"Done!" cried the auctioneer, "Sold to Mr.—the name, please—ah, Macpherson, for six hundred dollars—— A bargain!"
Between relief and joy Wallie was speechless, while Canby congratulated him and the crowd bestowed upon him glances of either derision or commiseration, according to the nature of the individual.
While he stood trying to realize his good fortune and that he was the owner of as good a pair of work-horses as ever looked through a halter, a figure that made his heart jump came swiftly forward, and with her hands in the pockets of her long motor coat, stopped in front of his team and scrutinized them closely.
Helene Spenceley looked from one of the horses to the other. She saw the dilated pupils, the abnormally full forehead, the few coarse hairs growing just above the eyelid, and they told her what she had suspected.
"I am sorry I did not know it was you who was bidding on these horses," she said, turning to Wallie.
"Did you want them, Miss Spenceley? I am sorry——"
"Want them? You couldn't give them to me. They are locoed!"
"Locoed!" He could only stare at her, hoping never again to feel such dismay as filled him at that moment.
He had only the vaguest notion as to what "locoed" meant, but it was very clear that it was something highly undesirable. And he had been cheated by Canby, who had known of it and advised him to buy them! Such duplicity was without his experience, and sickened him nearly as much as the thought of the $600 he had invested in horses so radically wrong that Helene Spenceley would not take them as a gift.
The single thought which came to solace him as he stood humiliated and panic-stricken was that she resented the dishonest trick that had been played upon him.