No one knows by just what course of agonized reasoning he arrived at his final decision, but at dusk he came back to the store. With the dumb placidity of some ruminant, Avery was sitting in his same place on the platform of the emporium.
"Brick," said Ivory, humbly, "I've been thinking back and remembering what I wrote to her--and it's all of it pretty clear in my mind, 'cause I never wrote love letters to anyone else. And I can't face it. I couldn't sit in court and hear it. I couldn't sit here on this platform in my own home place and face the people afterward. I couldn't start on the road with a circus and have the face to stand before the big tent after it and bark like I used to. They'd grin me out of business. I'd be backed into the stall. No, I can't do it. Go down and see what she'll compromise on."
Avery came back after two hours and loomed in the dusk before the platform. He fixed his eyes on the plug hat that was still lowered in the attitude of despondency.
"I wrassled with her, Ivory, just the same as if I was handling my own money, and I beat her down to sixty-six hundred. She won't take a cent less."
"I'll tell you what that sounds like to me," snarled Buck, after a moment of meditation. "It sounds as if she was going to get five thousand and you was looking after your little old sixteen hundred."
A couple of tears squeezed out and down over Avery's flabby cheeks.
"This ain't the first time you've misjudged me, when I've been doing you a favor," said he. "And it's all on account of the same mis'able woman that I'm misjudged--and we was living so happy here, me and you. I wish she was in----" His voice broke.
"I ain't responsible for what I'm saying, Avery," pleaded Buck, contritely. "You know what things have happened to stir me up the last few hours--yes, all my life, for that matter. I ain't been comfortable in mind for thirty years till you come here and cheered me up and showed me what's what. I appreciate it and I'll prove that to you before we're done. We'll get along together all right after this. All is, you must see me through."
Then the two plug hats bent together in earnest conference.
The next morning Avery, armed with an order on the savings bank at the shire for six thousand six hundred dollars, and with Buck's bank book in his inside pocket, drove up to the door of Fyles' tavern in Buck's best carriage, and Signora Rosyelli flipped lightly up beside the peace commissioner.