'^»NI 
 
 CERTAIN 
 RICH ^ 
 MAN 
 
 
 A 
 
 *^|jie!^' 
 
 WILLIAM ALLEN WHIT 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
no n-^-??''"*" University Library 
 PS 3545.H67532C4 1d09 
 
 ,, A certain rich man. 
 
 3 1924 021 726 165 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021726165 
 
MACMILLAN'S STANDARD LIBRARY 
 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
A CERTAm RICH MAN 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE 
 
 AUTHOR OF " STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS," " THE 
 COUKT OP BOTTIIXB," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Ck>PRiaBT, 1909, 
 
 bt the maomillait company. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1909. Reprinted 
 July, August twice, September, October, November, Decem- 
 ber, X909 ; August, October, 1910; February, zgxx; June, 19x2. 
 
 Special edition published October, 1909; August, xgi2. 
 
 Nortoooti Vcessa 
 
 J. 8. Cnshlng Go. — Berwick & BmlHi CSow 
 Norwood, Mass., 1T.B.A. 
 
TO MT MOTHEE 
 
BOOK I 
 
A CEETAIN RICH MAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The woods were as the Indians liad left them, but the 
 boys who were playing there did not realize, until many 
 years afterwards, that they had moved in as the Indians 
 moved out. Perhaps, if these boys had known that they 
 were the first white boys to use the Indians' playgrounds, 
 the realization might have added zest to the make-believe 
 of their games; but probably boys between seven and 
 fourteen, when they play at all, play with their fancies 
 strained, and very likely these little boys, keeping their 
 stick-horse livery-stable in a wild-grape arbour in the 
 thicket, needed no verisimilitude. The long straight 
 hickory switches — which served as horses — were ar- 
 ranged with their butts on a rotting log, whereon some 
 grass was spread for their feed. Their string bridles 
 hung loosely over the log. The horsemen swinging 
 in the vines above, or in the elm tree near by, were 
 preparing a raid on the stables of other boys, either in 
 the native lumber town a rifle-shot away or in distant 
 parts of the woods. When the youngsters climbed down, 
 they straddled their hickory steeds and galloped friskily 
 away to the creek and drank ; this was part of the rites, 
 for tradition in the town of their elders said that who- 
 ever drank of Sycamore Creek water immediately turned 
 horse thief. Having drunk their fill at the ford, they 
 waded it and left the stumpy road, plunging into the 
 underbrush, snorting and puffing and giggling and fuss- 
 ing and complaining — the big ones at the little ones 
 and the little ones at the big ones — after the manner of 
 mankind. 
 
2 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 When they had gone perhaps a half-mile from the 
 ford, one of the little boys, feeling the rag on his sore 
 heel slipping and letting the rough woods grass scratch 
 his raw flesh, stopped to tie up the rag. He was far in 
 the rear of the pack when he stopped, and the boys, not 
 heeding his blat, rushed on and left him at the edge of a 
 thicket near a deep-rutted road. His cry became a whim- 
 per and his whimper a sniffle as he worked with the rag ; 
 but the little fingers were clumsy, and a heel is a hard 
 place to cover, and the sun was hot on his back ; so he 
 took the rag in one hand and his bridle in the other, and 
 limped on his stick horse into the thick shade of a lone 
 oak tree that stood beside the wide dusty road. His sore 
 did not bother him, and he sat with his back against the 
 tree for a while, flipping the rag and making figures in 
 the dust with the pronged tail of his horse. Then his 
 hands were still, and as he ran from tune to tune with 
 improvised interludes, he droned a song of his prowess. 
 Sometimes he sang words and sometimes he sang thoughts. 
 He sank farther and farther down and looked up into the 
 tree and ceased his song, chirping instead a stuttering fal- 
 setto trill, not unlike a cricket's, holding his breath as 
 long as he could to draw it out to its finest strand ; and 
 thus with his head on his arm and his arm on the tree 
 root, he fell asleep. 
 
 The noon sun was on his legs when he awoke, and a 
 strange dog was sniffing at him. As he started up, he 
 heard the cla,tter of a horse's feet in the road, and saw an 
 Indian woman trotting toward him on a pony. In an in- 
 stant he was a-wing with terror, scooting toward the 
 thick of the woods. He screamed as he ran, for his 
 head was full of Indian stories, and he knew that the 
 only use Indians had for little boys was to steal them 
 and adopt them into the tribe. He heard the brush 
 crackling behind him, and he knew that the woman had 
 turned off the road to follow him. A hundred yards is a 
 long way for a terror-stricken little boy to run through 
 tangled underbrush, and when he had come to the high 
 bank of the stream, he slipped down among the tree roots 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 3 
 
 and tried to hide. His little heart, beat so fast that he 
 could not keep from panting, and the sound of breaking 
 brush came nearer and then stopped, and in a moment he 
 looked up and saw the squaw leaning over the bank, 
 holding to the tree above him. She smiled kindly at 
 him and said : — 
 
 " Come on, boy — I won't hurt you. I as scared of you 
 as you are of me." 
 
 She bent over and took him by the arm and lifted him 
 to her. She got on her pony and put him on before her 
 and soothed his fright, as they rode slowly through the 
 wood to the road, where they came to a great band of 
 Indians, all riding ponies. 
 
 It seemed to the boy that he had never imagined there 
 were so many people in the whole world ; there was some 
 parley among them, and the band set out on the road again, 
 with the squaw in advance. They were but a few yards 
 from the forks of the road, and as they came to it she 
 said : — 
 
 "Boy — which way to town?" 
 
 He pointed the way and she turned into it, and the 
 band followed. They crossed the ford, climbed the steep 
 red clay bank of the creek, and filed up the hill into the 
 unpainted group of cabins and shanties cluttered around 
 a well that men, in 1857, knew as Sycamore Ridge. The 
 Indians filled the dusty area between the two rows of gray 
 houses on either side of the street, and the town flocked 
 from its ten front doors before half the train had arrived. 
 The last door of them all to open was in a slab house, 
 nearly half a mile from the street. A washing fluttered 
 on the clothes-line, and the woman who came out of the 
 door carried a round-bottomed hickory -bark basket, such 
 as might hold clothes-pins. Seeing the invasion, she hur- 
 ried across the prairie, toward the town. She was a tall 
 thin woman, not yet thirty, brown and tanned, with a 
 strong masculine face, and as she came nearer one could 
 see that she had a square firm jaw, and great kind gray 
 eyes that lighted her countenance from a serene soul. Her 
 sleeves rolled far above her elbows revealed arms used to 
 
4 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 rough hard work, and her hands were red from the wash- 
 tub. As she came into the street, she saw the little boy 
 sitting on the Horse in front of the squaw. "Walking to 
 them quickly, and lifting her arms, as she neared the 
 squaw's pony, the white woman said : — 
 
 " Why, Johiinie Barclay, where have you been? " 
 The boy climbed from the pony, and the two women 
 smiled at each other, but exchanged no words. And as 
 his feet touched the ground, he became conscious of the 
 rag in his hand, of his bleeding heel, of his cramped legs 
 being " asleep " — all in one instant, and went limping and 
 whining toward home with his mother, while the Indians 
 traded in the store and tried to steal from the other houses, 
 and in a score of peaceful ways diverted the town's atten- 
 tion from the departing figures down the path. 
 
 That was the first adventure that impressed itself upon 
 the memory of John Barclay. All his life he remembered 
 the covered wagon in which the Barclays crossed the Mis- 
 sissippi; but it is only a curious memory of seeing the 
 posts of the bed, lying flat beside him in the wagon, and 
 of fingering the palm leaves cut in the wood. He was four 
 years old then, and as a man he remembered only as a tale 
 that is told the fight at Westport Landing, where his father 
 was killed for preaching an abolition sermon from the 
 wagon tongue. The man remembered nothing of the long 
 ride that the child and the mother took with the father's 
 body to Lawrence, where they buried it in a free-state 
 cemetery. But he always remembered something of their 
 westward ride, after the funeral of his father. The boy 
 carried a child's memory of the prairie — probably his 
 first sight of the prairie, with the vacant horizon cir- 
 cling around and around him, and the monotonous rattle 
 of the wagon on the level prairie road, for hours keeping 
 the same rhythm and fitting the same tune. Then there 
 was a mottled memory of the woods — woods with sun- 
 shine in them, and of a prairie flooded with sunshine on 
 which he played, now picking flowers, now playing house 
 under the limestone ledges, now, after a rain, following 
 little rivers down rocky draws, and finding sunfish and 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 5 
 
 silversides in the deeper pools. But always his memory- 
 was of the sunshine, and the open sky, or the deep wide 
 woods all unexplored, save by himself. 
 
 The great road that widened to make the prairie street, 
 and wormed over the hill into the sunset, always seemed 
 dusty to the boy, and although in after years he followed 
 that road, over the hills and far away, when it was rutty 
 and full of clods, as a child he recalled it only as a great 
 bed of dust, wherein he and other boys played, now bat- 
 tling with handfuls of dust, and now running races on 
 some level stretch of it, and now standing beside the road 
 while a passing movers' wagon delayed their play. The 
 movers' wagon was never absent from the boy's picture of 
 that time and place. Either the canvas-covered wagon 
 was coming from the ford of Sycamore Creek, or disap- 
 pearing over the hill beyond the town, or was passing in 
 front of the boys as they stopped their play. Being a boy, 
 he could not know, nor would lie care if he did know, that 
 he was seeing one of God's miracles — the migration of a 
 people, blind but instinctive as that of birds or buffalo, 
 from old pastures into new ones. All over the plains in 
 those days, on a hundred roads like that which ran through 
 Sycamore Ridge, men and women were moving from east 
 to west, and, as often has happened since the beginning of 
 time, when men have migrated, a great ethical principle 
 was stirring in them. The pioneers do not go to the wil- 
 derness always in lust of land, but sometimes they go to 
 satisfy their souls. The spirit of God moves in the hearts 
 of men as it moves on the face of the waters. 
 
 Something of this moving spirit was in John Barclay's 
 mother. For often she paused at her work, looking up 
 from her wash-tub toward the highway, when a prairie 
 schooner sailed by, and lifting her face skyward for an in- 
 stant, as her lips moved in silence. As a man the boy 
 knew she was thinking of her long journey, of the tragedy 
 that came of it, and praying for those who passed into the 
 West. Then she would bend to her work again ; and the 
 washerwoman's child who took the clothes she washed in 
 his little wagon with the cottonwood log wheels, across 
 
6 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 the commons into the town, was not made to feel an in- 
 ferior place in the social system until he was in his early 
 teens. For all the Sycamore Ridge women worked hard 
 in those days. But there were Sundays when the boy 
 and his mother walked over the wide prairies together, and 
 she told him stories of Haverhill — of the wonderful people 
 who lived there, of the great college, of the beautiful 
 women and wise men, and best of all of his father, who was 
 a student in the college, and they dreamed together — 
 mother and child — about how he would board at Uncle 
 Union's and work in the store for Uncle Abner — when 
 the boy went back to Haverhill to school when he grew 
 
 On these excursions the mother sometimes tried to in- 
 terest him in Mr. Beecher's sermons which she read to 
 him, but his eyes followed the bees and the birds and the 
 butterflies and the shadows trailing across the hillside; 
 so the seed fell on stony ground. One fine fall day they 
 went up the ridge far above the town where the court- 
 house stands now, and there under a lone elm tree just 
 above a limestone ledge, they spread their lunch, and the 
 mother sat on the hillside, almost hidden by the rippling 
 prairie grass, reading the first number of the Atlantic 
 Monthly, while the boy cleared out a spring that bubbled 
 from beneath a rock in the shade, and after running for a 
 few feet sank under a great stone and did not appear 
 again. As the mother read, the afternoon waned, and 
 when she looked up, she was astonished to see John stand- 
 ing beside the rock, waist deep in a hole, trying to back 
 down into it. His face was covered with dirt, and his 
 clothes were wet from the falling water of the spring that 
 was flowing into the hole he had opened. In a jiffy she 
 pulled him out, and looking into the hole, saw by the failing 
 sunlight which shone directly into the place that the child 
 had uncovered the opening of a cave. But they did not 
 explore it, for the mother was afraid, and the two came 
 down the hill, the child's head full of visions of a pirate's 
 treasure, and the mother's full of the whims of the Auto- 
 crat of the Breakfast Table. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 7 
 
 The next day school began in Sycamore Ridge, — for 
 the school and the church came with the newspaper, Free- 
 dom's Banner, — and a new world opened to the boy, and 
 he forgot the cave, and became interested in Webster's 
 blue-backed speller. And thus another grown-up person, 
 " Miss Lucy," came into his world. For with children, 
 men and women generically are of another order of beings. 
 But Miss Lucy, being John Barclay's teacher, grew into his 
 daily life on an equality with his dog and the Hendricks 
 boys, and took a place somewhat lower than his mother in 
 his list of saints. For Miss Lucy came from Sangamon 
 County, Illinois, and her father had fought the Indians, and 
 she told the school as many strange and wonderful things 
 about Illinois as John had learned from his mother about 
 Haverhill. But his allegiance to the teacher was only lip 
 service. For at night when he sat digging the gravel and 
 dirt from the holes in the heels of his copper-toed boots, 
 that he might wad them with paper to be ready for his 
 skates on the morrow, or when he sat by the wide fire- 
 place oiling the runners with the steel curly-cues curving 
 over the toes, or filing a groove in the blades, the boy's 
 greatest joy was with his mother. Sometimes as she ironed 
 she told him stories of his father, or when the child was 
 sick and nervous, as a special favour, on his promise to take 
 the medicine and not ask for a drink, she would bring her 
 guitar from under the bed and tune it up and play with a 
 curious little mouse-like touch. And on rare occasions 
 she would sing to her own shy maidenly accompaniment, 
 her voice rising scarcely higher than the wind in the syca- 
 more at the spring outside. The boy remembered only 
 one line of an old song she sometimes tried to sing: 
 " Sleeping, I dream, love, dream, love, of thee," but what 
 the rest of it was, and what it was all about, he never 
 knew ; for when she got that far, she always stopped and 
 came to the bed and lay beside him, and they both cried, 
 though as a child he did not know why. 
 
