Mahala was sufficiently practical to know that, in a foreclosure, property would go for half of its real value. She tried to think if there was some one to whom her father could turn for a loan that would give them time to dispose of the store and of lands and even of the house, at something like a fair valuation. Resolutely she went down to the library. She peeped in and saw her father still lying in a stupor that she supposed was natural sleep. She tiptoed to the desk, and sitting down, she began going over the long columns of his account book. At the foot of every page of entries a wave of indignation and scorn swept her being. But all of her anger was not directed against Martin Moreland; all of her pity was not expended upon the man lying in collapse in that same room. She was a woman now, and her mother had been a woman ever since she had married Mahlon Spellman—a woman with a good brain and a keen mind. She should have made it her affair to know something of her husband’s business; she should have refused instead of placing her name upon mortgages and papers that imperilled their home and their living. Instead of laughing and dancing and studying her way through school, at least after she knew that her father was troubled, Mahala felt that she should have inquired into his affairs, herself. She should have tried to help him. She should not have spent the large sums that she had upon clothing and things she might have done without. Since recrimination did no good, since she could think of no one who might help them in their hour of extremity, she was forced back to the original proposition of trying to determine what there was that she could do herself. Once she had a fleeting thought of Edith Williams. She knew that her uncle held large sums in trust for her. For a moment she wondered if Edith could secure for her a sum that would stay matters until they could be fairly adjusted. She remembered that even in personal expenses Edith always had been extremely close; that she would only spend money where she had a definite object in view, and in thinking deeply, there came to her the realization that it was barely possible that what Edith Williams would rather see than any other one thing was Mahala’s downfall instead of her salvation. Dimly there crept into Mahala’s mind the confused thought that not only Edith but many others might be glad to see her broken and humiliated. That, she resolved, they should not see. If what she had considered theirs was truly Martin Moreland’s, he must have it. She had enjoyed her good time, now she would work.