Youth is undaunted, full of hope, full of confidence. Ever since she could remember, Mahala had been in close contact with Junior much of the time. She was thoroughly familiar with the domineering traits of his disposition, his selfishness, his evasions, his cruelty, so like his father’s, to those in social or financial position that he deemed beneath him. In a few minutes alone, before his arrival that evening, she had tried to face the situation fairly; and in those minutes she had realized that all during the past year there had been a feeling of unrest and disquiet, and a vague wondering if trouble might not be coming her way. She found that she had been fortifying herself against it; that she had been planning for it; that she had been wondering what she would do if it came. Now that it was here, there was only one thing that she could do. If her father was in Martin Moreland’s debt to the extent of the store, of the valuable lands in which he had speculated, of their home even, then those things must be turned over to Martin Moreland even as the homes and the lands and the businesses of other men had been turned over to him. She realized now, as she never had before, that instead of being a tower of strength, her father had been a tower of weakness. In order to give her and her mother all the comfort and the joy to be gotten from life, he had brought this upon them. He had not had the strength of will to refuse them anything. He had wanted them to think that he was such a wonderful business man, so very successful, that he could pamper them and give them pleasure to any extent. At his elbow for years there had stood the man who had understood his disposition and preyed upon his weakness, and who would now reap a rich harvest.