Winston glanced at it.  “The quantity is small.  Still, money is very scarce and bank interest almost extortionate just now.”

Barrington flushed a trifle, and there was anger in his face.  He knew the fact that his loss on this sale should cause him anxiety was significant, and that Winston had surmised the condition of his finances tolerably correctly.

“Have you not gone quite far enough?” he said.

Winston nodded.  “I fancy I need ask no more, sir.  You can scarcely buy the wheat, and the banks will advance nothing further on what you have to offer at Silverdale.  It would be perilous to put yourself in the hands of a mortgage broker.”

Barrington stood up very grim and straight, and there were not many men at Silverdale who would have met his gaze.

“Your content is a little too apparent, but I can still resent an impertinence,” he said.  “Are my affairs your business?”

“Sit down, sir,” said Winston.  “I fancy they are, and had it not been necessary, I would not have ventured so far.  You have done much for Silverdale, and it has cost you a good deal, while it seems to me that every man here has a duty to the head of the settlement.  I am, however, not going to urge that point, but have, as you know, a propensity for taking risks.  I can’t help it.  It was probably born in me.  Now, I will take that contract up for you.”

Barrington gazed at him in bewildered astonishment.

But you would lose on it heavily.  How could you overcome a difficulty that is too great for me?”

“Well,” said Winston, with a little smile, “it seems I have some ability in dealing with these affairs.”

Barrington did not answer for a while, and when he spoke it was slowly.  “You have a wonderful capacity for making any one believe in you.”

“That is not the point,” said Winston.  “If you will let me have the contract, or, and it comes to the same thing, buy the wheat it calls for, and if advisable sell as much again, exactly as I tell you, at my risk and expense, I shall get what I want out of it.  My affairs are a trifle complicated and it would take some little time to make you understand how this would suit me.  In the meanwhile you can give me a mere I O U for the difference between what you sold at, and the price today, to be paid without interest and whenever it suits you.  It isn’t very formal, but you will have to trust me.”

Barrington moved twice up and down the room before he turned to the younger man.  “Lance,” he said, “when you first came here, any deal of this kind between us would have been out of the question.  Now, it is only your due to tell you that I have been wrong from the beginning, and you have a good deal to forgive.”

“I think we need not go into that,” said Winston, with a little smile.  “This is a business deal, and if it hadn’t suited me I would not have made it.”

He went out in another few minutes with a little strip of paper, and just before he left the Grange placed it in Maud Barrington’s hands.