If they give me time up there in Montreal I'll keep the place till Zoe comes back--till Zoe comes home." As he lay and tried to sleep, he kept saying over to himself, "Till Zoe comes home." He thought that if he could but have Zoe back, it all would not matter so much.

She would keep looking at him and saying, "There's the man that never flinched when things went wrong; there's the man that was a friend to everyone." At last a thought came to him--the key to the situation as it seemed, the one thing necessary to meet the financial situation.

He would sell the biggest farm he owned, which had been to him in its importance like the flour-mill itself.

He had had an offer for it that very day, and a bigger offer still a week before.

It was mortgaged to within eight thousand dollars of what it could be sold for but, if he could gain time, that eight thousand dollars would build the mill again.