The sleek Bennett soon made him acquainted with the facts as he knew them himself. “The fellow’s from the city, somewhere away off, good-looking and dandyfied, an artist, he claims to be. He’s boarding down to Widow Gray’s, and showed himself first at a picnic, where he came with her and got introduced to the whole country-side. I’m not saying he isn’t as pleasant a young chap as I ever met, but I don’t like it, seeing him in and out at Wheatlands all the time without knowing for sure who he’s after, Hermann,” he concluded, uneasily. “I’ll look into the matter this very day and find out what’s in the wind,” was the reassuring reply. Bennett’s little ferret eyes looked sharply at him, and he muttered: “I won’t have any fooling over this here bargain. The mortgage falls due pretty soon now, and if you fail to keep your word, I’ll foreclose at once, I swear.” “I’ll keep it to the letter: don’t you be uneasy,” soothed Wizard Hermann, adding: “Have you done anything to help along your own cause, eh?” “I’ve called several times and fetched the geerls presents of fruit and candy, and took ’em riding in my fine new turnout, but that dad-blame dandy was always along, and I couldn’t hardly get in a word edgeways to the geerl, and Miss Tuttle, she done all the talking to me, so’s I hadn’t any show at all with Leola,” Bennett muttered, morosely. “Let’s see; suppose you write a letter and propose formally for her hand. Tell her how rich you are, and that you’ll give her anything her heart craves. If she refuses, then I shall have to use my influence,” Wizard Hermann said, consolingly, wishing he were well out of all this bother and back in his laboratory at work with his beloved chemicals. His house and lands were all mortgaged to his rich neighbor, and he had not a dollar to pay him to prevent foreclosure. It seemed like a providence when the rich widower cast his covetous eyes on lovely Leola, and offered, if Hermann could get her to marry him, to release the debt. It was fifteen thousand dollars, but Wheatlands, with its wide-spreading acres, was worth twice as much, and it was terrible to thus sacrifice the home of his forefathers; so Hermann, who had burned up all that money in his foolish and mysterious experiments, decided that Leola must be sacrificed to pay the debt, since there was no other way. But how to obtain her consent he did not know, and, since the morning when she had so angrily repulsed him, the subject had tacitly dropped between them, Hermann realizing that his end could only be gained by force and cunning. Bennett’s story about a possible rival put a new element of trouble into the affair, so he set himself to investigate matters by calling the governess to account. When he summoned her to the library she thought he only wanted to go over some housekeeping accounts with her, or possibly to pay some arrears of her salary long overdue.