"It is very hard on my daughter, I fear," said the Elder, his face now full of emotion and self pity. "I worked all my life to raise my two darlings, and it grieves me to see one of them being ground down by a man."

"Oh, father, my husband is not cruel to me. He has never said an unkind word. He is just as good to me as a man can be—and I love him." This would have been sufficient to have satisfied and pacified any man, even one so unscrupulous. But it happens that in our story we have met one who is considerably different from the ordinary man. The substance of N. Justine McCarthy's vanity had never been fully estimated—not even by himself. Orlean did not recall then, that since she had been married she had not written her father and repeated what a great man he was. She had, on the other hand, written and told him what a great man her husband was. In her simplicity, she felt it was expected of her to tell that one or the other was great. But here she had encountered discouragement. Her husband apparently was considerably opposed to flattery. And she had difficulty to have him see that it was an evidence of faith on her part. But her husband had not seen it that way. He had dismissed it as a waste of time and had gradually used his influence with her to other ends; to the road they were following; the road to ultimate success, which could only be achieved by grim, practical methods. And that was one of his words, practical. But her father was speaking again.

"Now I wish you would explain how you could be at fault for this contest upon your place, and why your husband accuses you of such?"

"But Jean does not accuse me of being at fault, father," she defended weakly. "I accuse myself. And if you will be just a little patient," she begged almost in tears, "I'll explain." He frowned in his usual way, while she sighed unheard, and then fell to the task before her.

"It is like this," she began with an effort at self control. "Jean has not wished to ask me to stay on my claim alone as his sister and grandmother have done, you see."

"Oh, so he has them living out there alone like cattle, helping him to get rich!"

"They do not live like cattle, father," she defended in the patient manner she had been trained to. "They have a horse and buggy that he has furnished them, and get all their needs at the stores which is charged to him. They have good neighbors, awfully nice white people—women, too, who live alone on their claims as his sister and grandmother are doing."

"But they are not like you, daughter. Those are all rough people. You cannot live like them. You have been accustomed to something."