 So the winter of 1857 wore away at Sycamore Ridge, 
 and with the coming of the spring of '58, when the town 
 was formally incorporated, even into the boy world there 
 
8 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 came the murmurs of strife and alarms. The games the 
 boys played were war games. They had battles in the 
 •woods, between the free-state and the pro-slavery men, 
 and once — twice — three times there marched by on the 
 road real soldiers, and it was no unusual thing to see a 
 dragoon dismount at the town well and water his horse. 
 The big boys in school affected spurs, and Miss Lucy 
 brought to school with her one morning a long bundle, 
 which, when it was unwrapped, disclosed the sword of her 
 father. Captain Barnes, presented to him by his admiring 
 soldiers at the close of the "Black Hawk War." John 
 traded for a tin fife and learned to play " Jaybird " upon 
 it, though he preferred the jew's-harp, and had a more varied 
 repertory with it. Was it an era of music, or is childhood 
 the period of music ? Perhaps this land of ours was 
 younger than it is now and sang more lustily, if not with 
 great precision ; for to the man who harks back over the 
 years, those were days of song. All the world seemed 
 singing — men in their stores and shops, women at their 
 work, and children in their schools. And a freckled, bare- 
 footed little boy with sunburned curly hair, in home-made 
 clothes, and with brown bare legs showing-through the rips 
 in his trousers, used to sit alone in the woods breathing 
 his soul into a mouth-organ — a priceless treasure for which 
 he had traded two raccoons, an owl, and a prairie dog. But 
 he mastered the mouth-organ, — it was called a French 
 harp in those days, — and before he had put on his first 
 collar, Watts McHurdie had taught the boy to play the 
 accordion. The great heavy bellows was half as large as 
 he was, but the little chap would sit in McHurdie's har- 
 ness shop of a summer afternoon and swing the instrument 
 up and down as the melody swelled or died, and sway his 
 body with the time and the tune, as Watts McHurdie, who 
 owned the accordion, swayed and gyrated when he played. 
 Mrs. Barclay, hearing her son, smiled and shook her head 
 and knew him for a Thatcher ; « No Barclay," she said, 
 "ever could carry a tune." So the mother brought out 
 from the bottom of the trunk her yeUow-covered book, 
 " Winner's Instructor on the Guitar," and taught the child 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 9 
 
 what she could of notes. Thus music found its way out 
 of the boy's soul. 
 
 One day in the summer of 1860, as he and his fellows 
 were filing down the crooked dusty path that led from the 
 swimming hole through the dry woods to the main road, 
 they came upon a group of horsemen scanning the dry ford 
 of the Sycamore. That was the first time that John Bar- 
 clay met the famous Captain Lee. He was a great hulk of 
 a man who, John thought, looked like a pirate. The boys 
 led the men and their horses up the dry limestone bed of 
 the stream to the swimming hole — a deep pool in the 
 creek. The coming of the soldiers made a stir in the town. 
 For they were not " regulars " ; they were known as the 
 Red Legs, but called themselves " The Army of the Bor- 
 der." Under Captain J. Lord Lee — whose life after- 
 wards touched Barclay's sometimes — " The Army of the 
 Border," being about forty in number, came to Sycamore 
 Ridge that night, and greatly to the scandal of the decent 
 village, there appeared with the men two women in short 
 skirts and red leggins, who were introduced at Schnitzler's 
 saloon as Happy Hally and Lady Lee. " The Army of 
 the Border," under J. Lord and Lady Lee, — as they were 
 known, — proceeded to get bawling drunk, whereupon 
 they introduced to the town the song which for the 
 moment was the national hymn of Kansas : — 
 
 " Am I a soldier of the boss, 
 A follower of Jim Lane? 
 Then should I fear to steal a hosa, 
 Or blush to ride the same." 
 
 As the night deepened and Henry Schnitzler's supply 
 of liquor seemed exhaustless, the Army of the Border went 
 from song to war and wandered about banging doors and 
 demanding to know if any white-livered Missourian in the 
 town was man enough to come out and fight. At half- 
 past one the Army of the Border had either gone back to 
 camp, or propped itself up against the sides of the build- 
 ings in peaceful sleep, when the screech of the brakes on 
 the wheels of the stage was heard half a mile away as it 
 
10 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 lumbered down the steep bank of the Sycamore, and then 
 the town woke up. As the stage rolled down Main Street, 
 the male portion of Sycamore Ridge lined up before the 
 Thayer House to see who would get out and to learn the 
 news from the gathering storm in the world outside. As 
 the crowd stood there, and while the driver was climbing 
 from his box, little John Barclay, white -faced, clad in his 
 night drawers, came flying into the crowd from behind a 
 building. 
 
 "Mother — " he gasped, "mother — says — come — 
 mother says some one come quick — there's a man there 
 — trying to break in I " And finding that he had made 
 himself understood, the boy darted back across the com- 
 mon toward home. The little white figure kept ahead 
 of the men, and when they arrived, they found Mrs. Bar- 
 clay standing in the door of her house, with a lantern in 
 one hand and a carbine in the crook of her arm. In the 
 dark, somewhere over toward the highway, but in the 
 direction of the river, the sound of a man running over 
 the ploughed ground might be heard as he stumbled and 
 grunted and panted in fear. She shook her head reas- 
 suringly as the men from the town came into the radius 
 of the light from her lantern, and as they stepped on the 
 hard clean-swept earth of her doorway, she said, smiling : 
 
 "He won't come back. I'm sorry I bothered you. 
 Only — I was frightened a little at first — when I sent 
 Johnnie out of the back door." She paused a moment, 
 and answered some one's question about the man, and 
 went on, " He was just drunk. He meant no harm. It 
 was Lige Bemis — " 
 
 "Oh, yes," said "Watts McHurdie, "you know — the 
 old gang that used to be here before the town started. 
 He's with the Red Legs now." 
 
 " Well," continued Mrs. Barclay, " he said he wanted to 
 come over and visit the sycamore tree by the spring." 
 
 The crowd knew Lige and laughed and turned away. 
 The men trudged slowly back to the cluster of lights that 
 marked the town, and the woman closed her door, and she 
 and the child went to bed. Instead of sleeping, thej 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 11 
 
 talked over their adventure. He sat up in bed, big-eyed 
 with excitement, while his mother told him that the 
 drunken visitor was Lige Bemis, who had come to revisit 
 a cave, a horse thief's cave, he had said, back of the big 
 rock that seemed to have slipped down from the ledge 
 behind the house, right by the spring. She told the boy 
 that Bemis had said that the cave contained a room 
 wherein they used to keep their stolen horses, and that he 
 tried to move the great slab door of stone and, being drunk, 
 could not do so. 
 
 When the men of Sycamore Ridge who left the stage 
 without waiting to see what human seed it would shuck 
 out arrived at Main Street, the stage was in the barn, the 
 driver was eating his supper, and the passenger was in bed 
 at the Thayer House. But his name was on the dog-eared 
 hotel register, and it gave the town something to talk 
 about as Martin Culpepper was distributing the mail. 
 For the name on the book was Philemon R. Ward, and 
 the town after his name, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
 Every man and woman and most of the children in Syca- 
 more Ridge knew who Philemon Ward was. He had 
 been driven out of Georgia in '58 for editing an abolition 
 newspaper ; he had been mobbed in Ohio for delivering 
 abolition lectures ; he had been led out of Missouri with 
 a rope around his neck, and a reward was on his head in 
 a half-dozen Southern states for inciting slaves to rebel- 
 lion. His picture had been in Harper^s Weekly as a Gen- 
 eral Passenger Agent of the Underground Railway. 
 Naturally to Sycamore Ridge, where more than one night 
 the town had sat up all night waiting for the stage to 
 bring the New York Tribune, Philemon R. Ward was a. 
 hero, and his presence in the town was an event. When 
 the little Barclay boy heard it at the store that morning 
 before sunrise, he ran down the path toward home to tell 
 his mother and had to go back to do the errand on which 
 he was sent. By sunrise every one in town had the 
 news; men were shaken out of their morning naps to 
 iiear, " Philemon Ward's in town — wake up, man ; did 
 you hear what I say ? Philemon Ward came to town last 
 
12 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 night on the stage." And before the last man was awake, 
 the town was startled by the clatter of horses' hoofs on 
 the gravel road over the hill south of town, and Gabriel 
 Carnine and Lycurgus Mason of Minneola came dashing 
 into the street and yelling, " The Missourians are coming, 
 the Missourians are coming I " 
 
 The little boy, who had just turned into Main Street for 
 the second time, remembered all his life how the news that 
 the Minneola men brought, thrilled Sycamore Ridge. It 
 seemed to the boy but an instant till the town was in the 
 street, and then he and a group of boys were running to 
 the swimming hole to call the Army of the Border. The 
 horse weeds scratched his face as he plunged through the 
 timber cross-lots with his message. He was the first boy 
 to reach the camp. What they did or what he did, he never 
 remembered. He has heard men say many times that he 
 whispered his message, grabbed a carbine, and came tear- 
 ing through the brush back to the town. 
 
 All that is important to know of the battle of Sycamore 
 Ridge is that Philemon Ward, called out of bed with the 
 town to fight that summer morning, took command before 
 he had dressed, and when the town was threatened with a 
 charge from a second division of the enemy, Bemis and 
 Captain Lee of the Red Legs, Watts McHurdie, Madison 
 Hendricks, Oscar Fernald, and Gabriel Carnine, under the 
 command of Philemon Ward, ran to the top of the high 
 bank of the Sycamore, and there held a deep cut made for 
 the stage road, — held it as a pass against a half -hundred 
 horsemen, floundering under the bank, in the underbrush 
 below, who dared not file up the pass. 
 
 The little boy standing at the window of his mother's 
 house saw this. But aU the firing in the town, all the form- 
 ing and charging and skirmishing that was done that hot 
 August day in '60, either he did not see, or if he saw it, 
 the memory faded under the great terror that gripped his 
 soul when he saw his mother in danger. Ward in his 
 undershirt was standing by a tree near the stage road 
 above the bank. The firing in the creek bed had stopped. 
 His back was toward the town, and then, out of some 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 13 
 
 place dim in the child's mind — from the troop southwest 
 of town perhaps — caine a charge of galloping horsemen, 
 riding down on Ward. The others with him had found 
 cover, and he, seeing the enemy before him and behind him, 
 pistol in hand, alone charged into the advancing horsemen. 
 It was all confused in the child's mind, though the his- 
 tories say that the Sycamore Ridge people did not know 
 Ward was in danger, and that when he fell they did not 
 understand who had fallen. But the boy — John Barclay — 
 saw him fall, and his mother knew who had fallen, and the 
 wife of the Westport martyr groaned in anguish as she 
 saw Freedom's champion writhing in the dust of the road 
 like a dying snake, after the troop passed over him. And 
 even when he was a man, the boy could remember the woe 
 in her face, as she stooped to kiss her child, and then 
 huddling down to avoid the bullets, ran across the field to 
 the wounded man, with dust in his mouth, twitching in 
 the highway. Bullets were spitting in the dust about 
 her as the boy saw his mother roll the bleeding man over, 
 pick him up, get him on her back with his feet trailing on 
 the earth beside her, and then rising to her full height, 
 stagger under her limp burden back to the house. When 
 she came in the door, her face and shoulders were covered 
 with blood and her skirt ripped with ^ bullet. 
 
