"I hear Leland of Prospect is ploughing the same as if wheat was going up," said another man. The third of the party shook his pipe out, and pursed up his face, which was not an attractive one, into an expression of pitying contempt. "Leland's a blame fool, and always was," he said. "I once worked for him. It's the way the market went with him made him what he is. That, and nothing else." "Why'd you quit Prospect, Jasper?" asked the remaining comrade, and the others grinned. A vindictive gleam crept into the man's eyes. "Well," he said, "I've no use for being bossed by that kind of man, and one day I up and told him what I thought of him. There was considerable trouble before I walked out. Anyway, between the market and the English girl he's married, he's fixed just now." "She's flinging his money away?" asked somebody. "With both hands, and too stuck on herself to be civil to him. They're made like that in the Old Country. Leland's no more to her than the hired man, one of the boys told me." "Well, why'd she marry him?" "For his money. That's a good enough reason, and it's quite likely there was another one. Girls like her have got to marry somebody over there, and the men with money are kind of particular. I guess it's not astonishing. If you got hold of an English paper, it's full of their goings-on." "That's all right," said one of the others in tight store-clothes. "Still, until they're married, they've got to be careful. Afterwards, it don't so much matter. Unless all's quite straight, buyers hold off, and the figure comes down." "It's quite easy guessing that's what was wrong with Mrs. Leland. What else would a girl with her looks make sure of him for? Charley Leland comes along with his money, and they plant her right on to him. It's even betting she goes off with another man if the market breaks him." He stopped abruptly as his neighbour drove an elbow into his ribs, and his mouth gaped open as he dropped his feet from the stove. Then the others moved uneasily in their chairs, for a man stood in the doorway regarding them with a singularly unpleasant smile. "Stand right up, Jasper, you--hog!" he said. Jasper sat still, glancing at the others, as though he felt that, while none of them appeared in any haste to do so, it was their duty to support him, until one evidently remembered that there were, after all, four of them. "He's sitting where he is, Charley Leland," he said. "Nobody asked you to hang round listening, and if you don't like our talk you can go outside again." Leland showed no sign of having heard him. "Get up," he said, "and tell them you're a liar." Jasper sat still. He was tolerably active and muscular, or he would never have worked at Prospect. But there was a dangerous look in Leland's eyes. His quiet incisiveness was portentous. Realising that his comrades expected something of him, Jasper managed to retort. "Oh, go home!" he said. "I guess you've plenty of trouble there without making any here."