OLLY had the opportunity to warn her father in regard to his financial interests sooner than she expected. The very next morning, as she sat reading at a window in the sitting-room, she overheard the Colonel speaking to her mother about an offer he had just had for his mountain property.

“I believe it's a good chance for me to get rid of it,” he was saying, as he stood at the mantel-piece dipping his pipe into his blue tobacco-jar.

“I never did see any sense in paying taxes on land you have never seen,” said Mrs. Barclay, at her sewing-machine. “Surely you can put the money where it will bring in something.”

“Milburn wants it because there is about a hundred acres that could be cleared for cultivation. I'm of the opinion that it won't make as good soil as he thinks, but I'm not going to tell him that.”

“Would you be getting as much as it cost you?” asked Mrs. Barclay, smoothing down a white hem with her thumb-nail.

“About five hundred more,” her husband chuckled. “People said when I bought it that I was as big a fool as old Bishop, but you see I've already struck a purchaser at a profit.”

Then Dolly spoke up from behind her newspaper: “I wouldn't sell it, papa,” she said, coloring under the task before her.

“Oh, you wouldn't?” sniffed her father. “And why?”

“Because it's going to be worth a good deal more money,” she affirmed, coloring deeper and yet looking her parent fairly in the eyes.

Mrs. Barclay broke into a rippling titter as she bent over her work. “Alan Bishop put that in her head,” she said. “They think, the Bishops do, that they've got a gold-mine over there.”

“You must not sell it, papa,” Dolly went on, ignoring her mother's thrust. “I can't tell you why I don't want you to, but you must not—you 'll be sorry if you do.”

“I don't know how I'm to keep on paying your bills for flimflam frippery if I don't sell something,” retorted the old man, almost and yet not quite angry. Indirectly he was pleased at her valuation of his property, for he had discovered that her judgment was good.

“And she won't let Frank Hillhouse help,” put in Mrs. Barclay, teasingly. “Poor fellow! I'm afraid he 'll never get over it. He's taken to running around with school-girls—that's always a bad sign.”

“A girl ought to be made to listen to reason,” fumed Barclay, goaded on to this attack by his wife, who well knew his sore spots, and liked to rasp them.

“A girl will listen to the right sort of reason,” retorted Dolly, who was valiantly struggling against an outburst. “Mamma knows how I feel.”

“I know that you are bent on marrying a man without a dollar to his name,” said her father. “You want to get into that visionary gang that will spend all I leave you in their wild-cat investments, but I tell you I will cut you out of my property if you do. Now, remember that. I mean it.”

Dolly crushed the newspaper in her lap and rose. “There is no good in quarrelling over this again,” she said, coldly. “Some day you will understand the injustice you are doing Alan Bishop. I could make you see it now, but I have no right to explain.” And with that she left the room.

Half an hour later, from the window of her room up-stairs, she saw old Bobby Milburn open the front gate. Under his slouch hat and big gray shawl he thumped up the gravelled walk and began to scrape his feet on the steps. There was a door-bell, with a handle like that of a coffee-mill, to be turned round, but old Bobby, like many of his kind, either did not know of its existence, or, knowing, dreaded the use of innovations that sometimes made even stoics like himself feel ridiculous. His method of announcing himself was by far more sensible, as it did not even require the removal of his hands from his pockets; and, at the same time, helped divest his boots of mud. He stamped on the floor of the veranda loudly and paused to listen for the approach of some one to admit him. Then, as no one appeared, he clattered along the veranda to the window of the sitting-room and peered in. Colonel Barclay saw him and opened the door, inviting the old fellow into the sitting-room. Old Bobby laid his hat on the floor beside his chair as he sat down, but he did not unpin his shawl.

“Well, I've come round to know what's yore lowest notch, Colonel,” he said, gruffly, as he brushed his long, stringy hair back from his ears and side whiskers. “You see, it's jest this way. I kin git a patch o' land from Lank Buford that will do me, in a pinch, but I like yore'n a leetle grain better, beca'se it's nigher my line by a quarter or so; but, as I say, I kin make out with Buford's piece; an' ef we cayn't agree, I 'll have to ride over whar he is workin' in Springtown.”

