refused right out to trade any other way."

A light broke on Henley. He whistled softly, and his brawny hand clutched his knee like a vise as he leaned forward.

"I see, I see," he panted, his eyes large in pitying surprise. "He was dodging the law against usury. He has it fixed so that he's making no violation of law, and yet he is getting at least two and a half times as much as he'd be entitled to. Instead of eighty dollars a year—eight per cent.—he's getting two hundred. You've already paid him for the value of his part over and over. My Lord, my Lord, and you—you who have had such a hard time! But have you never made any payment at all besides the rent?"

"It was all I could do to rake up the two hundred a year," Dixie answered, huskily. "Once, though, when cotton went high and I had made six bales, I offered him a hundred dollars to lessen my debt, but he wouldn't take it. He said it was too little to count, and that new papers would have to be drawed up to make a proper credit, and for me to keep it and spend it on some implements I needed. But I haven't told you the worst yet, Alfred. He now says 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, he drove by home yesterday and called me out to the gate. He says land has gone down on account of the new railroad passing on the other side of the mountain, and that we both made a big mistake in paying as much as we did."

"The old liar!" Henley cried. "The road's coming to Chester, and he knows it. He thinks Chester will grow, and your farm will be cut up into town building sites. He's determined to get your property by hook or crook. Some'n must be done, and that right off. Let me study a minute."

Henley went to the side-door and looked out. Dixie saw him step down into the junk-filled yard, and move aimlessly about from one spot to another, his hands locked behind him. His head was bowed, and his fine, strong face darkened by a steady frown. Jim Cahews came looking for him to ask some question, but he waved him away. Dixie heard him cry out impatiently: "Don't bother me!—let me alone! For the Lord's sake, go back, go back!"

Cahews returned to his customer, and Dixie remained seated, her eyes fixed on Henley. He seemed to have forgotten that she was near; he seemed scarcely to know where he was himself, for once he drew himself to a seat on a big dry-goods box and sat swinging his legs to and fro, his gaze on the cloud-flecked sky. Then the pendulum-like movement, the pounding of his heels would cease; with a hand clutching the box on either side of him he would lean forward, lock his feet together beneath him, and bite his lip. Suddenly he got down and came back to her, a certain light of decision in his eyes.

"I've tackled a heap of jobs," he said, as he sat down beside her, "and I've beat old Welborne more than once, but I generally steer clear of him. I've been trying to think up some way to thwart him, but it is powerful hard to devise any means to get at him. Now, if we just could manage to get him to make his give-or-take offer before a witness we'd have him good and tight, but he'd be too slick to do it. If he did make it, you see, you could plank down the money I'll lend you and settle the thing on the spot. Now listen, Dixie, there is only one possible way open, and that is to trick the old scamp into writing down his offer and signing it. I know something I'd like to try on if you'd forgive me for the—the false light I'd have to put you in for a few minutes."

"False light? Why, what do you mean, Alfred?"

"Why, it's like this, amongst business men"—Henley flushed to the eyes—"now and then two scamps (like me 'n him, for instance) kind o' join forces against a weaker person and work together in harness like. Now, if you just wouldn't think too hard of me, I could sort o' let on to old Welborne, you see, that you was up to your eyes in debt to me, and that—that the thing had been running on till I was—well, was plumb tired out, and ready to come down on you."

"Oh, I see." A faint smile broke over the girl's shrewd face. "Why, I wouldn't care what you did or said, Alfred," she cried. "He's trying to rob me, and I'd have a right to protect myself."

"Well, then, enough said." Henley fell into an attitude of relief. "You set here, and I'll run over and chat with him. I may fetch him here, and if I openly abuse you and dun you to your teeth, you must take it all in good spirit. You can hang your head and pretend to be sort o' shamed, if you like; it will help to carry the thing out. Any girl that could sell that old lion's cage for as much as you did—and in the way you did it—ought to know how to pull the wool over Welborne's eyes. You see, when the old devil is made to believe that I'm down on you and determined to have a settlement, he'll think you are in more desperate straits than ever. Wait!"

Henley went to the big iron safe in a corner of the room and counted out a roll of currency. He folded it tightly and gave it to her. "Stick that down in your pocket," he said, "and have it ready, and, remember, you are to let on all the way through that you are willing to sell out, but before you do so you want his proposition put down in black and white. He may think it is just some cranky woman's notion, and do it—he may, and he may not; our chances hang on that one thing. You are a dead goner if you don't get that paper."

"I understand fully," Dixie said, her lips drawn firmly. "The only thing I don't like is borrowing your money."

"Don't be silly," Henley snorted. "You are good for it, and I'd rather lend money to you than anybody else on earth. Don't let that bother you."

"Well, I won't, then," the girl said. "I know you want to help me, and I'm very thankful for such a friend."