“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'.”