 That is all of the battle that John Barclay ever remem- 
 bered. After that it seemed to end, though the histories 
 say that it lasted all the long day, and that the fire of the 
 invaders was so heavy that no one from the Ridge dared 
 venture to the Barclay home. The boy saw his mother 
 lay the unconscious man on the floor, while she opened 
 the back door, and without saying a word, stepped to the 
 spring, which was hidden from the road. She put her 
 knee, her broad chest, and her strong red hand to the rock 
 and shoved until her back bowed and the cords stood out 
 on her neck ; then slowly the rock moved till she could see 
 inside the cave, could put her leg in, could squirm her 
 body in. The morning light flooded in after her, and in 
 the instant that she stood there she saw dimly a great 
 room, through which the spring trickled. There were hay 
 
14 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 inside, and candles and saddles ; in another minute she haa 
 the wounded man in the cave and "was washing the dirt 
 from him. A bullet had ploughed its way along his scalp, 
 his body was pierced through the shoulder, and his leg was 
 broken by a horse's hoof. She did what she could while 
 the shooting went on outside, and then slipped out, tugged 
 at the great rock again until it fell back in its place, and 
 knowing that Philemon Ward was safe from the Missou- 
 rians if they should win the day, she came into the house. 
 Then as the mocking clouds of the summer drouth rolled 
 up at night, and belched forth their thunder in a tempest 
 of wind, the besiegers passed as a dream in the night. 
 And in the morning they were not. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Anb so on the night of the battle of Sycamore Ridge, 
 John Barclay closed the door of his childhood and became 
 a boy. He did not remember how Ward's wounds were 
 dressed, nor how the town made a hero of the man; but he 
 did remember Watts McHurdie and Martin Culpepper and 
 the Hendricks boys tramping through the cave that night 
 with torches, and he was the hero of that occasion because 
 he was the smallest boy there and they put him up through 
 the crack in the head of the cave, and he saw the stars 
 under the elm tree far above the town, where he and his 
 mother had spent a Sunday afternoon three years before. 
 He called to the men below and told them where he was, 
 and slipped down through the hole again with an elm 
 sprout in his hand to prove that he had been under the 
 elm tree at the spring. But he remembered nothing of 
 the night — how the men picketed the town ; how he sat up 
 with them along with the other boys; how the women, 
 under his mother's direction and Miss Lucy's, cared for 
 the wounded man, who lapsed into delirium as the night 
 wore on, and gibbered of liberty and freedom as another 
 man would go over his accounts in his dreams. 
 
 His mother and Miss Lucy took turns nursing Ward 
 night after night during the hot dry summer. As the 
 sick man grew better, many men came to the house, and 
 great plans were afloat. Philemon Ward, sitting up in 
 bed waiting for his leg to heal, talked much of the cave 
 as a refuge for fugitive slaves. There was some kind of a 
 military organization; all the men in town were enlisted, 
 and Ward was their captain; drums were rattling and men 
 were drilling; the dust clouds rose as they marched across 
 the drouth-blighted fields. One night they marched up 
 to the Barclay home, and Ward with a crutch under his 
 arm, and with Mrs. Barclay and Miss Lucy beside him, 
 
 16 
 
16 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 stood in the door and made a speech to the men. And 
 then there were songs. Watts McHurdie threw back his 
 head and sang " Scots wha ha' wi' "Wallace bled," follow- 
 ing it with some words of his own denouncing slavery and 
 calling down curses upon the slaveholders; so withal it 
 was a martial occasion, and the boy's heart swelled with 
 patriotic pride. But for a vague feeling that Miss Lucy 
 was neglecting him for her patient, John would have be- 
 gun making a hero of Philemon R. Ward. As it was, the 
 boy merely tolerated the man and silently suspected him 
 of, intentions and designs. 
 
 But when school opened, Philemon Ward left Sycamore 
 Ridge and John Barclay made an important discovery. It 
 was that Ellen Culpepper had eyes. In Sycamore Ridge 
 with its three hundred souls, only fifteen of them were 
 children, and five of them were ten years old, and John 
 had played with those five nearly all his life. But at ten 
 sometimes the scales drop from one's eyes, and a ribbon 
 or a bead or a pair of new red striped yarn stockings or 
 any other of the embellishments which nature teaches little 
 girls to wear casts a sheen over all the world for a boy. 
 The magic bundle that charmed John Barclay was a 
 scarlet dress, " made over," that came in an " aid box " 
 from the Culpeppers in Virginia. And when the other 
 children in Miss Lucy's school made fun of John and his 
 amour, the boy fought his way through it all — where 
 fighting was the better part of valour — and made horse- 
 hair chains for Ellen and cut lockets for her out of coffee 
 beans, and with a red-hot poker made a ring for her from 
 a rubber button as a return for the smile he got at the sly 
 twist he gave her hair as he passed her desk on his way to 
 the spelling class. As for Miss Lucy, who saw herself 
 displaced, she wrote to Philemon Ward, and told him of 
 her jilting, and railed at the fickleness and frailty of the 
 sex. 
 
 And by that token an envelope in Ward's handwriting 
 came to Miss Lucy every week, and Postmaster Martin 
 Culpepper and Mrs. Martin Culpepper and all Sycamore 
 Ridge knew it. And loyal Southerner though he was, 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 17 
 
 Martin Culpepper's interest in the affair between Ward and 
 Miss Lucy was greater than his indignation over the fact 
 that Ward had carried his campaign even into Virginia ; 
 nothing woiild have tempted him to disclose to his political 
 friends at home the postmarks of Ward's letters. That 
 was the year of the great drouth of '60, remembered all 
 over the plains. And as the winter deepened and the 
 people of Sycamore Ridge were without crops, and with- 
 out money to buy food, they bundled up Martin Culpepper 
 and sent him back to Ohio seeking aid. He was a hand- 
 some figure the day he took the stage in his high hat and 
 his ruffled shirt and broad coat tails, a straight lean figure 
 of a man in his early thirties, with fine black eyes and a 
 shocky head of hair, and when he pictured the sufferings 
 of the Kansas pioneers to the people of the East, the state 
 was flooded with beans and flour, and sheeted in white 
 muslin. For Martin Culpepper was an orator, and though 
 he is in his grave now, the picture he painted of bleeding 
 Kansas nearly fifty years ago still hangs in many an old 
 man's memory. And after all, it was only a picture. For 
 they were all young out here then, and through all the 
 drouth and the hardship that followed — and the hardship 
 was real — there was always the gayety of youth. The 
 dances on Deer Creek and at Minneola did not stop for the 
 drouth, and many's the night that Mrs. Mason, the tall 
 raw-boned wife of Lycurgus, wrapped little Jane in a 
 quilt and came over to the Ridge from Minneola to take 
 part in some social affair. And while Martin Culpepper 
 was telling of the anguish of the famine. Watts McHurdie 
 and his accordion and Ezra Lane's fiddle were agitating 
 the heels of the populace. And even those pioneers who 
 were moved to come into the wilderness by a great pur- 
 pose — and they were moved so — to come into the new 
 territory and make it free, nevertheless capered and romped 
 through the drouth of '60 in the cast-off garments of their 
 kinsmen and were happy ; for there were buffalo meat and 
 beans for the needy, the aid room had flour, and God gave 
 them youth. 
 
 Not drouth, nor famine, nor suffering, nor zeal of a 
 
18 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 great purpose can burn out the sparkle of youth in the 
 heart. Only time can do that, and so John Barclay re- 
 membered the famous drouth of '60, not by his mother's 
 tears, which came as she bent over his little clothes, before 
 the aid box came from Haverhill, not by the long days of 
 waiting for the rain that never came, not even by the sun 
 that lapped up the swimming hole before fall, and left no 
 river to freeze for their winter's skating, not even by his 
 mother's anguish when she had to go to the aid store for 
 flour and beans, though that must have been a sorry day 
 for a Thatcher ; but he remembers the great drouth by 
 Ellen Culpepper's party, where they had a frosted cake and 
 played kissing games, and — well, fifty years is a long time 
 for two brown eyes to shine in the heart of a boy and a 
 man. It is strange that they should glow there, and all 
 memory of the runaway slaves who were sheltered in the 
 cave by the sycamore tree should fade, and be only as a 
 tale that is told. Yet, so memory served the boy, and he 
 knew only at second hand how his mother gave her 
 widow's mite to the cause for which she had crossed the 
 prairies as of old her " fathers crossed the sea." 
 
 Before the rain came in the spring of '61 Martin Cul- 
 pepper came back from the East an orator of established 
 reputation. The town was proud of him, and he addressed 
 the multitude on various occasions and wept many tears over 
 the sad state of the country. For in the nation, as well 
 as in Sycamore Ridge, great things were stirring. Watts 
 McHurdie filled Freedom's Banner with incendiary verse, 
 always giving the name of the tune at the beginning of 
 each contribution, by which it might be sung, and the way 
 he clanked Slavery's chains and made love to Freedom was 
 highly disconcerting ; but the town liked it. 
 
 In April Philemon R. Ward came back to Sycamore 
 Ridge, and there was a great gathering to hear his speech. 
 Ward's soul was aflame with anger. There were no Greek 
 gods and Roman deities in what Ward said, as there were 
 in Martin Culpepper's addresses. Ward used no figures 
 of speech and exercised no rhetorical charms ; but he talked 
 with passion in his voice and the frenzy of a cause in his 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 19 
 
 eyes. Martin Culpepper was in the crowd, and as Ward 
 lashed the South, every heart turned in interrogation to 
 Culpepper. They knew what his education had been. 
 They understood his sentiments ; and yet because he was 
 one of them, because he had endured with them and suf- 
 fered with them and ministered to them, the town set him 
 apart from its hatred. And Martin Culpepper was sensi- 
 tive enough to feel this. It came over him with a wave of 
 joy, and as Ward talked, Culpepper expanded. Ward closed 
 in a low tone, and his face was white with pent-up zeal as 
 he asked some one to pray. There was a silence, and then a 
 woman's voice, trembling and passionate, arose, and Syca- 
 more Ridge knew that Mrs. Barclay, the widow of the 
 Westport martyr, was giving sound to a voice that had 
 long been still. It was a simple halting prayer, and not 
 all those in the room heard it clearly. The words were 
 not always fitly chosen; but as the prayer neared its close, — 
 and it was a short prayer at the most, — there came 
 strength and courage into the voice as it asked for grace for 
 " the brother among us who has shared our sufferings and 
 lightened our burdens, and who has cleaved to us as a brother, 
 but whose heart is drawn away from us by ties of blood 
 and kinship " ; and then the voice sank lower and lower as 
 though in shame at its boldness, and hushed in a tremu- 
 lous Amen. 
 
 No one spoke for a moment, and as Sycamore Ridge 
 looked up from the floor, its eyes turned instinctively tow- 
 ard Martin Culpepper. He felt the question that was in 
 the hearts about him, and slowly, to the wonder of all, he 
 rose. He had a beautiful deep purring voice, and when he 
 opened his eyes, they seemed to look into every pair of eyes 
 in the throng. There were tears on his face and in his 
 voice as he spoke. " Entreat me not to leave thee, or to 
 return from following after thee : for whither thou goest, I 
 will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people 
 shall be my people, and thy God my God : where thou 
 diest, I will die, and there will I be buried: the Lord 
 do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee 
 and me." And then he sank to his chair and hid his 
 
20 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 face, and for a moment a hundred wet-eyed men were 
 stUl. 
 
 Though John Barclay was at the meeting, he remembered 
 only his mother's prayer, but in his heart there was always a 
 picture of a little boy trying to walk home with a little girl, 
 and when he came up with her she darted ahead or dropped 
 back. At the Culpepper gate she stood waiting fully a 
 minute for him to catch her, and when he came up to her, 
 she laughed, " Huh, Mr. Smarty, you didn't, did you ? " and 
 ran up the walk, scooted into the house, and slammed the 
 door. But he understood and went leaping down the hill 
 toward home with happiness tingling in his very finger-tips. 
 He seemed to be flying rather than' walking, and his toes 
 touched the dirt path so lightly that he rounded the cor- 
 ner and ran plump into Miss Lucy and Philemon Ward 
 standing at the gate. And what he saw surprised him so 
 that he let out a great " haw-haw-haw " and ran, trying to 
 escape his shame and fear at his behaviour. But the next 
 morning Miss Lucy smiled so sweetly at him as he came 
 into the schoolroom, that he knew he was forgiven, and 
 that thrill was lost by the thump of joy that startled his 
 heart when he saw a bunch of dog-tooth violets in his ink 
 bottle, and in his geography found a candy heart with a 
 motto on it so fervent that he did not eat it for three long 
 abstemious days of sheer devotion, in which there were 
 eyes and eyes and eyes from the little girl in the scarlet 
 gown. 
 
 It is strange that the boy did not remember how Syca- 
 more Ridge took the call to arms for the war between the 
 states. All he remembered of the great event in our his- 
 tory as it touched the town was that one day he heard there 
 was going to be a war. And then everything seemed to 
 change. A dread came over the people. It fell upon the 
 school, where every child had a father who was going away. 
 
 And it was because Madison Hendricks, the first man 
 to leave for the war, was father of Bob and Elmer Hen- 
 dricks that John's first associations of the great Civil War 
 go back to the big black-bearded man. For Madison 
 Hendricks, who was a graduate of West Point, and a vet- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 21 
 
 eran of the Mexican War, waa called to Washington in 
 May, and his boys acquired a prestige that was not ac- 
 corded to them by the mere fact that their father was 
 president of the town company, and was accounted the first 
 citizen of the town. Madison Hendricks, who owned the 
 land on which the town was built, Madison Hendricks, 
 scholar and gentleman, veteran of the Mexican War, first 
 mayor of Sycamore Ridge upon its incorporation, — his 
 sons had no standing. But Madison Hendricks, formally 
 summoned to go to Washington to put down the rebellion, 
 and leaving on the stage with appropriate ceremonies, — 
 there was a man who could bequeath to his posterity in 
 the boy world something of his consequence. 
 
