By Right of Purchase

"They've got the bears this time – screwed up tight," he said. "Two of the big men gone under – couldn't get the wheat to cover, and it looks to me as if there is a bull movement everywhere. I can't remember prices ever stiffening this way before when the wheat was pouring in, and, if the bulls can swing the thing over harvest, there's no saying what they may go to."

"I'm glad you're satisfied," said Eveline Annersly. "Still, your observations are not very clear to me."

Leland looked at her with a smile. "The fact is that it seems quite likely I'm going to be comparatively rich. I'm 'most where I stood this time last year already, and if the market doesn't break away under the harvest, prices are going up and up. One thing's certain – Carrie's going to have a month in New York."

He stopped a moment and looked at his companion steadily. "It's rather a curious thing that, when I suggested she might like a run over to Barrock-holme, she didn't seem to want to go. And there's another point that's puzzling me. When I mention the crescent or the pearls, why does she want to change the subject?"

Eveline Annersly decided to tell him. "The two things go together. It happens now and then that a woman has to choose between her relations and her husband. Carrie chose you. Those jewels are, you know, worth a good deal of money, and, while they belong to her, there is reason for believing that, unless she had shown herself resolute, Jimmy would have had them instead. In fact, I have a notion that her father found it distressingly inconvenient to send them. One can raise money on such things in England."

A deeper hue crept into Leland's sun-darkened face. "I understand now – that is, some of it," he said. "It would be better if you made the whole thing clear."

"Well, there was a time when you were rather hard pressed for a thousand pounds. Carrie, if I remember, found you a much larger sum. But she evidently did not tell you where her jewels went."

The man's eyes glowed. When at last he spoke, there was a thrill in his voice.

"It hurts me, in a way, to think of it – but what does that matter?" he said. "Her jewels, everything she had.. when I was in a tight place, she brought them all to me… It was the two thousand pounds that saved me… Shall I have time enough to get even with her in all my life, Aunt Eveline?"

Eveline Annersly smiled reassuringly. "One ought to do a good many little things in a lifetime, and, after all, it is deeds of gratitude that please us most."

They went in some little time afterwards. While they sat at supper together, one of Leland's distant neighbours came in.

"I've ridden straight from the settlement. Macartney had a wire from Winnipeg just before I left," he said. "Wheat jumped up another cent to-day."

Leland looked across the table at Gallwey. "Tom," he said, "before I fell sick, my broker sent along an offer for about half the crop. I wouldn't sell. But I have wondered once or twice if the other man made another bid."

"He did," said Gallwey, with a quiet smile. "There were, as you may remember, two or three weeks when we told you very little, and you wouldn't have understood anything during the first of them. At the time everybody round here was anxious to sell – that is, except Mrs. Leland. By her instructions, I wrote your broker that you meant to hold on to every bushel."

Leland said nothing, for there were others present, but Carrie felt her face grow hot when he looked at her. It was also significant that soon after the meal was over the others seemed to feel they would be excused if they went out to watch the threshing. Gallwey, whose face beamed, surmised that the impression was conveyed to them by Eveline Annersly, though he could not be sure how she had accomplished it.

The dusk came early now, but a full moon was rising above the prairie, and men still toiled about the big machine, whose hum rang through the stillness. Loaded waggons lurched through the crackling stubble. Outside the homestead, Leland sat with his wife, watching them.

"The first wheat we sell will get that crescent back," he said. "The next will take us for two months to New York. We'll start when the snow is on the ground, but it will not be like that first drive we had."

There was a curious little tremor in Carrie Leland's voice. "Charley," she said, "everything is different now. You have driven out the rustlers and you have saved your wheat."

Leland laughed.

"That isn't quite what you mean, and, after all, it wouldn't go very far by itself. The thing that counts the most is that Carrie Leland is content with her prairie farmer."