As the work progressed, after the ladies had left them, Travis Gully was surprised at the knowledge of such work as Norton evidenced, and he realized that he had done wisely in taking him into his confidence and gaining his assistance. He listened without interruption to Jack Norton's plans as he outlined them, and to the results of his calculations as to the expense incurred and profits derived from the transaction as they were read with such an apparent familiarity with figures that he did not question their correctness. There was one question uppermost in Gully's mind that would persist in its recurrence, and that was: "Who was this Jack Norton, this waif of the sandy desert, who with the last few hours, with apparently no other incentive than a desire to help one who had befriended him, had developed into a thorough business man, with unlimited capacity for facts and figures?" While Travis Gully was asking himself these questions his wife, in the adjoining room, was busily racking her mind with the one thought: "Was Ida interested in Jack, and if so, to what extent, and had he noticed it?" She would know at the first opportunity. She would ask her, but she must be careful, and she smiled; Ida was such a child. Jack Norton, oblivious to the thoughts that were filling the minds of his friends, worked on at the formulation of his plans. It had been months, it seemed like years to him, since he had been given an opportunity to work at something worth while. It was true that the amount in dollars and cents involved in this entire transaction would be at best but a few hundred, but it was business, and recalled to his mind other days when he had worked out larger plans; yes, very much larger, where thousands of dollars were involved. He laughed whimsically to himself after he had handed the final product of his hours of work to Travis Gully to read. It was a recapitulation of the whole transaction, condensed and simplified in a manner that he was sure would bring it within his understanding, and as Gully read, his brow contracted with many wrinkles as his brain groped for an interpretation of the mass of figures, Jack Norton compared these existing conditions with other scenes in his past, when he had entered noiselessly through swinging glass doors and over dustless carpets into the presence of the older Norton, his "Governor," and submitted for his inspection a sheet of about the same dimensions containing, not a written agreement whereby one or more men do "agree to remove the sagebrush from, plow and make ready for planting certain lands beginning at, etc.," but a neatly prepared statement of his college expenses, supplemented with a request for an additional allowance for golf, yachting, etc.