for twenty-nine hundred--all in good repair and neat as wax. She
might take it into her head to buy it."

"Right in the village, too," growled Lute Parsons. "Say, Jedge, did
you give her that option she was looking for? Because if you did she
can't get out of it so easy."

Judge Fulsom twinkled pleasantly over his bulging cheeks.

"I sure did accommodate the young lady with the option, as
aforesaid," he vouchsafed. "And what's more, I telephoned to the
Grenoble Bank to see if her check for five thousand dollars was O.
K.... Well; so long, boys!"

He stepped ponderously down from the piazza and turned his broad back
on the row of excited faces.

"Hold on, Jedge!" the middle-aged man called after him. "Was her
check any good? You didn't tell us!"

The Judge did not reply. He merely waved his hand.

"He's going over to the post office," surmised the lean youth,
shifting the stub of his cigar to the corner of his mouth in a
knowing manner.

He lowered his heels to the floor with a thud and prepared to follow.
Five minutes later the bartender, not hearing the familiar hum of
voices from the piazza, thrust his head out of the door.