 So in the pall that came upon the school in Sycamore 
 Ridge that spring of '61, Bob and Elmer Hendricks were 
 heroes, and their sister — who was their only guardian in 
 their father's absence — had to put them in her dresses 
 and send them to bed, and punish them in all the shameful 
 ways that she knew to take what she called " the tuck out 
 of them." And the boy of all the boys who gave the Hen- 
 dricks boys most homage was little Johnnie Barclay. 
 There was no dread in his hero-worship. He had no 
 father to go to the war. But the other children and all 
 the women were under a great cloud of foreboding, and for 
 them the time was one of tension and hoping against hope 
 that the war would soon pass. 
 
 How the years gild our retrospect. It was in 1903 that 
 Martin Culpepper, a man in his seventies, collected and 
 published "The Complete Poetical and Philosophical 
 Works of Watts McHurdie, together with Notes and a 
 Biographical Appreciation by Martin F. Culpepper." 
 One of the earlier chapters, which tells of the enlistment 
 of the volunteer soldiers for the Civil War in '61, de- 
 votes some space to the recruiting and enlistment in Syca- 
 more Ridge. The chapter bears the heading " The Large 
 White Plumes," and in his " introductory remarks'" the 
 biographer says, " To him who looks back to those golden 
 days of heroic deeds only the lines of Keats will paint the 
 picture in his soul : — 
 
22 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 '" ' Lo, I must tell a tale of chivalry, 
 
 For large white plumes are dancing in mine eyes.' ""' 
 
 And so the "large white plumes" blinded his eyes to 
 the fear and the dread that were in the hearts of the people, 
 and he tells his readers nothing of the sadness that men 
 felt who put in crops knowing that their wives must culti- 
 vate and harvest them. He sees only the glory of it; for 
 we read : " Hail to the spirit of mighty Mars. When he 
 strode through our peaceful village, he awoke many a war 
 song in our breasts. As for our hero. Mars, the war god 
 forged iron reeds for his lute, and he breathed into it the 
 spirit of the age, and all the valour, all the chivalry of a 
 golden day came pouring out of his impassioned reeds." 
 Such is the magic of those la,rge white plumes on Martin 
 Culpepper's memory. Although John Barclay in that 
 latter day bought a thousand copies of the Biography and 
 sent them to public libraries all over the world, he smiled 
 as he read that paragraph referring to Watts McHurdie's 
 accordion as the " impassioned reeds." When he read it, 
 John Barclay, grown to a man of fifty-three, sitting at a 
 great mahogany table, with a tablet of white paper on a 
 green blotting pad before him, and a gorgeous rose rising 
 from a tall graceful green vase on the shining table, looked 
 out over a brown wilderness of roofs and chimneys across 
 a broad river into the hills that were green afar off, and 
 there, rising out of yesterday, he saw, not the bent little 
 old man in the harness shop with steel-rimmed spectacles 
 and greasy cap, whom you may see to-day; but Instead, 
 the boy in John Barclay's soul looked through his eyes, 
 and he saw another Watts McHurdie, — a dapper little 
 fellow under a wide slouch hat, with a rolling Byronio 
 collar, and fancy yellow waistcoat of the period, in ex- 
 ceedingly tight trousers. And then, flash I the picture 
 changed, and Barclay saw Watts McHurdie under his 
 mushroom hat; Martin Culpepper in his long-tailed coat; 
 Philemon Ward, tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, slim, and 
 sturdy; skinny, nervous Lycurgus Mason and husky Ga- 
 briel Gamine from Minneola; Jake Dolan inhis shirt sleeves, 
 without adornment of any kind, except the gold horsesho^ 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 23 
 
 pinned on his shirt bosom; Daniel Frye, the pride of an 
 admiring family, in his best home-made clothes; Henry 
 Schnitzler, Oscar Fernald, and nearly a hundred other 
 men, to the boy's eyes so familiar then, now forgotten, and 
 all their faces blurred in the crowd that stood about the 
 recruiting oificer by the town pump in Sycamore Ridge that 
 summer day of '61. A score or so of men had passed 
 muster. The line ou the post at the wooden awning in 
 front of Schnitzler's saloon was marked at five feet six. 
 All had stood by it with their heads above the line. It 
 was Watts McHurdie's turn. He wore high-heeled boots 
 for the occasion, but strut as he would, his reached hair 
 would not touch the stick that came over the line. " Stretch 
 your neck — ye bantam," laughed Jake Dolan. " Walk 
 turkey fashion, Watts," cried Henry Schnitzler, rushing 
 up behind Watts and grabbing his waistband. The crowd 
 roared. Watts looked imploringly at the recruiting officer 
 and blubbered in wrath: "Yes, damn you — yes ; that's 
 right. Of course ; you won't let me die for my bleedin' 
 country because I ain't nine feet tall." And the little 
 man turned away trying to choke his tears and raging at 
 his failure. And because the recruiting officer was con- 
 siderable of a man. Watts McHurdie's name was written 
 in the muster roll, and he went out. 
 
 Many days must have passed between the time when 
 the men were mustered in and the day they went away to 
 the war. But to the man who saw those times through the 
 memory of the boy in blue jeans forever playing bugle- 
 calls upon his fife, it was all one day. For that crowd 
 dissolved, and another picture appeared upon the sensitized 
 plate of his memory. There is a crowd in the post-office 
 — mostly men who are going away to war. The stage 
 has come in, and a stranger, better dressed than the men 
 of Sycamore Ridge, is behind the letter-boxes of the post- 
 office. The boy is watching his box ; for it is the day 
 when the Springfield Republican is due. Gradually the 
 hum in front of the boxes quiets, and two loud voices have 
 risen behind the screen. Then out walks great Martin 
 Culpepper, white of face, with pent-up fury. His left 
 
24 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 hand is clutched like a talon in the shoulder of the stranger, 
 whom Martin is holding before him. " Gentlemen, your 
 attention," demands Culpepper. The stranger swallows 
 his Adam's apple as if to speak ; Martin turns to him with, 
 " Don't you say that word again, sir, or I'll wring your 
 neck." Then he proceeds : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, this busybody has come all the way from 
 Washington here to teU me I'm a thief. I wrote to his 
 damn Yankee government that I was needing the money 
 last winter to go East on the aid committee and would 
 replace it, and now that I'm going out to-morrow to die for 
 his damn Yankee government, he has the impertinence to 
 come in here and say I stole that money. Now what I 
 want to ask you, gentlemen, is this : Do I go out to-morrow 
 to die on the field of glory for my country, or does this here 
 little contemptible whippersnapper take me off to rot in 
 some Yankee jail ? I leave it to you, gentlemen. Settle 
 it for yourselves." And with that Culpepper throws the 
 man into the crowd and walks behind the screen in solemn 
 state. 
 
 The boy never knew how it was settled. But Martin 
 Culpepper went to " the field of glory, " and all the boy 
 knew of the incident is here recorded. However, in the 
 Biography of Watts McHurdie above-mentioned and afore- 
 said occur these words, in the same chapter — the one 
 entitled " The Large White Plumes " : " Let memory with 
 gentle hand cover with her black curtain of soft oblivion all 
 that was painful on that glorious day. Let us not recall 
 the bickerings and the strifes, let the grass watered by 
 Lethe's sweet spring creep over the scars in the bright pros- 
 pect which lies under our loving gaze. Let us hold in our 
 heart the tears in beauty's eyes ; the smile that curls her 
 crimson lips, and the hope that burns upon her brow. Let 
 us fondle the sacred memory of every warm hand clasp of 
 comrade and take to the silent grave the ever green garland 
 of love that adorned our hearts that day. For the sordid 
 thorns that pierced our bleeding hearts — what are they 
 but ashes to-day, blown on the winds of yesterday ? " 
 
 What indeed, Martin Culpepper — what indeed, smiled 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 25 
 
 John Barclay as he reached for the rose on his broad ma- 
 hogany desk across forty long years, and looking through 
 a wide window, saw on the blank wall of a great hulk of a 
 building half a mile away, the fine strong figure of a man 
 with black shaggy hair on his young leonine head rise and 
 wave his handkerchief to a woman with tears running down 
 her face and anguish in her eyes, standing in a swarm of 
 children. What indeed are sordid thorns when the " large 
 white plumes are dancing " — what indeed? 
 
 That was a busy night in Sycamore Ridge — the night 
 before the men left for war in the summer of '61. And 
 the busiest man in all the town was Philemon R. Ward. 
 Every man in the town was going, and most of the men 
 were going who lived in the county — an area as large as 
 a New England state, and yet when they were all gathered 
 in Main Street, there were less than fivescore of them. 
 They had agreed to elect Ward captain, Martin Culpepper 
 first lieutenant, Jake Dolan second lieutenant. It was one 
 of the diversions of the occasion to call out " Hello, Cap," 
 when Ward hustled by a loitering crowd. But his pride 
 was in his work, and before sundown he had it done. The 
 Yankee in him gave him industry and method and fore- 
 sight. At sunset the last of the twenty teams and wagons 
 he had ordered came rattling down the hill west of town, 
 driven by Gabriel Carnine of Minneola, with Mrs. 
 Lycurgus Mason sitting like a war goddess on the back 
 seat holding Lycurgus, a spoil of battle, while he held 
 their daughter on his lap, withal a martial family party. 
 Mrs. Barclay and Miss Lucy went to the aid store-room 
 and worked the long night through, getting breakfast for 
 the men. Mary Murphy and Nellie Logan came from the 
 Thayer House to the aid room when the hotel dishes were 
 washed, and helped with the work. And while they were 
 there the Culpeppers walked in, returning from a neigh- 
 bourly visit to Miss Hendricks ; John Barclay in an apron, 
 stirring a boiling pot of dried apples, turned his back on 
 the eyes that charmed him, but when the women §ent him 
 for a bucket of water, he shook the handle at Ellen Cul- 
 pepper and beckoned her with a finger, and they slipped 
 
26 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 out into the moonlight together. She had hold of the 
 handle of the bucket with him, and they pulled and hauled 
 and laughed as boy and girl will laugh so long as the 
 world turns round. The street was deserted, and only the 
 bar of light that fell across the sidewalk from Schnitzler's 
 saloon indicated the presence of human beings in the little 
 low buildings that pent in the highway. The boy and 
 the girl stood at the pump, and the boy stuck a foot in the 
 horse trough. He made a wet silhouette of it on the stone 
 beneath him, and reached for the handle of the pump. 
 Then he said, " I got somepin I won't tell." 
 
 " Three little niggers in a peanut shell," replied the girl. 
 
 " All right. Miss Cuteness. All right for you ; I was 
 going to tell you somepin, but I won't now." He gave 
 the pump-handle a pull. It was limp and did not respond 
 with water. "Ellen — " the boy repeated as he worked 
 the handle, "I got somepin to teU you. Honest I have." 
 
 " I don't care, Mr. Smarty," the girl replied ; she made 
 a motion as if to walk away, but did not. The boy 
 noticed it and said, "Yes, -sir — it*s somepin you'd like to 
 know." The girl did not turn round. The boy, who had 
 been working with the wheezy pump, was holding the 
 handle up, and water was gurgling down the well. And 
 before she could answer he said, "Say, Ellen — don't 
 be mad; honest I got somepin." 
 
 " Who's it about ? " she asked over her shoulder. 
 
 "Me." 
 
 " That's not much — who else ? " 
 
 "Elmer Hendricks!" 
 
 " Who else ? " The girl was halfway turned around 
 when she spoke. 
 
 "Bob — Bob Hendricks," replied the boy. 
 
 "Aw — Bob Hendricks — " returned the girl, in con- 
 tempt. Then she faced the boy and said, " What is it ? " 
 
 " Come here 'n' I'll tell you." 
 
 " I'll come this far." The girl took two steps. 
 
 " I got to whisper it, and you can't hear." 
 
 " Well, 'tain't much." The girl dangled one bare foot 
 hesitatingly. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 27 
 
 " I'll come halfway," she added. 
 
 The boy made a mark in the dust of the road a few 
 feet from him with his toe, and said, "Come to there." 
 
 The girl shook her head, and spoke. " Tell me part — 
 'n' I'll see if it's good." 
 
 " Me and Elmer an' Bob are goin' to run away ! " The 
 girl stepped to the toe mark and cried, " What ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir — in the mornin'." He caught hold of the 
 girl's arm awkwardly and swung her around to the op- 
 posite side of the pump-handle, and put her hands on it 
 and began to pump. She pumped with him as he puffed 
 between the strokes, "Um' huh — we're going to hide 
 in the provision wagons, under some saddles they is there 
 and go — to — war ! " The water was pouring into the 
 bucket by the time he had got this out. Their hands 
 touched on the pump-handle. It was the boy who drew 
 his hand away. The girl gasped: — 
 
 " Why, John Barclay, — it ain't no such thing — does 
 your ma know it ? " 
 
 He told her that no one knew it but her, and they 
 pumped in silence until the bucket was full, and walking 
 back carrying the bucket between them, he told her an- 
 other secret: that Watts McHurdie had asked John to 
 get his guitar after midnight, and play an accompaniment 
 to the accordion, and that Watts and Ward and Jake 
 Dolan and Gabriel Carnine were going out serenading. 
 Further he told her that Watts was going to serenade 
 Nellie Logan at the Thayer House, and that Gabriel 
 Carnine was going to serenade Mary Murphy, and that 
 Philemon Ward was going to serenade Miss Lucy, and 
 that he, John Barclay, had suggested that it would be fine 
 to serenade Mrs. Culpepper, because she was such a nice 
 woman, and they agreed that if he would bring his guitar, 
 they would I 
 
 When the boy and girl returned to the store, Ward and 
 Miss Lucy went to the Barclay home for the guitar. 
 When they came back, Mrs. Barclay noted a pink welt 
 on one of Ward's fingers where his cameo ririg had been, 
 and she observed that from time to time Miss Lucy kept 
 
28 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 feeling of her hair as if to smooth it. It was long after 
 midnight before the girls from the hotel went home, and 
 Miss Lucy and Mrs. Barclay lay on the counter in the 
 store, trying to sleep. They awoke with the sound of 
 music in their ears, and Miss Lucy said, "It's Captain 
 Ward — and the other boys, serenading us." They 
 heard the high tenor voice of Watts McHurdie and the 
 strong clear voice of Ward rising above the accordion 
 and guitar : — 
 
 " For her voice is on the breeze, 
 Her spirit comes at will, 
 At midnight on the seas 
 
 Her bright smile haunts me still." 
 
