"It means, Mr. Harnett, that I've lost the old place I was raised on, and all for the lack of a little money. You know that I helped poor Tom set himself up in business by mortgaging the farm. If the poor boy had lived, he would have paid it all; but jest when we thought he was gettin' along so famously, he died. I've walked the streets of this town all day, hopin' I could find some one who would help me make up the balance I owe; but the fire yesterday makes everybody feel poor, I s'pose, an' I couldn't borrow a dollar; so I'm goin' home now to tell mother that we've got to leave the home where all our babies were born, and where they all died." The old man could not prevent the tears from gathering in his eyes as he spoke, and both the boys felt an uncomfortably hard lump rise in their throats as he finished. "Can't you persuade your creditor to give you longer time?" asked George. "I've just come from his office, where I begged harder of him than I ever begged of man before to take what money I had and wait a year longer; but he wants my back pasture to piece on to his own, and says he will foreclose to-morrow," replied the old man. And then, as if conscious that he was obtruding his own sorrows on one whom he had no right to burden with them, he would have changed the conversation; but George prevented him by asking: "How much did you owe him, Mr. Simpson?" "Well, you see, I'd kept the interest paid up reg'lar, an' it come to jest the face of the mortgage, five hundred dollars. I'd managed to scrape up two hundred an' twenty-five, an' up to this mornin' I'd reckoned on sellin' the wood lot for enough to make up the balance. But when the fire come yesterday, the man who was to buy it--'Siah Rich--had lost so much that he couldn't take it." "Was you to sell him the wood-lot for two hundred and seventy-five dollars?" "Yes, an' I think it was well worth that. I didn't really need it, an' if I could only have sold it I'd been all right, but now the whole thing's got to go. I don't care so much for myself, but it'll come powerful hard on the wife, for she does set a store by the old place, if it is rough-lookin'." George beckoned to Ralph to step aside with him, but there was no need of any consultation just then, for the latter said, quickly: "I know what you mean, George, and here is all I have got." As he spoke Ralph handed his friend the roll of bills which was to enable him to spend a long vacation, and then turned away, as if not wanting to embarrass the old gentleman by his presence. "Mr. Simpson," said George, as he added his own money to that which Ralph had given him, "between the two of us we have got enough to buy your wood-lot, and here is the money. Pay the mortgage this afternoon, and then you can make out a deed to these two names." George wrote his own and Ralph's name on a slip of paper, which he handed to the old man at the same time he gave him the money.