He leaned forward and rested his head on his clasped hands, his eyes searching her face with smiling boldness. “There are not many men,” he went on, “who come back from the grave the way I did to find—everything so unchanged.” He sprang from his chair and paced the floor excitedly. “If I’d only come yesterday!” he cried. “I had saved enough—I could have prevented that absurd fiasco.” He stopped in front of her. “Why didn’t you answer my letter, Barbara?” “I couldn’t read it,” she murmured, a sudden vivid color fluttering in her cheeks. “Jimmy lost it on the way home from the office, and it lay out in the rain a week. I knew, though, that you were not—dead.” “And that I had not forgotten you,” he urged. “You must have wondered, though, why I had not written before. But I couldn’t. I swore when I went away that I would get money—somehow. That I would get enough to save you out of the slavery you were in then. I meant to hire a caretaker for your father, a nurse for the boy. But I had the devil’s own luck. Three times I won, only to lose. Then I made a little pile—not enough; but still I thought—I hoped—— Do you want me to tell you what I hoped, Barbara?” “No,” she said faintly. “I—can’t listen.” “Why?” he urged. “Do you—love someone else?” She looked at him imploringly. “You were here, and you know——” “Yes,” he said sharply. “I know what happened. You must have been out of your mind with anxiety, Barbara, to have thought of such a thing. Why did you do it?” “I wanted to save the farm—for Jimmy.” He shrugged his shoulders, with a muttered exclamation. “You got the money?” “Yes.” “And so you’re sold into slavery for five years?” She made no reply. “Now, see here, Barbara. I won’t stand for anything of the sort. It’s an outrage. I haven’t enough—quite—to pay the other fellow out; but I’ll arrange it with him—or her. Is it a man or a woman slave-holder, Barbara?” She hesitated. “I—don’t know,” she said, “not yet.” “You don’t know?” he echoed. “Why, this is more preposterous than the other. Of course you’ll have to know.” “It is quite true,” she said quietly. “I only know that I must be ready to leave home at a minute’s notice.” He bent over her with sudden passion. “Marry me, Barbara,” he begged in a low, shaken voice. “If you only will, I’ll manage it somehow.” “I—can’t,” she murmured. “I am in honor bound. Don’t you see? I’ve accepted the money, and paid a part of it for debts.” He threw himself down in his chair and pulled it toward hers impatiently. “Let me think,” he said quickly. “You’ve paid off your mortgage. How much was it?” She told him, and he set down the figures rapidly. “Who held your mortgage?” he wanted to know. “Stephen Jarvis,” she said, with a singular reluctance at which she wondered, even while she perceived it. “Miserly old crab; I remember him,” said David Whitcomb. His face brightened suddenly.