“But you’re not going to buy it.  You told him so, Uncle Seth.”

“Of course I’m not going to buy it—­at my last offer.  It’s worth five thousand dollars in the open market, and once I offered him fifty thousand for it.  Now I’ll give him five.”

“I wonder why he wants to sell,” Shirley mused.  “From what Bryce Cardigan told me once, his father attaches a sentimental value to that strip of woods; his wife is buried there; it’s—­or rather, it used to be—­a sort of shrine to the old gentleman.”

“He’s selling it because he’s desperate.  If he wasn’t teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, he’d never let me outgame him,” Pennington replied gayly.  “I’ll say this for the old fellow:  he’s no bluffer.  However, since I know his financial condition almost to a dollar, I do not think it would be good business to buy his Valley of the Giants now.  I’ll wait until he has gone bust—­and save twenty-five or thirty thousand dollars.”

“I think you’re biting off your nose to spite your face, Uncle Seth.  The Laguna Grande Lumber Company needs that outlet.  In dollars and cents, what is it worth to the Company?”

“If I thought I couldn’t get it from Cardigan a few months from now, I’d go as high as a hundred thousand for it to-night,” he answered coolly.

“In that event, I advise you to take it for fifty thousand.  It’s terribly hard on old Mr. Cardigan to have to sell it, even at that price.”

“You do not understand these matters, Shirley.  Don’t try.  And don’t waste your sympathy on that old humbug.  He has to dig up fifty thousand dollars to pay on his bonded indebtedness, and he’s finding it a difficult job.  He’s just sparring for time, but he’ll lose out.”

As if to indicate that he considered the matter closed, the Colonel drew his chair toward the fire, picked up a magazine, and commenced idly to slit the pages.  Shirley studied the back of his head for some time, then got out some fancy work and commenced plying her needle.  And as she plied it, a thought, nebulous at first, gradually took form in her head until eventually she murmured loud enough for the Colonel to hear: 

“I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” Pennington queried.

“Something nice for somebody who did something nice for me,” she answered.

“That McTavish girl?” he suggested.

“Poor Moira!  Isn’t she sweet, Uncle Seth?  I’m going to give her that black suit of mine.  I’ve scarcely worn it—­”

“I thought so,” he interrupted with an indulgent yawn.  “Well, do whatever makes for your happiness, my dear.  That’s all money is for.”

About two o’clock the following afternoon old Judge Moore, of the Superior Court of Humboldt County, drifted into Bryce Cardigan’s office, sat down uninvited, and lifted his long legs to the top of an adjacent chair.

“Well, Bryce, my boy,” he began, “a little bird tells me your daddy is considering the sale of Cardigan’s Redwoods, or the Valley of the Giants, as your paternal ancestor prefers to refer to that little old quarter-section out yonder on the edge of town.  How about it?”