While they were thus arguing, however, quarreling over even so small a sum as $100, as they thought, a new complication was added by Dode learning, as he soon did, that this was all mineral land, that farms were being sold in Adair—the next township—and even here; that it was rumored that Queeder had already sold his land for $5,000, and that if he had he had been beaten, for the land was worth much more—$200 an acre even, or $14,000. At once he suspected his father and mother of some treachery in connection with the sale—that there had been no option given, but a genuine sale made, and that Queeder or his mother, or both, were concealing a vast sum from himself and Jane. An atmosphere of intense suspicion and evil will was at once introduced. “They’ve sold the furm fer $5,000 ’stid uv $2,000; that’s whut they’ve gone an’ done,” insisted Dode one day to Jane in the presence of his father and mother. “Ev’rybody aroun’ hyur knows now what this hyur land’s wuth, an’ that’s whut they got, yuh kin bet.” “Yuh lie!” shrieked Queeder shrilly, who was at once struck by the fact that if what Dode said was true he had walked into a financial as well as a moral trap from which he could not well extricate himself. “I hain’t sold nuthin’,” he went on angrily. “Lester Botts wuz hyur an’ seed whut we done. He signed onto it.” “Ef the land’s wuth more’n $2,000, that feller ’twuz hyur didn’ agree tuh pay no more’n that fer it in hyur,” put in Mrs. Queeder explanatorily, although, so little did she trust her husband, she was now beginning to wonder if there might not have been some secret agreement between him and this stranger. “Ef he had any different talk with yer Paw,” and here she eyed old Queeder suspiciously, beginning to recall the prospector’s smooth airs and ways, “he didn’ say nuthin’ ’bout it tuh me. I do rec’leck yer Paw’n him talkin’ over by the fence yander near an hour afore they come in hyur. I wondered then whut it wuz about.” She was beginning to worry as to how she was to get more seeing that the price agreed upon was now, apparently, inconsequential. And as for Dode, he now eyed his father cynically and suspiciously. “I cal’late he got somepin more fer it than he’s tellin’ us about,” he insisted. “They ain’t sellin’ land down to Arno right now fer no $200 an acre an’ him not knowin’ it—an’ land not ez good ez this, nuther. Ye’re hidin’ the money whut yuh got fer it, that’s whut!” Mrs. Queeder, while greatly disturbed as to the possibility of duplicity on her husband’s part in connection with all this, still considered it policy to call Heaven to witness that in her case at least no duplicity was involved. If more had been offered or paid she knew nothing of it. For his part Queeder boiled with fear, rage, general opposition to all of them and their share in this.