Graham nodded.  “The market price will be less than what I offered you in a week, and I could scarcely sell your wheat at it to-day.  I was going to hold it myself, because I can occasionally get a little more from one or two millers who like that special grade.  Usual sorts I’m selling for a fall.  Quite sure the deal wouldn’t suit you?”

Barrington lighted a fresh cigar, though Graham noticed that he had smoked very little of the one he flung away.  This was, of course, a trifle, but it is the trifles that count in the aggregate upon the prairie, as they not infrequently do elsewhere.

“I fancy I told you so,” he said.

The broker glanced at Dane, who was a big, bronzed man, and, since Barrington could not see him, shook his head deprecatingly.

“You can consider that decided, Graham,” he said.  “Still, can you as a friendly deed give us any notion of what to do?  As you know, farming, especially at Silverdale, costs money, and the banks are demanding an iniquitous interest just now, while we are carrying over a good deal of wheat.”

Graham nodded.  He understood why farming was unusually expensive at Silverdale, and was, in recollection of past favors, inclined to be disinterestedly friendly.

“If I were you, I would sell right along for forward delivery at a few cents under the market.”

“It is a trifle difficult to see how that would help us,” said Barrington, with a little gesture of irritation, for it almost seemed that the broker was deriding him.

“No!” said the man from Winnipeg, “on the contrary, it’s quite easy.  Now I can predict that wheat will touch lower prices still before you have to make delivery, and it isn’t very difficult to figure out the profit on selling a thing for a dollar and then buying it, when you have to produce it, at ninety cents.  Of course, there is a risk of the market going against you, but you could buy at the first rise, and you’ve your stock to dole out in case anybody cornered you.”

“That,” said Dane thoughtfully, “appears quite sensible.  Of course, it’s a speculation, but presumably we couldn’t be much worse off than we are.  Have you any objections to the scheme, sir?”

Barrington laid down his cigar, and glanced with astonished severity at the speaker.  “Unfortunately, I have.  We are wheat growers and not wheat stock jugglers.  Our purpose is to farm, and not swindle and lie in the wheat pits for decimal differences.  I have a distinct antipathy to anything of the kind.”

“But, sir,” said Dane, and Barrington stopped him with a gesture.

“I would,” he said, “as soon turn gambler.  Still, while it has always been a tradition at Silverdale that the head of the settlement’s lead is to be followed, that need not prevent you putting on the gloves with the wheat-ring blacklegs in Winnipeg.”

Dane blushed a little under his tan, and then smiled as he remembered the one speculative venture his leader had indulged in, for Colonel Barrington was a somewhat hot-tempered and vindictive man.  He made a little gesture of deprecation as he glanced at Graham, who straightened himself suddenly in his chair.