“If you don’t want to sell, I suppose he might,” the prospector continued pleasantly. The idea was expressed softly, meditatively, indifferently almost. There was a silence, in which Queeder calmly leaned on his plough handles thinking. The possibility of losing this long-awaited opportunity was dreadful. But he was not floored yet, for all his hunger and greed. Arnold had said that the metal alone, these rocks, was worth two cents a pound, and he could not get it out of his mind that somehow the land itself, the space of soil aside from the metal, must be worth something. How could it be otherwise? Small crops of sorts grew on it. “I dunno,” he replied defiantly, if internally weakly. “Yuh might ast. I ain’t heerd o’ his wantin’ to sell.” He was determined to risk this last if he had to run after the stranger afterward and beg him to compromise, although he hoped not to have to do that, either. There were other prospectors. “I don’t know yet whether I want this,” continued the prospector heavily and with an air of profound indifference, “but I’d like to have an option on it, if you’d like to sell. What’ll you take for an option at sixty days on the entire seventy acres?” The worn farmer did not in the least understand what was meant by the word option, but he was determined not to admit it. “Whut’ll yuh give?” he asked finally, in great doubt as to what to say. “Well, how about $200 down and $5,000 more at the end of sixty days if we come to terms at the end of that time?” He was offering the very lowest figure that he imagined Queeder would take, if any, for he had heard of other sales in this vicinity this very day. Queeder, not knowing what an option was, knew not what to say. Five thousand was what he had originally supposed he might be offered, but sixty days! What did he mean by that? Why not at once if he wanted the place—cash—as Dunk Porter, according to Arnold, had received? He eyed the stranger feverishly, fidgeted with his plough handles, and finally observed almost aimlessly: “I ’low ez I could git seven thousan’ any day ef I wanted to wait. The feller hyur b’low me a ways got three thousan’, an’ he’s got thirty acres less’n I got. Thar’s been a feller aroun’ hyur offerin’ me six thousan’.” “Well, I might give you $6,000, providing I found the ground all right,” he said. “Cash down?” asked Queeder amazedly, kicking at a clod. “Within sixty days,” answered the prospector. “Oh!” said Queeder, gloomily. “I thort yuh wanted tuh buy t’day.” “Oh, no,” said the other. “I said an option. If we come to terms I’ll be back here with the money within sixty days or before, and we’ll close the thing up—six thousand in cash, minus the option money. Of course I don’t bind myself absolutely to buy—just get the privilege of buying at any time within sixty days, and if I don’t come back within that time the money I turn over to you to-day is yours, see, and you’re free to sell the land to some one else.”