"It’s mortgaged to the hilt, Ann," he gulped, "and next Wednesday if I can’t pay down five hundred to Carson in Darley, it will go under the hammer. That will bust Nettie’s love business all to flinders. Old Lawson’s got Sam under his thumb, and he’ll call it off. Nettie knows all about it. She’s no fool for a girl of her age; she found out about the debt; she hardly sleeps a wink, but mopes about with red eyes all day long. I thought I had trouble away back when me ’n’ you—away back there, you know—but I was younger then, and this sorter seems to be _my_ fault." Ann fell to quivering with excitement as she reached for a chair and leaned upon it, her stout knee in the seat, her strong, bare arms resting on the back. "Right here I want to ask you one question, Joe Boyd, before we go a step further. Did Mary Waycroft make a proposal to Nettie—did Mary Waycroft hint to Nettie that maybe I’d be willing to help her along in some substantial way?" The farmer raised a pair of shifting eyes to the piercing orbs above him, and then looked down. "I believe she did something of the sort, Ann," he said, reluctantly, "but, you see—" "I see nothing but _this_," Ann threw into the gap left by his sheer inability to proceed—"I see nothing but the fact that my proposition scared her nearly to death. She was afraid it would get out that she was having something to do with me, and now, if I do rescue this land from public sale, I must keep in the background, not even let her know where the money is coming from." "I didn’t say _that_," Boyd said, heavily stricken by the combined force of her tone and words. "The—the whole thing’s for _you_ to decide on. I’ve tussled with it till I’m sick and tired. I wouldn’t have come over if I hadn’t thought it was my bounden duty to lay it before you. The situation has growed up unforeseen out of my trouble and yours. If you want the girl’s land to go under hammer and bust up her marriage, that’s all right. I won’t cry about it, for I’m at the end of my rope. You see, law or no law, she’s yore natural flesh and blood, jest as she is mine, an’ she wasn’t—the girl wasn’t responsible fer what you an’ me tuck a notion to do away back there. The report is out generally that everything you touch somehow turns to gold—that you are rolling in money. That’s the reason I thought it was my duty—by God, Ann Lincoln"—his eyes were flashing with something like the fire which had blazed in them when he had gone away in his health and prime—"I wouldn’t ask you for a red cent, for myself, not if I was dying for a mouthful of something to eat. I’m doing this because it seems right according to my poor lights. The child’s happiness is at stake; you can look at it as you want to and act as you see fit."