 And underneath these high voices was the gruff bass voice 
 of Gabriel Gamine and the baritone of Jake Dolan. And 
 when Mrs. Barclay heard the piping treble of her son, 
 and the tinkle of his guitar, her eyes filled with tears of 
 pride. 
 
 The serenaders waked the chickens, and the crowing 
 roosters roused Mrs. Barclay, and in the hurry of the 
 hour she forgot to look for her son. As " the gray dawn 
 was breaking," a hundred men came into the room, and 
 found the smoking breakfast on the table. It was a 
 good breakfast as breakfasts go when men are hungry. 
 But they sat in silence that morning. The song was all 
 out of them ; the spring of youth was crushed under the 
 weight of great events. And as they rose — they who 
 had been so merry the day before, and had joked of the 
 things the soldier fears, they were all but mute, and left 
 their breakfasts scarcely tasted. 
 
 The women remember this, — the telltale sign of the 
 untouched breakfast, — and their memory is better than 
 that of Martin Culpepper, who wrote in that plumy chap- 
 ter of the Biography, before mentioned : — 
 
 " The soldiers left their homes that beautiful August 
 morning as the sun was kissing the tips of the sycamore 
 that gave the magnificent little city its name. They had 
 partaken abundantly of a bountiful breakfast, and as they 
 satisfied their inner man from a table groaning with good 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 29 
 
 things prepared by the fair hands of the gentler sex, the 
 gallant men rose with song and cheer, and went on their 
 happy way where duty and honour called them." 
 
 But the women who scraped the plates that morning 
 knew the truth. One wonders how much of history 
 would be thrown out as worthless, like Martin Culpep- 
 per's fine writing, if the women who scraped the plates 
 might testify. For those "large white plumes" do not 
 dance in women's eyes I 
 
 After breakfast the men tumbled into the wagons, and 
 as one wagon after another rattled out of Fernald's 
 feed lot and came down the street, the men waved their 
 hats and the women waved their aprons, and a great cloud 
 of dust rose on the highway, and as the wagons ducked 
 down the bank to the river, only the tall figure of Martin 
 Culpepper, waving his handkerchief, rose above the cloud. 
 At the end of the line was a provision wagon, and on it 
 rode Philemon Ward — Yankee in his greatest moment, 
 scorning the heroic place in the van, and looking after 
 the substantial. , In the feed lot, just as the reins were 
 in his hands, Ward saw Elmer Hendricks' foot peeping 
 from under a saddle. Ward dragged the boy out, spank- 
 ing him as he came over the end gate, and noted the 
 sheepish smile on his face. Ten days later, as Ward, 
 marching in the infantry, was going up a hill through the 
 timber at the battle of Wilson's Creek, that same boy 
 rode by with the cavalry, and seeing Ward, waved a car- 
 bine and smiled as he charged the brow of the hill. That 
 night, going back under the stars, Ward stumbled over a 
 body, and stooping, saw the smile still on the boy's face, 
 and the carbine clutched in his hand. But for the hole 
 through the boyish brow, the eyes might still have been 
 laughing. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A FEW years ago, in the room of the great mahogany 
 table, with its clean blotting pad, its writing tablet, and 
 its superb rose rising from a green vase in the midst of the 
 shining unlittered expanse, there was a plain, heavy ma- 
 hogany wainscoting reaching chin-high to the average man. 
 A few soft-toned pictures adorned the dull gray walls 
 above the wainscoting, and directly over a massive desk 
 that never was seen open hung a framed letter. The 
 letter was written on blue-lined paper in red pokeberry 
 ink. At the top of the letter was the advertisement of a 
 hotel, done in quaint, old-fashioned, fancy script with 
 many curly-cues and printers' ornaments. The adver- 
 tisement set forth that the Thayer House at Sycamore 
 Ridge was " First class in every particular," and that "Es- 
 pecial attention was paid to transient custom." On aline 
 in the right-hand corner the reader was notified that the 
 tavern was founded by the Emigrant Aid Society, and 
 balancing this line, in the left-hand corner, were these 
 words : " The only livery-stable west of Lawrence." John 
 Barclay's eyes have read it a thousand times, and yet he 
 always smiled when he scanned the letter that followed 
 the advertisement. The letter read : — 
 
 " Dear Ma I am going to war. Doan crye. Iff father 
 was here he wood go ; so why should not I. I will be 
 very caerfuU not to get hurt & stay by Cap Ward all the 
 time. So godby yours truly J. Barclay Jr." 
 
 It was five hours after the soldiers had gone when Mrs. 
 Barclay came home from her work in the aid room, and the 
 first thing that attracted her attention was her son's letter, 
 lying folded on the table. When she read it, she ran with 
 the open letter across the common to the town. It was a 
 woman's town that morning, — not a man was left in it, — 
 for Ezra Lane, the only old man living in the Ridge, had 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 31 
 
 left Freedom's Banner to shift for itself while he rode to 
 Leavenworth with the soldiers to bring back the teams; and 
 when Mrs. Barclay came into the street, she found some 
 small stir there, made by Miss Hendricks — the only mother 
 the Hendricks boys remembered — who was inquiring for 
 her lost boys. Mrs. Barclay displayed her note, and in a 
 moment the whole population of Sycamore Ridge, with 
 hands under its aprons, was standing in front of the post- 
 office. Then Ellen Culpepper found her tongue, and Mrs. 
 Barclay began to look for. a horse. Elmer Hendricks' pony 
 in the pasture was the only horse Ward had left within 
 twenty miles. When Ellen Culpepper and her little sister 
 Molly came back from the pasture and announced that 
 Elmer's pony was gone also, the women, surmised that he 
 had taken it with him, for they could not know that after 
 he was spanked from the provision wagon, he had slipped 
 out to the pasture and ridden by a circuitous route to the 
 main road. 
 
 It was Captain Ward, dismounting^ from his driver's 
 seat on the provision wagon at noon, who discovered two 
 boys : a little boy eleven years old in a dead faint, and a 
 bigger boy panting with the heat. They threw cold 
 spring water on John Barclay's face, and finally his eyes 
 opened, and he grinned as he whispered, " Hullo, Captain," 
 to the man bending over him. The man held water to 
 the boy's lips, and he sipped a little and swam out into the 
 blackness again, and then the man reappeared and the 
 boy tried to smile and whispered, " Aw — I'm all right." 
 They saw he was coming out of his faint, and one by one 
 the crowd dropped away from him ; but Ward stayed, and 
 when the child could speak, he replied to Ward's question, 
 "'Cause I wanted to." And then again when the ques- 
 tion was repeated, the boy said, " I tell you 'cause I wanted 
 to." He shook his head feebly and grinned again and 
 tried to rise, but the man gently held him down, and kept 
 bathing his temples with cold water from the spring be- 
 side them. Finally, when the man seemed a little harsh in 
 his questions, the boy's eyes brimmed and he said : " Whur'd 
 my pa be if he was alive to-day ? I just guess I got as 
 
32 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 mucli right here as you have." He made a funny little 
 picture lying on the lush grass by the spring in the woods; 
 his browned face, washed clean on the forehead and tem- 
 ples, showed almost white under the dirt. There were 
 tear-stained rings about the eyes, and his pink shirt and 
 blue trousers were grimy with dust, and the red clay of 
 the Sycamore still was on the sides of his dust-brown bare 
 feet. Around a big toe was a rag which showed a woman's 
 tying — neat and firm but red with clay. 
 
 Ward left, and Bob Hendricks came and stood over the 
 prostrate boy. Bob was carrying a bucket of water to the 
 cook as a peace offering. 
 
 " What did they do ? " asked the boy on the ground. 
 
 " Just shook me — and then said f ather'd tend to me for 
 this." The boys exchanged comments on the situation 
 without words, and then Bob said as he drew the dripping 
 bucket from the spring, " We're going clear on to Leaven- 
 worth, and they say then we've got to come back with 
 Ezra Lane and the teams." 
 
 The boy on the ground raised himself by rolling over 
 and catching hold of a sapling. He panted a moment, and 
 "I'll bet y' I don't." The other boy went away with a 
 weak " Me neither," thrown over his shoulder. 
 
 During that long afternoon, and all the next day and 
 the next, the boys ran from wagon to wagon, climbing 
 over end gates, wriggling among the men, running with 
 the horses through the shady woods, paddling in the fords, 
 and only refusing to move when the men got out of the 
 wagons and walked up the long clay hills that rise above the 
 Kaw River. At night they camped by the prairie streams, 
 and the men sang and wondered what they were doing at 
 home, and Philemon Ward took John Barclay out into the 
 silence of the woods and made him say his prayers. And 
 Ward would look toward the west and say, " Well, Johnnie, 
 — there's home," and once they stood in an open place in 
 the timber, and Ward gazed at a bright star sinking in the 
 west, and said, "I guess that's about over Sycamore 
 Ridge." They went on, and the boy, looking back to see 
 why the man had stopped, caught him throwing a kiss at 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 33 
 
 the star. And they could not know, as they walked back 
 together through the woods abashed, that two women sit- 
 ting before a cabin door under a sycamore tree were look- 
 ing at an eastern star, and one threw kisses at it unashamed 
 while the other wept. And on other nights, many other 
 nights, the two. Miss Lucy and Mrs. Barclay, sat looking 
 at their star while the terror in their hearts made their 
 lips mute. God makes men brave who staqd where bullets 
 fly, yet always they can run away. But God seems to give 
 no alternative to women at home who have to wait and 
 dread. 
 
 Forty years later John Barclay took from a box in a 
 safety vault back of his office in the city a newspaper. It 
 was the Sycamore Ridge Banner, yellow and creased and 
 pungent with age. " This," he said to Senator Myton, 
 spreading the wrinkled sheet out on the mahogany table^ 
 "this is my enlistment paper." He smiled as he read 
 aloud : — 
 
 "At noon of our first day out we came across two stow- 
 aways. Hendricks, aged twelve, son of our well-known 
 and popular Mayor, and J. Barclay, aged eleven, son of 
 Mrs. M. Barclay, who, owing to the suddenness of the de- 
 parture of our troops for the seat of war in Missouri, and 
 certain business delays made necessary in ye editor's re- 
 turn, were slipped out with our company rather than left 
 in the rough and uncertain city of Leavenworth. They 
 are called by the boys of ' C ' company respectively ' the 
 little sergeant and the little corporal. Good Luck boys.' " 
 
 A little farther down the column was this paragraph : 
 
 " Aug. 2nd we went into camp on Sugar Creek, and some 
 sport was had by the men who went in bathing, taking the 
 horses with them." 
 
 " Ever go in swimming with the horses, Senator ? " asked 
 Barclay. The senator shook his head doubtfully. 
 
 " Well — you haven't. For if you had you'd remember 
 it," answered Barclay, and a hundred naked young men 
 and two skinny, bony boys splashed and yelled and ducked 
 and wrestled and locked their strong wet arms about the 
 necks of the plunging horses and dived under them, and 
 
34 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 rolled across them and played with them like young satyrs 
 in the cool water under the overhanging elms with the 
 stars twinkling in the shining mahogany as Barclay folded 
 the paper and put it away. He thrummed the polished 
 surface a moment and looked back into the past to see 
 Philemon Ward straight, lean, and glistening like a god 
 standing on a horse ready to dive, and as he huddled, 
 crouched for the leap, Barclay said, " Well, come on. Sen- 
 ator, we must go to lunch now." 
 
 It was late in the afternoon of their third day's journey 
 that the men from Sycamore Ridge rode in close order, 
 singing, through the streets of Leavenworth. Watts Mc- 
 Hurdie was playing his accordion, and the people turned 
 to look at the uncouth crowd in civilian's clothes that 
 went bellowing " O My Darling Nellie Gray," across the 
 town and out to the Fort. Ezra Lane promised to call 
 at the Fort for the two boys and with drivers for the 
 teams early the next morning — but to Sycamore Ridge, 
 Leavenworth in those days was the great city with its 
 pitfalls, and when Ezra Lane, grizzled though he was, 
 came to a realizing sense of his responsibilities, the next 
 day was gone and the third was waning. When he 
 went to the Fort, he found the Sycamore Ridge men had 
 been hurried into Missouri to meet General Price, who 
 was threatening Springfield, and no word had been left 
 for him about the boys. As he left the gate at the 
 Fort, a troop of cavalry rode by gaily, and a boy, a big 
 overgrown fourteen-year-old boy in a blue uniform, passed 
 and waved his hand at the befuddled old man, and cried, 
 " Good-by, Mr. Lane, — tell 'em you saw me." He knew 
 the boy was from Sycamore Ridge, but he knew also 
 that he was not one of the boys who had come with the 
 soldiers; and being an old man, far removed from the boy 
 world, he could not place the child in his blue uniform, 
 so he drove away puzzled. 
 
