“Yes, indeed,” she readily assented. “He thinks he’s perfectly right; but of course he isn’t.” “Well, why isn’t he? After all, your mother trusted him to do just what we’re planning to get him not to do.” “But her will doesn’t _say_ he can’t help Dan. So why shouldn’t he?” “No,” Mr. Oliphant interrupted; “it doesn’t say he mustn’t; but that’s what she counted on. In our hearts we’re blaming him for not betraying a trust, and for being unwilling to put money into the fire;—he honestly believes it would be putting it into the fire. And he won’t do it, even though he knows his refusing makes him look mean in the eyes of pretty much everybody he cares about, even in the eyes of the person he seems to care most about. Well, there’s something rather fine in a stand like that, after all.” “Martha’d never forgive him!” Mrs. Oliphant said emphatically. “Never! If he doesn’t help Dan, now that he’s got so _much_, she’d always believe him terribly stingy. So you see we ought to persuade him for his own good, too—if we could only think of a way.” But they continued to find that elusive way beset by baffling afterthoughts; and when Dan came home from his excursion, successful and in high fettle, they spoke to him of the subject that had been engrossing them—and were straightway baffled again. Dan even declined the proffer of future assistance from his mother. “Not a penny!” he said. “She didn’t have any faith in me, and she despised the whole idea of Ornaby. She gave me thirty-five hundred dollars of my own—bless her for it! She gave me that to do with as I please, and it’s plenty. Why, to-morrow I’m goin’ to fix up the interest on what’s owed on the land, and then I’ve got to settle another little matter, and after that I——” “Wait, Dan,” his father interposed. “What other little matter is it you have to settle? I didn’t know anything had been worrying you except the probable foreclosure.” “It didn’t, sir. I didn’t worry about this at all. I knew I could fix _it_ all right, if I could just hold off the foreclosure. It seems I’ve never paid any of the taxes on the Addition—I’ve had so many other things on my mind, it seems I just kind of neglected that—and so somebody’s got a tax title to it; but now I can settle with him to-morrow morning and clear it off—and then I’m goin’ to turn up some sod out there! I’m goin’ to get ready to lay the foundation for my first factory!” “But the _money_, dear!” his mother cried. “How in the world do you expect even to lay the foundations unless we can get Harlan——”