"Done everything! Ruined everything!"
"Tell me, tell me, tell me! Don't keep a body in such suspense. Didn't he buy, after all? Didn't he make an offer?"
"Offer! He offered $10,000 for our land, and"
"Thank the good providence from the very bottom of my heart of hearts! What sort of ruin do you call that, Si!"
"Nancy, do you suppose I listened to such a preposterous proposition? No! Thank fortune I'm not a simpleton! I saw through the pretty scheme in a second. It's a vast iron speculation!—millions upon millions in it! But fool as I am I told him he could have half the iron property for thirty thousand—and if I only had him back here he couldn't touch it for a cent less than a quarter of a million!"
Mrs. Hawkins looked up white and despairing:
"You threw away this chance, you let this man go, and we in this awful trouble? You don't mean it, you can't mean it!"
"Throw it away? Catch me at it! Why woman, do you suppose that man don't know what he is about? Bless you, he'll be back fast enough to-morrow."
"Never, never, never. He never will come back. I don't know what is to become of us. I don't know what in the world is to become of us."
A shade of uneasiness came into Hawkins's face. He said:
"Why, Nancy, you—you can't believe what you are saying."
"Believe it, indeed! I know it, Si. And I know that we haven't a cent in the world, and we've sent ten thousand dollars a-begging."
Nancy, you frighten me. Now could that man—is it possible that I—hanged if I don't believe I have missed a chance! Don't grieve, Nancy, don't grieve. I'll go right after him. I'll take—I'll take—what a fool I am!—I'll take anything he'll give!"
The next instant he left the house on a run. But the man