 The afternoon the men from Sycamore Ridge came to 
 Leavenworth they were hurriedly examined again, signed 
 the muster rolls, and were sent away without uniforms 
 all in twenty-four hours. But not before they had found 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 35 
 
 time to have their pictures taken in borrowed regimentals. 
 For twenty years after the war the daguerreotypes of the 
 soldiers taken at Leavenworth that day were the proudest 
 adornments of the centre-tables of Sycamore Ridge, and 
 even now on Lincoln Avenue, in a little white cottage 
 with green blinds, that sits in a broad smooth lawn with 
 elm trees on it, stands an easel. On the easel is a picture 
 
 — an enlarged crayon drawing of a straight, handsome 
 young fellow in a captain's uniform. One hand is in his 
 coat, and the other at his hip. His head is thrown back 
 with a fierce determination into the photographer's iron 
 rest and all together the picture is marked with the wrin- 
 kled front of war. For over one corner of the easel hangs 
 a sword with an ivory handle, and upon it is an inscrip- 
 tion proclaiming the fact that the sword was presented 
 to Captain Philemon R. Ward by his company for 
 gallant conduct on the field of battle on the night of 
 August 4, 1861. Above the easel in the corner hangs 
 another picture — that of a sweet-faced old man of seventy, 
 beaming rather benignly over his white lawn necktie. The 
 forty-five years that have passed between the two faces 
 have trimmed the hair away from the temples and the brow, 
 have softened the mouth, and have put patience into the 
 eyes — the patience of a great faith often tried but never 
 broken. The five young women of the household know 
 that the crayon portrait on the bamboo easel is highly im- 
 proper as a parlour ornament — for do they not teach school, 
 and do they not take all the educational journals and the 
 crafty magazines of art ? But the hand that put it there 
 was proud of its handiwork, and she who hung the sword 
 upon the easel is gone away, so the girls smile at the fierce 
 young boyish face in the picture as they pass it, and throw 
 a kiss at the face above it, and the easel is not moved. 
 
 And the man, — the tall old man with a slight stoop in 
 his shoulders, the old man who wears the alpaca coat and 
 the white lawn tie seen in the upper picture, — sometimes 
 he wanders into the stately front room with a finger in a 
 census bulletin as a problem in his head creases his brow 
 
 — and the sight of the sword always makes him smile, and 
 
36 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 sometimes the smile is a chuckle that stirs the cockles of 
 his heart. 
 
 For his mind goes back to that summer night of August 
 4, 1861, and he sees himself riding on a horse with a little 
 boy behind with his arms in the soldier's belt. It is dusk, 
 and " C " Company on foot is filing down a Missouri hill. 
 It is a muddy road, and the men are tired and dirty. There 
 is no singing now. A man driving an ox team has turned 
 out of the road to let the soldiers pass. Some one in the 
 line asks the man, " Where's Price ? " 
 
 " Over the hill yonder," replies the man, pointing with 
 his hickory whip-stock. The word buzzes up and down 
 the line. The captain on his horse with the boy clutch- 
 ing at his belt does not hear it. But the line lags and 
 finally halts. The men have been only two days under 
 military discipline. That day last week Phil Ward — 
 who was he, anyway ? Henry Schnitzler and Oscar Fer- 
 nald could have bought him and sold him twice over. 
 So the line halted. Then the captain halted. Then he 
 called Second Lieutenant Dolan and asked to know what 
 was the matter. " They say they are going to camp," 
 responded Dolan, touching his cap. Captain Ward's face 
 flushed. He told Dolan to give the order to march. 
 There were shouts and laughter, and Gabriel Carnine 
 cried, " Say, Phil, this here Missourian we passed says old 
 General Price is over that hill." The boys laughed again, 
 and Ward saw that trouble was before him. The men 
 stood waiting while he controlled his rage before he spoke. 
 Dolan said under his breath from the ground beside the 
 horse, " They're awful tired. Cap, and they don't want to 
 tackle Price's army all by their lonelies." Some one in 
 the company called out, " We've voted on this thing. Cap. 
 Don't the majority rule in this country ? " 
 
 A smile twitched at Ward's mouth and the boy in him 
 pricked a twinkle in his eyes, for he was only twenty-six, 
 and he laughed — threw his head back and then leaned 
 over and slapped the horse's neck and finally stJaight- 
 ened up and said, » Gentlemen, I bow to the will of, the 
 people." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 37 
 
 And so it happened that when they drew their first 
 month's pay, Martin Culpepper and Jake Dolan sug- 
 gested to the company that they buy Ward a sword to 
 commemorate the victory of the people. And Martin 
 Culpepper made a great presentation speech in which he 
 said that to the infantry, cavalry, and artillery arms of 
 military service, " " Company had added the " vox populi." 
 But the night after the presentation Oscar Fernald and 
 Watts McHurdie crawled under the captain's tent and 
 stole the sword and pawned it for beer, and there was 
 a sound of revelry by night. 
 
 When they found the great camp near Springfield, it 
 seemed to John Barclay that all the soldiers in the world 
 were gathered. It is difficult for a boy under a dozen years 
 to remember things consecutively ; because boys do not do 
 things consecutively. They flit around like butterflies, and 
 BO the picture that they make of events jumps from scene 
 to scene. One film on a roll of John's memory showed a 
 hot August day in the camp of " C " Company ; the men 
 are hurrying about the place. The tents are down ; the 
 boys — John and Bob — are kicking around the vacant 
 camp looking for trophies. But there the film broke 
 and did not record the fact that Captain Ward put Bob 
 and John on a commissary wagon that stood in a side 
 street as the soldiers moved out. John remembered 
 looking into a street filled with marching soldiers. First 
 the regidars and the artillery came swinging down the 
 street. At their head the boy saw General Lyon, the 
 commanding officer,, and around him was a body-guard 
 whose plumed hats, with the left brim pinned up, caught 
 the boys' eyes. The regulars marched by silently. It 
 was part of their day's work ; but following them came a 
 detachment of Germans singing " Marchen Rote," and 
 then the battery of six guns and then the Kansans. 
 Small wonder Captain Gordon Granger told Colonel 
 Mitchel that the Kansas soldiers were only an armed 
 mob. They filed out of Springfield, some in rags and 
 some in tags and some in velvet gowns. They carried 
 guns ; but they looked like delegates to a convention, 
 
38 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 and as the boys saw their own company, they waved 
 their hands, but they were almost ashamed of the shabby 
 clothes of the men from Sycamore Ridge ; for a boy 
 always notices clothes on others. When the Germans 
 stopped singing " Marchen Rote," the boys heard Watts 
 McHurdie's high tenor voice start up " The Dutch Com- 
 panee," and the crowd that was lining the street cheered 
 and cheered. A Missouri regiment followed and more 
 regulars, and then a battery of four guns passed, and then 
 came more Kansans still going to that everlasting con- 
 vention. And a band came roaring by, — with its crash- 
 ing brass and rumbling drums, — and then after the band 
 had turned the corner, came Iowa in gray blouses and 
 such other garments as the clothes-lines of the country 
 afforded. They were singing as they passed — a song 
 the boy had never heard, being all about the " happy land 
 of Canaan." And before the sun had set again, after that 
 night, hundreds of those who sang of the happy land were 
 there. In the rear were the ambulances and the ammuni- 
 tion and the hospital vans, and the wagon which held the 
 boys wheeled into the line. After they had passed, the 
 streets were clogged with carts and drays and wagons of 
 all sorts, for the citizens were moving to places of safety. 
 As a man, the boy's memory did not tell him how the 
 boys fared, but he does remember that it was dark in the 
 timber where they camped that night, and that they slipped 
 away into the woods to lie down together. The chirping 
 of the birds at dawn wakened them, and as John sat up 
 rubbing his 6yes, he heard a rifle's crack. They were at 
 the edge of a field, and half a mile from him, troops were 
 marching by columns across a clearing. The rifle-shot 
 was followed by another, and another, and then by a half- 
 dozen. " Wake up. Bob — wake up — they's a battle," he 
 cried, and the two boys stumbled to their feet. The shots 
 were far in front of the marching soldiers, and the boys 
 could not make out what the firing meant. The line 
 formed and ran up the hill, and the boys saw the morning 
 sun flashing on the guns of the enemy. The battery roared, 
 and the boys were filled with terror. They ran through 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 39 
 
 the woods lite dogs until they came to the soldiers from 
 Sycamore Ridge. The boys crawled on their bellies to 
 their friends, and lay with their faces all but buried in 
 the ground. The men were lying at the edge of the tim- 
 ber talking, and Watts McHurdie was on his back. 
 
 " What's the matter with you. Watts ? " asked Oscar 
 Fernald. 
 
 " Os," replied Watts, " I got a presentiment I'm goin' 
 to be shot in the rear. It will kill me to be shot in the 
 back, and I've got a notion that's how I am goin' to die." 
 
 The line laughed. Captain Ward, who was sitting a 
 few paces in the rear of the men, went over to Watts, and 
 scuffled the man over with his foot. A bullet went through 
 Ward's hat before he got back to his place. The men were 
 sticking up ramrods and betting on the number of minutes 
 they would last. No ramrod stood more than ten minutes. 
 Martin Culpepper threw up his hat five times before a bul- 
 let hit it; but he went bareheaded the rest of the day, 
 and John Barclay, in sheer fear, began to dig a hole und6r 
 him. After he had been on his belly for an hour, Henry 
 Schnitzler got tired and rose. The men begged him to lie 
 down. But his only reply when they told him he was a fool 
 was," Veil, vot of it?" And when they said he would be 
 shot, he answered again, " Veil, vot of it ? " And when 
 Jake Dolan cried, " You pot-gutted Dutchman, sit down 
 or there'll be a sauer-kraut shower in hell pretty quick," 
 Henry shook his fat sides a moment and laughed, " Veil, 
 vot of dot — altzo 1 " For an hour, that seemed ten, he 
 moved back and forth on the line, firing and joking, and 
 then the speU broke and a bullet took part of his jaw. As 
 he dropped to his position, with the blood gushing from 
 his face, his eyes blazed, and he spat out, " By hell-tam, 
 now I vos mad," and he fought the day out and died that 
 night. But as he sank to his place when the bullet hit 
 him. Watts McHurdie saw Schnitzler stagger, and through 
 the smoke, knew that he was wounded. Watts rushed to 
 Schnitzler and bent over him, when a ball hit Watts and 
 went ripping through the fleshy part of his hip. " Shot in 
 the back — damn it, shot in the back 1 " he screamed, as 
 
40 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 he jumped into the air. "What did I tell you, boys, 
 I'm shot in the back." And he crawled bleeding to the 
 rear. 
 
 All the long forenoon the camp of the enemy continued 
 to belch out men. The battery mowed them down, and 
 once the Kansans were ordered to charge the hill, and the 
 boys were left alone. It was there that the two were 
 separated. John saw men sink in awful silence, and the 
 blood ooze from their heads. He saw men cramp in agony 
 and choke with blood, and he saw Martin Culpepper, per- 
 haps with the large white plumes still dancing in his eyes, 
 dash out of the line and pick up a Union banner that Sigel's 
 men had lost, and that the enemy was flaunting just before 
 the artillery mowed the gray line down. He heard the 
 hoarse men cheer Martin, and as the tall swart figure came 
 running back waving the flag, the boy prayed to his father's 
 God to save the man. 
 
 When the battle lulled, the boy found himself parted 
 from " C " Company, and fled back through the woods to the 
 rear. There he came upon a smell that was familiar. He 
 had known it in the slaughter-house at home. It was the 
 smell of fresh blood, and with it came the sickening drone 
 of flies. In an instant he stood under a tree where men 
 were working smeared with blood. He stumbled over a 
 little pile of dismembered legs and hands. A man with a 
 bloody knife was bending over a human form stretched on 
 a bloody and, it seemed to the boy, a greasy table. An- 
 other was helping the big man. They were cutting the 
 bullet out of Watts McHurdie, who was lying white and 
 unconscious and with flies crawling over him, half naked 
 and blood-smeared, on the table. The boy screamed, and 
 the man turned his head and snarled through his clenched 
 teeth that held the knife, " Get out of here — no — go get 
 me a bucket of water from the creek." Some one handed 
 the boy a bucket, and he ran where he was told to go, with 
 the awful sight burned on his brain, with the sickening 
 smell in his nose, and with the drone of flies in his ears. 
 When he came back the firing had begun again. The 
 surgeon was saying, " Well, that's all that's waiting — now 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 41 
 
 I'm going for a minute." He grabbed a gun standing by 
 the table and ran toward the front ; he did not take off 
 his blood-splotched apron, and the boy fled from the place 
 in terror. In a few moments the firing ceased ; but the 
 boy ran on, hunting for a hiding-place. He saw a troop 
 of Alabamians plunge over a log in a charge, and roll 
 in an awful, writhing, screaming pile of dying men and 
 horses, and in the heap he saw the terror-stricken face of 
 a youth, who was shrieking for help ; John carried that 
 fear-distorted face in his memory for years, until long 
 afterwards it appeared in Sycamore Ridge. 
 
