Leigh looked steadily at her questioner. All her life she had had a way of keeping her own counsel, nor was it ever easy to know what her thoughts might be. "Miss Shirley, the late Miss Jane Aydelot trusted Doc Carey to look after her affairs. Doc Carey, he trusted me to take his place. Can you trust me to be the last link of the chain in doin' her business? My grammar's poor, but my hands is clean now, thank the Lord!" "Yes, Mr. Champers, I am sure of your uprightness." Leigh did not dream how grateful these words were to the man before her, honestly trying to beat back to better ideals of life. "When I was a very little girl," Leigh went on, "Miss Jane told me I was to be her heir." Darley gave a start, but as Leigh's face was calm, he could only wonder how much she had remembered. "All the years since I've lived in Kansas I've been kept in mind in many ways of her favor toward me. I came to know long ago that she was determined to leave me all the old Aydelot estate. And I knew also that it should have been Asher's, not mine." Darley thought of Thaine, and, dull as he was, he read in a flash a romance that many a finer mind might have missed. "Well, sufferin' catfish!" he said to himself. "Danged plucky girl; forges along an' bucks me into sellin' her this ranch an' sets it into alfalfy an' sets up Jim Shirley for life, 'cause putterin' in the garden an' bein' kind to the neighbors is the limit to that big man's endurance. An' this pretty girl, knowin' that Aydelot property ought to be Thaine Aydelot's, just turns it down, an', by golly, I'll bet she turns him down, too, fearin' he wouldn't feel like takin' it. An' he's clear hiked to the edges of Chiny. Well, it's a danged queer world. I'm glad I've only got Darley Champers to look out for. The day I see them two drivin' out of Wykerton towards Little Wolf, the time she'd closed the Cloverdale ranch deal, I knowed the white lilac mother used to love was sweeter in my back lot." "I could not take Miss Jane's property and be happy," Leigh went on. "Besides, I can earn a living. See what my brushes can do, and see the secret I learned in the Coburn book." Leigh held up the sketch she was finishing, then pointed to the broad alfalfa acres, refreshingly green in the May sunlight. "Well, I brought down a copy of the late Miss Aydelot's will that she left with Doc Carey, who is goin' to Chiny in a few days, him an' Thaine Aydelot, Doc writes me. An' you can look over it. I've got to go to Cloverdale next week an' settle things there, an' see that the probatin's are straight. Lemme hear from you before I go. I must be gettin' on. Danged fine country, this Grass River Valley. Who'd a' thought it back in the seventies when Jim Shirley an' Asher Aydelot squatted here? Goodday." Left alone, Leigh Shirley opened the big envelope holding the will of Francis Aydelot and read in it the stern decree that no child of Virginia Thaine should inherit the Aydelot estate in Ohio.