"The price of corn," she said with perfect control, "will go way up after this dry weather, but the price of beef doesn't always rise in proportion. Besides that, this is a bad year to get tied up in the money market." "We're going to have to do it all the same," John replied, spurred on by the mention of Luther's name to compel her consent. "But, we can't do it. Hugh especially directed in his letter that we must not go into debt." "I have not had the honour of seeing Hugh's letter to you, and therefore I do not know," John returned. That was another sore point. "So you didn't! Doctor Morgan read it to all the rest." Elizabeth had forgotten that John had not heard the letter read, and rose promptly and went for it. She laid it on the table at his elbow when she returned saying: "I had forgotten--you didn't hear it when the doctor read it that day." John Hunter brushed it aside with his arm. "I don't wish to see it, thank you." The letter fell on the floor. Elizabeth stooped quickly and picked it up. "You may do as you wish about that; I shall not consent to the mortgage just the same," she said, her temper getting the better of her at last. She turned to the bedroom to put the letter away. "Now look here, Elizabeth!" John called after her. Seeing the ineffectiveness of carrying on the conversation when they were not face to face, John waited till she returned. When she was seated again and had begun to rock the restless child once more, he began: "We may as well understand each other right now as any time. If you're going to run this place, I want to know it, and I'll step down and out." John looked belligerent and waited for her to do her womanly duty and give in. Elizabeth made no reply. John waited. He continued to wait for some seconds. "I shall not consent to a mortgage," was the quiet answer. John Hunter flung himself out of the house. It was a bad afternoon for John. The drizzle had hardly been enough to lay the dust, but had made it impossible to walk through the grass or over the fields; his pride made it impossible for him to go back to the house, and so there was no place open to him except the hayloft, where he turned his own gloomy thoughts over and reasoned out this new development. A day's pouting, he was certain, would win his point; it would probably be all right when he went back at supper time, but he saw difficulties ahead with Elizabeth feeling that she had a right to an opinion regarding the property. "I shall let her see that I mean business all the same. I'm not going to have her interfering in my work. Let her attend to her own, as a woman ought to do," he concluded.