 But that day John fled from the death-trap almost mad 
 with fear. Rushing farther into the woods, he came upon 
 General Lyon and his staff. The plumed hats of the body- 
 guard told the boy that the sandy-haired man before him 
 was in command, though the man's face was bloody from 
 a wound in his head, and though his clothes were stained 
 with blood and he was hatless. He sat upright on his 
 horse, and as the boy turned, he heard the voices of Cap- 
 tain Ward and his soldiers, begging to be sent into the 
 fight. It was a clamour fierce and piteous, and the gen- 
 eral had turned his head to the Kansans, when something 
 at the left startled him. There was no firing, and a column 
 of soldiers was approaching. Doubt paralyzed the group 
 around Lyon for a moment. The men wore gray blouses 
 strangely like those the lowans wore. The men might be 
 Sigel's men, coming back from their artillery duel. The 
 general plainly was puzzled. He rode out from the body- 
 guard a few paces. The boy was staring at him, when the 
 body-guard with their gay plumed hats came up, and he 
 saw wrath flash into the general's face as he recognized 
 the enemy. "Shoot them — shoot them — " he shouted. 
 But the gray line vomited its smoke first, and the boy felt 
 his foot afire. The general dropped from his horse, and 
 as the boy looked down, he saw a red blot coming out on 
 his instep. In the same instant he saw Captain Ward rush 
 to the falling general, and saw the body-guard gather 
 about him, and then the blackness came over the child and 
 he fell. He did not see them bear General Lyon's body 
 
42 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 into the brush, nor hear Ward moan his sorrow. But 
 when Ward returned from the thicket, he saw the child 
 lying limp on the grass. 
 
 As Ward ran toward the hospital van carrying the limp 
 little body, he could see that a ball had pierced the boy's 
 foot. Also he saw the men in retreat who had shot Lyon, 
 and all over the field the firing had ceased. As he hurried 
 through the underbrush, Ward ran into Bob Hendricks 
 hiding in the thicket. Ward took the child's hand and 
 he began to sob : " I saw Elmer go up that hill. Captain ; 
 I saw him go up with the horses and he ain't come back." 
 But Ward did not understand him, and hurried the little 
 fellow along with John to the surgeon. 
 
 Then Ward left them, and when John Barclay opened 
 his eyes. Bob Hendricks was sitting beside him. A great 
 lint bandage was about John's foot, and they were in a 
 wagon jolting over a rutty road. He did not speak for a 
 long time, and then he asked, " Did we whip 'em ? " 
 
 And Bob nodded and said, "Cap says so ! " 
 
 The children clasped hands and talked of many things 
 that passed from the boy's mind. But his mind recorded 
 that the next day in the hospital Martin Culpepper said, 
 " Bob can't come to-day, Johnnie ; you know he's tendin' 
 Elmer's funeral." The boy must have opened his eyes, for 
 the man said, " Why, Johnnie, I thought you knew ; yes ; 
 they found him dead that night — right under the reb — 
 under the enemies' guns on the brink of the hill." 
 
 The chUd's eyes filled with tears, but he did not cry. 
 His emotion was spent. The two sat together for a time, 
 and the little boy said, "Why didn't you go, Mr. Cul- 
 pepper?" And the man replied: "Me? Oh — why — 
 Oh, yes, I got a little scratch here in my leg, and they 
 won't let me out of here. There's Watts over there in 
 the next cot; he got a little scratch too — didn't you, 
 Watts?" Watts and the boy smiled at each other, but 
 John did not see Bob again for years. Miss Hendricks 
 came and took him to their father's people in Ohio. 
 
 One day some one came in the hospital where John and 
 Watts and Martin Culpepper were lying, and began to 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 43 
 
 call out mail for the men, and the third name the corporal 
 called was " Captain Martin Culpepper " ; and when they 
 brought him a long official envelope with General Fre- 
 mont's name on it, Martin Culpepper held it in his hands, 
 looked at the inscription, read the word " captain " again 
 and again, and could not speak for choked joy. And tears 
 so dimmed his eyes that he could not see the " large white 
 plumes " of chivalry, but the men in the beds cheered as 
 they heard the words the corporal read. 
 
 With such music as that in his ears, and with his soul 
 stirred by the events about him, Watts McHurdie, lying 
 in the hospital, wrote the song that made him famous. 
 They know in Sycamore Ridge that Watts is not much of 
 a poet, that his rhymes are sometimes bad and his metre 
 worse. But once his heart took fire and burned for a day 
 sheer white, and in that day he wrote words that a nation 
 sang, and now all the world is singing. And they are 
 proud of him, and when people come to Sycamore Ridge 
 on pilgrimages to see the author of the song, men do not 
 smile in wonder; they show the visitors his shop, and 
 point out the bowed little man bending over his bench, 
 stretching his arms out as he sews, and they point him 
 out with pride. Not even John Barclay with all his mill- 
 ions, or Bob Hendricks, who once refused a place in the 
 President's cabinet, are more esteemed in Sycamore Ridge 
 than the little harness maker who set the world to singing. 
 
 And curiously enough, John Barclay was with Watts 
 McHurdie when he wrote the song. They brought him 
 an accordion one day while he was getting well, and the 
 two sat together. Watts droned along and shut his eyes 
 and mumbled some words, and then burst out with the 
 chorus. Over and over he sang it and exclaimed be- 
 tween breaths : " Say — ain't that fine ? I just made it 
 up." He was exalted with his performance, and some 
 women came loitering down the corridor where the 
 wounded man and the boy were lying. The visitors gazed 
 compassionately at them — little Watts not much larger 
 than the boy. A woman asked, "And where were you 
 wounded, son ? " looking at Watts with his accordion. 
 
44 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 His face flushed up at the thought of his shame, and he 
 could not keep back the tears that always betrayed him 
 when he was deeply moved. "Ten — ten miles from 
 Springfield, madam, ten miles from Springfield." And 
 to hide his embarrassment he began sawing at his ac- 
 cordion, chanting his famous song. But being only a 
 little boy, John Barclay tittered. 
 
 A few days after the battle Captain Ward wrote to 
 Miss Lucy telling her that some soldiers slightly wounded 
 would go home on a furlough to Lawrence, and that they 
 would take John with them and put him on the stage at 
 Lawrence for Sycamore Ridge. Then Ward's letter con- 
 tinued : " It is all so horrible — this curse of war ; some- 
 times I think it is worse than the curse of slavery. There 
 is no 'pomp and circumstance of glorious war.' Men 
 died screaming in agony, or dumb with fear. They were 
 covered with dirt, and when they were dead they merged 
 into the landscape like inanimate things. What vital 
 difference is there between a living man and a dead man, 
 that one stands out in a scene big and obtrusive, and the 
 other begins to fade into the earth as soon as death 
 touches the body ? The horror of death is upon me, and 
 I cannot shake it off. It is a fearful thing to see a hu- 
 man soul pass 'in any shape, in any mood.' And I have 
 seen so many deaths — we lost one man out of every 
 three — that I am all unnerved. I saw General Lyon 
 die — the only abolitionist in the regular army, they say. 
 He died like a soldier — but not as the soldiers die in 
 pictures. He sank off his horse so limp, and so like an 
 animal with its death wound, and gasped so weakly, ' I'm 
 killed — take care of my body,' that when we covered his 
 face and bore him away, we could not realize we were 
 carrying a man's body. And now, my dear, if I should 
 go as these men go, I have neither kith nor kin to mourn 
 me — only you, and you must not mourn, for I shall be 
 near you always and always, without sign or token, and 
 when you feel my presence near, know that it is real, 
 and not a seeming. For the great force of life that moves 
 events in this world has but one symbol, but one vital 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 45 
 
 manifestation, and that is love, and when a soul is 
 touched with that, it is immortal." 
 
 But Martin Culpepper, with his dancing plumes, saw 
 things in another light. Perhaps we always see things 
 in another light when forty years have passed over them. 
 But in his chapter "The Shrill Trump," in the Biog- 
 raphy, he writes : " ' O you mortal engines, whose rude 
 throats the immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,' 
 O for the 'spirit-stirring drum, and the ear-splitting 
 fife' 'in these piping times of peace.' Small wonder it 
 was that with the clang and clank of sabre and artillery 
 in his ears, with the huzzas of comrades and the sparkle 
 of the wine of war in his eyes, our hero wrote the never 
 dying words that made him famous. How the day comes 
 back with all its pageantry, the caparisoned horses, the 
 handsome men stepping to the music of inspiring melody, 
 the clarion commands of the officers, and the steady rum- 
 ble of a thousand feet upon the battle ground, going care- 
 less whether to death or immortality in deathless fame." 
 
 A curious thing is that deathless fame which Martin 
 speaks of — a passing curious thing ; for when word came 
 of Henry Schnitzler's death, Mary Murphy, of the Thayer 
 House, put off Gabriel Carnine's ring, and wept many 
 tears in the stage driver's coffee and wore black in her hat 
 for a year, and when Gabriel came home, she married him 
 and all went as merrily as a wedding-bell. What covert 
 tenderness or dream of gauzy romance was in her memory, 
 the town could never know ; but the Gamines' first boy 
 was named Henry, and for many years after the war, she 
 was known among the men, who do not understand a- 
 woman's heart, as the " War widow by brevet." Yet that" 
 was Henry's " deathless fame " in Sycamore Ridge, for the 
 town has long since forgotten him, and even his name 
 means nothing to our children, who see it on the bronze 
 statue set up by the rich John Barclay to commemorate our 
 soldier dead. 
 
 But John was our first war hero. And when he brought 
 his battle scars home that September night in '61, for hours 
 before the stage drove across Sycamore Creek the boy 
 
46 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 was filled with a nameless dread that he might be 
 spanked. 
 
 They carried him on a cot to his mother's house, and 
 put him in the great carved four-poster bed, and in the 
 morning Miss Lucy came and hovered over him, and they 
 talked of Captain Ward to her heart's content, and the 
 boy told Miss Lucy the gossip of the hospital, — that Cap- 
 tain Ward was to be made a major, — and she kissed him 
 and petted him until he was glad none of the boys was 
 around to see the sickening spectacle. And then Miss 
 Lucy and Mrs. Barclay told the child of their plans, — that 
 Miss Lucy was going to war as a nurse, and that Mrs. 
 Barclay was to teach the Sycamore Ridge school during 
 the winter. And in a few weeks John was out of the 
 hero business, working in Culpepper's store after school, 
 and getting used to a limp that stayed with him all his life. 
 
 The next spring he traded a carbine that he brought 
 home from the army for an Indian pony, and then he began 
 business for himself. He organized the cows of the town 
 into a town herd and took them every morning to pasture 
 on the prairie. All day he rode in the open air, and the 
 town boys came out to play with him, and they explored 
 the cave by his mother's house, and with their sling-shots 
 killed quails and prairie chickens and cooked them, and 
 they played war through the long summer days. But 
 John did not grow as the other boys grew ; he remained 
 undersized, and his limp put him at a disadvantage ; so he 
 had few fights, but he learned cunning, and got his way by 
 strategy rather than by force — but he always had his way. 
 He was strong ; the memory of what he had seen and what 
 he had been that one awful day in the battle made lines 
 on his face ; sometimes at night he would wake screaming, 
 when he dreamed he was running away from the surgeon 
 with the bloody knife in his teeth and that the man was 
 going to throw an arm at him. And when he wished to 
 bring Ellen Culpepper to time he would begin in a low 
 terrorful voice, "And I saw — the man — take — a — 
 g-r-e-a-t 1-o-n-g knife d-r-i-p-p-i-n-g with r-e-d-b-1-o-o-d 
 out of his t-e-e-t-h and go slish, k-slish," but he never got 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 47 
 
 farther than this, for the girl would begin shaking, and if 
 they were alone, would run to him arid grab him and put 
 her hand to his mouth to make him stop. 
 
 And so his twelfth year passed under the open sky in 
 the sunshine in summer and in winter working after 
 school in town where men were wanting, and where a boy 
 could always find work. He grew brown and lean, and 
 as his voice grew squeaky and he sang alto in the school, 
 he became more and more crafty and masterful. The fact 
 that his mother was the teacher, did not give him more 
 rights in school than other boys, for she was a sensible 
 woman, but it gave him a prestige on the playground that 
 he was not slow to take. He was a born trader ; and he 
 kept what he got and got more. His weakness was 
 music. He kept two cows in his herd in the summer 
 time in return for the use of the melodeon at the Thayer 
 House, and moved it to his own home and ptit it in the 
 crowded little room, and practised on it at night when 
 the other boys were loafing at tha town pump. For a 
 consideration in marbles he taught Buck Culpepper the 
 chords in " G " on the guitar, and for further consideration 
 taught him the chords in " D " and " C," and with the aid 
 of Jimmy Fernald, aged nine, and Molly Culpepper, aged 
 eleven, one with a triangle and the other with a pumpkin 
 reed pipe, John organized his Band, which he led with his 
 mouth-organ, and exhibited in Culpepper's barn, appro- 
 priating to himself as the director the pins charged at 
 the door. Forty years afterward, when Molly called his 
 attention to his failure to divide with the children, John 
 Barclay smiled as he lifted his lame foot to a fat leather 
 chair in front of him and said, "That was what we call 
 the promoter's profit." And then the talk ran to Ellen, 
 and John opened his great desk and from a box without 
 a mark on it he brought out a tintype picture of Ellen at 
 fourteen, a pink-cheeked child in short sleeves, with the 
 fringe of her pantalets showing above her red striped 
 stockings and beneath her bulging skirts, and with a 
 stringy, stiff feather rising from the front of her narrow- 
 rimmed hat. 
 