At this juncture Dolly came into the room. She shook hands with the visitor, who remained seated and mumbled out some sort of gruff greeting, and went to her chair near the window, taking up her paper again. Her eyes, however, were on her father's face.

“I hardly know what to say,” answered Barclay, deliberately. “Your price the other day didn't strike me just right, and so I really haven't been thinking about it.”

There was concession enough, Dolly thought, in Milburn's eye, if not in his voice, when he spoke. “Well,” he said, carelessly, “bein' as me'n you are old friends, an' thar always was a sort o' neighborly feelin' betwixt us, I 'll agree, if we trade, to hire a lawyer an' a scribe to draw up the papers an' have 'em duly recorded. You know that's always done by the party sellin'.”

“Oh, that's a little thing,” said the Colonel; but his watchful daughter saw that the mere smallness of Milburn's raise in his offer had had a depressing effect on her father's rather doubtful valuation of the property in question. The truth was that Wilson had employed the shrewdest trader in all that part of the country, and one who worked all the more effectively for his plainness of dress and rough manner. “That's a little thing,” went on the Colonel, “but here's what I 'll do—”

“Father,” broke in Dolly, “don't make a proposition to Mr. Milburn. Please don't.”

Milburn turned to her, his big brows contracting in surprise, but he controlled himself. “Heigho!” he laughed, “so you've turned trader, too, Miss Dolly? Now, I jest wish my gals had that much enterprise; they git beat ef they buy a spool o' thread.”

The Colonel frowned and Mrs. Barclay turned to Dolly with a real tone of reproof. “Don't interfere in your father's business,” she said. “He can attend to it.”

The Colonel was not above making capital of the interruption, and he smiled down on the shaggy visitor.

“She's been deviling the life out of me not to part with that land. They say women have the intuition to look ahead better than men. I don't know but I ought to listen to her, but she ain't running me, and as I was about to say—”

“Wait just one minute, papa!” insisted Dolly, with a grim look of determination on her face. “Just let me speak to you a moment in the parlor, and then you can come back to Mr. Milburn.”

The face of the Colonel darkened under impatience, but he was afraid failure to grant his daughter's request would look like over-anxiety to close with Mil-burn, and so he followed her into the parlor across the hallway.

“Now, what on earth is the matter with you?” he demanded, sternly. “I have never seen you conduct yourself like this before.”

She faced him, touching his arms with her two hands.

“Father, don't be angry with me,” she said, “but when you know what I do, you will be glad I stopped you just now. Mr. Milburn is not buying that land for his own use.”

“He isn't?” exclaimed the Colonel.

“No; he's secretly employed by a concern worth over two million dollars—the Southern Land and Timber Company of Atlanta.”

“What?” the word came out as suddenly as if some one had struck him on the breast.

“No,” answered the girl, now pale and agitated. “To save Mr. Bishop from loss, Alan and Rayburn Miller have worked up a scheme to build a railroad from Darley to the Bishop property. All arrangements have been made. There can be no hitch in it unless the citizens refuse to grant a right of way. In a week from now a meeting is to be advertised. Of course, it is not a certainty, but you can see that the chance is good, and you ought not to sacrifice your land.”

“Good Heavens!” ejaculated Barclay, his eyes distended, “is this a fact?”

“I am telling you what I have really no right to reveal,” said Dolly, “but I promised Alan not to let you sell if I could help it.”

The Colonel was staggered by the revelation; his face was working under strong excitement. “I thought that old rascal”—he meant Milburn—“was powerfully anxious to trade. Huh! Looky' here, daughter, this news is almost too good to be true. Why, another railroad would make my town-lots bound up like fury, and as for this mountain-land—whew! It may be as you say. Ray Miller certainly is a wheel-horse.”

“It was not his idea,” said Dolly, loyally. “In fact, he tried his best to discourage Alan at first—till he saw what could be done. Since then he's been secretly working at it night and day.”

“Whew!” whistled the Colonel. “I don't care a cent whose idea it is; if it goes through it's a good one, and, now that I think of it, the necessary capital is all that is needed to make a big spec' over there.”

“So you won't sell to Mr. Milburn, then?” asked Dolly, humbly grateful for her father's change of mood.

“Sell to that old dough-faced scamp?” snorted Barclay. “Well, he 'll think I won't in a minute! Do you reckon I don't want to have some sort o' finger in the pie? Whether the road's built or not, I want my chance.”

