"I tried to reason myself out of the action I finally took," Boyd went on, deliberately, "but there was nothing else to do. I was bothered nigh to death. The thing was running me stark crazy. I had to chop it off, and I’m frank to say, even at this late day, that I don’t see how I could have done otherwise. But I didn’t come here to fetch all this up. It was just the other matter, and the belief that it was my duty to give you a chance to act on it as you saw fit." "If her wedding depends on it, the farm must be saved," Ann said, quietly. "I give away money to others, why shouldn’t I to—to her? I’ll get a blank and write a check for the money." He lowered his head, staring at the flames. "That’s for you to decide," he muttered. "When the debt is paid the land shall be deeded to her. I’ll die rather than borrow on it again." Ann went to the clock on the mantel-piece and took down a pad of blank checks and a pen and bottle of ink. Placing them on the table, she sat down and began to write with a steady hand and a firm tilt of her head to one side. "Hold on!" Boyd said, turning his slow glance upon her. "Excuse me, but there’s one thing we haven’t thought of." Ann looked up from the paper questioningly. "What is that?" "Why, you see, I reckon I’d have to get that check cashed somewhere, Ann, and as it will have your name on it, why, you see, in a country where everybody knows everybody else’s business—" "I understand," Ann broke in—"they would know I had a hand in it." "Yes, they would know that, of course, if I made use of that particular check." Ann Boyd rested her massive jaw on her hand in such a way as to hide her face from his view. She was still and silent for a minute, then she rose, and, going to the fire, she bent to the flame of a pine-knot and destroyed the slip of paper. "I don’t _usually_ keep that much money about the house," she said, looking down on him, "but I happen to have some hidden away. Go out and get your horse ready and I’ll bring it to you at the fence." He obeyed, rising stiffly from his chair and reaching for his worn slouch hat. He was standing holding his bony horse by the rein when she came out a few minutes later and gave him a roll of bills wrapped in a piece of cloth. "Here it is," she said. "You came after it under a sense of duty, and I am sending it the same way. I may be made out of odd material, but I don’t care one single thing about the girl. If you had come and told me she was dead, I don’t think I’d have felt one bit different. It might have made me a little curious to know which of us was going next—you, me, or her—that’s all. Good-bye, Joe Boyd." "Good-bye, Ann," he grunted, as he mounted his horse. "I’ll see that this matter goes through right." XVIII