He had taken Leigh's hand in good-by and held it as he put the question. "I'll be so glad to have your help, for we will see things alike, not as the older people see for us. It is only at our age that we dare take risks. Your father and Uncle Jim wouldn't come to Kansas now if it were now like it was when they were twenty-one." Thaine did not release her hand. "I'm glad there is only one Leigh," he said softly. The light of his eyes and the sympathetic tone seemed all unlike the heir of the Sunflower Ranch, yet very much like the spirit of the father who had wrested it from the wilderness, and the mother who had courageously shared his every need. "I don't know tonight where my wilderness lies. But I hope, little girl, I hope I'll fight as good a battle on my frontier as my father has done--as you are doing. Good-night." He hurried away and, falling into the gay company at Bennington's, was welcomed by Jo as a penitent, and abundantly forgiven. While down at Cloverdale, Leigh Shirley sat long alone, looking with unseeing eyes at the twilight into which he had vanished. CHAPTER XVI THE HUMANENESS OF CHAMPERS What is the use of trying to make things worse? Let's find things to do, and forget things. --_The Light That Failed._ On the third day after Darley Champers had closed with Leigh Shirley, Horace Carey walked into his office. "Hello, Champers, how's business?" he asked, with the cheerful way that drew even his enemies to him. "Danged bad!" Champers replied. "Rotten world is full of danged fools who want money and ain't satisfied when you get it for 'em." "Have you made such a sale lately?" Carey inquired. "Yes; day before yesterday," Champers replied. "Was it the old Jim Shirley quarter, the Cloverdale Ranch?" the doctor asked. "The very place, and I'm in a devil of a fix, too," Darley Champers declared. "The trouble is I'm dead sure I'll not get the other fourteen hundred." Thomas Smith had been paid the two hundred dollars and had fully released the land to Champers to finish the sale. Unfortunately for Champers, Smith still hung about Wykerton, annoying his agent so much that in a fit of anger, Champers revealed the fact that Leigh Shirley was the buyer of the Cloverdale Ranch. Smith's rage was the greater because he did not believe the price money could be paid by a girl without resources, and against this girl he was not now ready to move. The burden of the whole matter now was that Darley Champers had taken his life in his own hands by the deal. The bulldog in Champers was roused now, and, while he was a good many things evil, he was not a coward. But for his anger this morning, he would hardly have been so free in answering Doctor Carey's query. Carey was a living rebuke to him, and no man loves that force anywhere. "I tell you, I'm in a devil of a fix," he repeated.