“But remember I am giving away state secrets,” said Dolly. “He must not know that you have heard about the road.”

“I 'll not give that away,” the old man promised, with a smile, and he turned to the door as if eager to face Milburn. “Huh! That old scamp coming here to do me one! The idea!”

The two men, as they faced each other a moment later, presented an interesting study of human forces held well in check. The Colonel leaned on the mantel-piece and looked down at the toe of his boot, with which he pushed a chunk of wood beneath the logs.

“You never can tell about a woman' s whims, Mil-burn,” he said. “Dolly's set her heart on holding onto that land, and I reckon I'm too easily wriggled about by my women folks. I reckon we'd better call it off.”

“Oh, all right—all right!” said Milburn, with a start and a sharp contraction of his brows. “I'm that away some myse'f. My gals git me into devilish scrapes sometimes, an' I'm always sayin' they got to stop it. A man loses too much by lettin' 'em dabble in his business. But I was jest goin' to say that I mought raise my bid fifty cents on the acre ruther than trapse away over to Springtown to see Buford.”

There was silence through which several kinds of thoughts percolated. The raise really amounted to so much that it materially increased Barclay's growing conviction that the railroad was next to a certainty. “Huh!” he grunted, his eyes ablaze with the amusement of a winner. “I wouldn't listen to less than a dollar more on the acre.” And as the gaze of Milburn went down reflectively the Colonel winked slyly, even triumphantly, at his smiling daughter and said: “Dolly thinks it will make good land for a peach-orchard. Lots of money is being made that way.”

“Bosh!” grunted Milburn. “It don't lie right fer peaches. You kin git jest as much property nigh the railroad as you want fer peaches. You are a hard man to trade with, but I reckon I 'll have to take yore offer of—”

“Hold on, hold on!” laughed the Colonel, his hand upraised. “I didn't say I'd take that price. I just said I wouldn't listen to less than a dollar raise. I've listened to many a thing I didn't jump at, like a frog in muddy water, not knowing what he's going to butt against.”

Under his big shawl Milburn rose like a tent blown upward by wind. He was getting angry as he saw his commission money taking wing and flitting out of sight. He had evidently counted on making an easy victim of Barclay. For a moment he stood twisting his heavy, home-knit gloves in his horny hands.

“Now if it's a fair question,” he said, as the last resort of a man ready and willing to trade at any reasonable cost, “what will you take, cash down, on your honor between us—me to accept or decline?”

The Colonel's pleasure was of the bubbling, overflowing kind. Every move made by Milburn was adding fuel to his hopes of the proposed railroad, and to his determination to be nobody's victim.

“Look here,” he said, “that land has been rising at such a rate since you came in that I'm actually afraid to let it go. By dinner-time it may make me rich. Dolly, I believe, on my word, Milburn has discovered gold over there. Haven't you, Milburn? Now, honor bright.”

“It will be a long time before you find gold or anything else on that land,” Milburn retorted, as he reached for his hat and heavily strode from the room.

“Well! I do declare,” and Mrs. Barclay turned to Dolly and her father. “What on earth does this mean?” The Colonel laughed out, then slapped his hand over his mouth, as he peered from the window to see if Milburn was out of hearing. “It's just this way—”

“Mind, father!” cautioned Dolly. “Do you want it to be all over town by dinner-time?”

“Dolly!” cried Mrs. Barclay, “the idea of such a thing!”

Dolly smiled and patted her mother on the cheek.

“Don't tell her, papa,” she said, with decision.

“The truth is,” said the Colonel, “Dolly really wants to plant peaches. I don't think there's much in it, but she will have her way.”

“Well, I call that mean of you,” retorted Mrs. Barclay, dark with vexation. “Well, miss, I 'll bet you didn't tell your father who you went sleigh-riding with.”

The old man frowned suddenly. “Not with Alan Bishop,” he said, “after my positive orders?”

“He came to tell me about the—the”—Dolly glanced at her mother suddenly—“about the peaches, papa.”

“Well”—the Colonel was waxing angry—“I won't have it—that's all. I won't have you—”

“Wait, papa,” entreated the girl, sweetly, “wait till we see about the—peaches!” And, with a little teasing laugh, she left the room.