Dorn's face began to work as he began to talk, and his eyes were dark and deep, burning with gloom.
"Bad news it is, indeed.… Mr. Anderson, the I.W.W. marked us.… You'll remember your suggestion about getting my neighbors to harvest our wheat in a rush. I went all over, and almost all of them came. We had been finding phosphorus everywhere. Then, on the hot day, fires broke out all around. My neighbors left their own burning fields to save ours. We fought fire. We fought fire all around us, late into the night.… My father had grown furious, maddened at the discovery of how he had been betrayed by Glidden. You remember the—the plot, in which some way my father was involved. He would not believe the I.W.W. meant to burn his wheat. And when the fires broke out he worked like a mad-man.… It killed him!… I was not with him when he died. But Jerry, our foreman was.… And my father's last words were, 'Tell my son I was wrong.'… Thank God he sent me that message! I think in that he confessed the iniquity of the Germans.… Well, my neighbor, Olsen, managed the harvest. He sure rushed it. I'd have given a good deal for you and Miss Anderson to have seen all those big combines at work on one field. It was great. We harvested over thirty-eight thousand bushels and got all the wheat safely to the elevators at the station.… And that night the I.W.W. burned the elevators!"
Anderson's face turned purple. He appeared about to explode. There was a deep rumbling within his throat that Lenore knew to be profanity restrained on account of her presence. As for her own feelings, they were a strange mixture of sadness for Dorn and pride in her father's fury, and something unutterably sweet in the revelation about to be made to this unfortunate boy. But she could not speak a word just then, and it appeared that her father was in the same state.
Evidently the telling of his story had relieved Dorn. The strain relaxed in his white face and it lost a little of its stern fixity. He got up and, opening his bag, he took out some papers.
"Mr. Anderson, I'd like to settle all this right now," he said. "I want it off my mind."
"Go ahead, son, an' settle," replied Anderson, thickly. He heaved a big sigh and then sat down, fumbling for a match to light his cigar. When he got it lighted he drew in a big breath and with it manifestly a great draught of consoling smoke.
"I want to make over the—the land—in fact, all the property—to you—to settle mortgage and interest," went on Dorn, earnestly, and then paused.
"All right. I expected that," returned Anderson, as he emitted a cloud of smoke.
"The only thing is—" here Dorn hesitated, evidently with difficult speech—"the property is worth more than the debt."
"Sure. I know," said Anderson, encouragingly.