"What would you do with it? Buy corner lots in Niqoyastcàdjeburg?"

"No, indeed; I'd buy a farm in the Blue-grass—two of them, maybe."

"What an ambition for a girl! Have you ever been in the Blue-grass country?"

She got out of the hammock and came to lean, with her hands behind her, against the opposite porch post. "That was meant to humiliate me, and I sha'n't forget it. You know well enough that I have never been east of the Mississippi."

"I didn't know it. You never tell me anything about yourself."

Again the mood shutter clicked and her smile was the calm mask of discerning wisdom.

"Persons with well-developed egos don't care to listen to folk-stories," she rejoined, evading the tentative invitation openly. "But tell me, what would you do with your pot of rainbow gold—if you should find it?"

Brouillard rose and straightened himself with his arms over his head like an athlete testing his muscles for the record-breaking event.

"What would I do? A number of things. But first of all, I think, I'd buy the privilege of telling some woman that I love her."

This time her laugh was frankly disparaging. "As if you could!" she said, with a lip curl that set his blood afire—"as if any woman worth while would care two pins for your wretched pot of gold!"

"Oh, I didn't mean it quite that way," he hastened to explain. "I said: 'Buy the privilege.' If you knew the conditions you would understand me when I say that the money must come first."

She was silent for so long a time that he looked at his watch and thought of going. But at the deciding instant she held him with a low-spoken question.

"Does it date back to the handicap? You needn't tell me if you don't want to."

"It does. And there is no reason why I shouldn't tell you the simple fact. When my father died he left me a debt—a debt of honor; and it must be paid. Until it is paid—but I am sure you understand."

"Quite fully," she responded quickly, and now there was no trace of levity in the sweetly serious tone. "Is it much?—so much that you can't——"

He nodded and sat down again on the porch step. "Yes, it is big enough to go in a class by itself—in round numbers, a hundred thousand 

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