"Yes, but you are not going to sell it. He has extended the note another six months. Cotton is going up this fall."
"Isn't that great!" she exclaimed. "Here we have money enough for another crop, and can speculate on last year's cotton by holding for higher prices. Why, man, if it should go to ten cents we'd clear $3,000 on that cotton above what we already have."
"Yes, and if it goes to twelve, you'll have $4,500 to the good."
He sat still for a moment, gripping the neck of his fiddle with his fingers as though choking it into waiting.
"Well?" she prompted.
"I've got a chance for something big." He got up and walked, holding the fiddle by the neck, swinging it back and forth. "If I put it through, it will be a fortune; but if I fail I'll be in debt world without end—mortgaged all the rest of my life!"
Walking back and forth before her in the starlight he told Imogene Chandler of the big opportunity—of the rare combination of circumstances which made it possible for him, without property or backing, to borrow one hundred thousand dollars for a crop; and marshalled his reasons for belief in its success. "The water might fail," she suggested, when he had finished and sat down again with the fiddle across his knee.
"Yes, it might," he admitted.
"The Chinamen might get into trouble among themselves or with the Mexicans and leave you at a critical time."
"Possibly."