48 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 During the time when he was going to school by day and 
 working evenings and caring for the town herd through 
 the summer, the war was dragging wearily on. Sometimes 
 a soldier came home on a furlough and there was news 
 of the Sycamore Ridge men, but oftener it was a season 
 of waiting and working. The women and children cared 
 for the farms and the stores as best they could and lived, 
 heaven only knows how, and opened every newspaper with 
 horror and dread, and glanced down the long list of names 
 of the dead, the missing and the wounded, fearful of what 
 they might see. Mrs. Barclay heard from Miss Lucy and 
 through her kept track of Philemon Ward, who was trans- 
 ferred to another regiment after he was made major. 
 And when he was made a colonel at Shiloh, there were 
 tear blots on Miss Lucy's letter that told of it, and after 
 Appomattox he was brevetted a general. As for Captain 
 Culpepper, he came home a colonel, and Jake Dolan came 
 home a first lieutenant. But Watts McHurdie came home 
 with a letter from Lincoln about his song, and he was the 
 greatest man of all of them. 
 
 It is odd that Sycamore Ridge grew during the war. 
 Where the people came from, no one could say — yet they 
 came, and young Barclay remembered even during the 
 war of playing in the foundations and running over the 
 rafters of new houses. But when the war closed, the great 
 caravan that had lagged while the war was raging, began 
 to trail itself steadily in front of Mrs. Barclay's door, 
 through the streets of Sycamore Ridge and out over the 
 western hills. Soldiers with their families passed, going 
 to the free homesteads, and the line of movers' wagons 
 began with daybreak and rumbled by far into the night. 
 But hundreds of wagons stopped in Sycamore Ridge, and 
 the stage came crowded every night. Brick buildings, 
 the town's mortal pride, began showing their fronts on 
 Main Street, and other streets in the town began to assert 
 themselves. Mrs. Barclay's school grew from a score of 
 children in 1864 to three rooms fuU in '65, and in '66 the 
 whole town turned out to welcome General and Mrs. 
 Ward, she that was Miss Lucy Barnes, and there was a re- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 49 
 
 union of " C " Company that night, and a camp-fire in Cul- 
 pepper Hall, and the next day Lige Bemis was painting a 
 sign which read " Philemon R. Ward, Attorney-at-Law, 
 Pension Matters Promptly Attended To." And the first 
 little Ward was born at the Thayer House and named Eli 
 Thayer Ward. 
 
 The spring that found John Barclay sixteen years old 
 found him a browned, gray-eyed, lumpy sort of a boy, big 
 at the wrong places, and stunted at the wrong places, with 
 a curious, uneven sort of an education. He knew all 
 about Walden Pond; and he knew his Emerson — and was 
 mad with passion to see the man ; he had travelled over the 
 world with Scott; had crossed the bridge with Caesar in 
 his father's books; had roamed the prairie and the woods 
 with Cooper's Indians; had gone into the hearts of men 
 with Thackeray and Dickens, holding his mother's hand 
 and listening to her voice ; but he knew algebra only as a 
 name, and rhetoric was a dictionary word with him. Of 
 earthly possessions he had two horses, a bill of sale for his 
 melodeon, a saddle, a wagon, a set of harness ; four mouth- 
 organs, one each in " A," " D," " E," and " C," all care- 
 fully rolled in Canton flannel on a shelf above his bed; one 
 concertina, — a sort of German accordion, — five pigs, a cow, 
 and a bull calf. Moreover, there were two rooms in the 
 Barclay home ; and the great rock was gone from the door 
 of the cave, and a wooden door was in its place and the 
 Barclays were using it for a spring-house. The boy had a 
 milk route and sbld butter to the hotel. But the chiefest 
 treasure of the household was John's new music book. 
 And while he played on his melodeon, Ellen Culpepper's 
 eyes smiled from the pages and her voice moved in the 
 melodies, and his heart began to feel the first vague vibra- 
 tion with the great harmony of life. And so the pimples 
 on his chin reddened, and the squeak in his voice began 
 to squawk, and his big milky eyes began to see visions 
 wherein a man was walking through this vain world. As 
 for Ellen Culpepper, her shoe tops were tiptoeing to her 
 skirts, and her eyes were full of dreams of the warrior bold, 
 " with spurs of gold," who " sang merrily his lay." And 
 
60 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 rising from these dreams, she always stepped on her feet. 
 But that was a long time ago, and men and women have 
 been born and loved and married and brought children 
 into the world since then. For it was a long time 
 ago. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The changes of time are hard to realize. One knows, 
 of course, that the old man once was young. One under- 
 stands that the tree once was a sapling, and conversely we 
 know that the child will be a man and the gaunt sapling 
 stuck in the earth in time will become a great spreading 
 tree. But the miracle of growth passes not merely our 
 understanding, but our imagination. 
 
 So though men tell us, and grow black in the face with 
 the vehemence of telling, that the Sycamore Ridge of 
 the sixties — a gray smudge of unpainted wooden houses 
 bordering the Santa Fe trail, with the street merging into 
 the sunflowers a block either way from the pump, — is 
 the town that now lies hidden in the elm forest, with its 
 thirty miles of paving and its scores of acres of wide velvet 
 lawns, with its parks wherein fountains play, guarded 
 by cannon discarded by the pride of modern war, with the 
 court-house on the brink of the hill that once was far 
 west of the town and with twenty-two thousand people 
 whizzing around in trolleys, rattling about in buggies or 
 scooting down the shady avenues in motor-cars — what- 
 ever the records may show, the real truth we know ; the 
 towns are not the same ; the miracle of growth cannot fool 
 us. And yet here is the miracle in the making. Always 
 in John Barclay's eyes when he closed them to think of 
 the first years that followed the war between the states, 
 rose visions of yellow pine and red bricks and the litter and 
 debris of building ; always in his ears as he remembered 
 those days were the confused noises of wagons whining 
 and groaning under their heavy loads, of gnawing saws 
 and rattling hammers, of the clink of trowels on stones, 
 of the swish of mortar in boxes, and of the murmur of the 
 tide of hurrying feet overboard sidewalks, ebbing and flowing 
 night and morning. In those days new boys came to town 
 
52 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 BO rapidly that sometimes John met a boy in swimming 
 whom he did not know, and, even in 1866, when Ellen and 
 Molly Culpepper were giving a birthday party for Ellen, 
 she declared that she " simply couldn't have all the new 
 people there." 
 
 And so in the sixties the boy and the town went through 
 their raw, gawky, ugly adolescence together. As streets 
 formed in the town, ideas took shape in the boy's mind. 
 As Lincoln Avenue was marked out on the hill, where 
 afterward the quality of the town came to live, so in the 
 boy's heart books that told him of the world outlined 
 vague visions. Boy fashion he wrote to Bob Hendricks 
 once or twice a month or a season, as the spirit moved him, 
 and measured everything with the eyes of his absent friend. 
 For he came to idealize Bob, who was out in the wonder- 
 ful world, and their letters in those days were curious 
 compositions — full of adventures by field and wood, and 
 awkward references to proper books to read, and cures for 
 cramps and bashfully expressed aspirations of the soul. 
 Bob's father had become a general, and when the war 
 closed, he was sent west to fight the Indians, and he took 
 Lieutenant Jacob Dolan with him, and Bob sent to John 
 news of the Indian fighting that glorified Bob further. 
 
 And when a letter came to the Ridge from Dolan an- 
 nouncing that he and the Hendricks family were coming 
 back to the Ridge to live, — the general to look after his 
 neglected property, and Dolan to start a livery-stable, — 
 John heard the news with a throb of great joy. When a 
 letter from Bob confirmed the news, John began to count 
 the days. For the love of boys is the most unselfish thing 
 in a selfish world. They met awkwardly and sheepishly 
 at the stage, and greeted each other with grunts, and be- 
 came inseparable. Bob came back tall, lanky, grinny, and 
 rather dumb, and he found John undersized, vriry, master- 
 ful, and rather mooney, but strong and purposeful, for a 
 boy. But each accepted the other as perfect in every 
 detail. 
 
 Nothing Bob did changed John's attitude, and nothing 
 John did made Bob waver in his faith in John. Did the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 53 
 
 boys come to John with a sickening story that Bob's sister 
 made him bring a towel to the swimming hole, John 
 glared at them a moment and then waved them aside with, 
 " Well, you big brutes, — didn't you know what it was 
 for?" When they reported to John that Bob's father 
 was making him tip his hat to the girls, they got, instead 
 of the outbreak of scorn they expected, " Well — did the 
 girls tip back ? " And when Bob's sister said that the 
 Barclay boy — barefooted, curly-headed, dusty, and sun- 
 burned — looked like something the old cat had dragged 
 into the house, the boy was impudent to his sister and 
 took a whipping from his father. 
 
 That fall the children of Sycamore Ridge assembled for 
 the first time in their new seven-room stone schoolhouse, 
 and the two boys were in the high school. The board 
 hired General Philemon Ward to teach the twenty high 
 school pupils, and it was then he first began to wear the 
 white neckties which he never afterwards abandoned. 
 Ward's first clash with John Barclay occurred when Ward 
 organized a military company. John's limp kept him out 
 of it, so he broke up the company and organized a literary 
 society, of which he was president and Ellen Culpepper 
 secretary, and a constitution was adopted exempting the 
 president and secretary from work in the society. It was 
 natural enough that Bob Hendricks should be made treas- 
 urer, and that these three ofi&cers should be the programme 
 committee, and then a long line of vice-presidents and as- 
 sistant secretaries and treasurers and monitors was elected 
 by the society. 
 
 So John became the social leader of the group of boys 
 and girls who were just coming out of kissing games into 
 dances at one another's homes in the town. John decided 
 who should be in the " crowd " and who might be invited 
 only when a mixed crowd was expected. Fathers desiring 
 trade; and mothers faithful to church ties, protested ; but 
 John Barclay had his way. It was his crowd. They 
 called themselves the " Spring Chickens," and as John had 
 money saved to spend as he pleased, he dictated many 
 things ; but he did not spend his money, he lent it, and his 
 
54 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 barn was stored with skates and sleds and broken guns 
 and scrap-iron held as security, while his pockets bulged 
 with knives taken as interest. 
 
 As the winter waned and the Spring Chickens waxed 
 fat in social honours, Bob Hendricks glanced up from his 
 algebra one day, and discovered that little Molly Culpep- 
 per had two red lips and two pig-tail braids of hair that 
 reached below her waist. Then and there he shot her 
 deftly with a paper wad, chewed and fired through a cane 
 pipe-stem, and waited till she wiped it off her cheek with 
 her apron and made a face at him, before he plunged into 
 the mysteries of x^+2xi/+i/K And thus another old 
 story began, as new and as fresh as when Adam and Eve 
 walked together in the garden. 
 
 John Barclay was so busy during his last year in the 
 Sycamore Ridge school that he often fancied afterwards 
 that the houses on Lincoln Avenue in Culpepper addition 
 must have come with the grass in the spring, for he has no 
 memory of their building. Neither does he remember 
 when General Madison Hendricks built the brick building 
 on the corner of Main Street and Fifth Avenue, in which 
 he opened the Exchange National Bank of Sycamore 
 Ridge. Yet John remembered that his team and wagon 
 were going all winter, hauling stone for the foundation of 
 the Hendricks home on the hill — a great brick structure, 
 with square towers and square " ells " rambling off on the 
 prairie, and square turrets with ornate cornice pikes prick- 
 ing the sky. For years the two big houses standing side 
 by side — the Hendricks house and the Culpepper house, 
 with its tall white pillars reaching to the roof, its double 
 door and its two white wings spreading over the wide 
 green lawn — were the show places of Sycamore Ridge, 
 and the town was always divided in its admiration for 
 them. John's heart was sadly torn between them. Yet 
 he was secretly glad to learn from his mother that his 
 Uncle Union's house in Haverhill had tall columns, green 
 blinds on the white woodwork, and a wide hall running 
 down the centre. For it made him feel more at home at the 
 Culpeppers'. But when the Hendricks' piano came, after 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 55 
 
 they moved into the big house, the boy's heart was opened 
 afresh ; and he spent hours with Bob Hendricks at the 
 piano, when he knew he would be welcome at the Culpep- 
 pers'. He leased his town herd in the summer to Jimmie 
 Fernald — giving him the right to take the cows to the 
 commons around town upon the payment of five dollars a 
 month to John for keeping out of the business, and pass- 
 ing Jimmie good-will. In the meantime, by day, John 
 worked his team, and hired two others and took contracts 
 for digging cellars. At nights he went to the country 
 with his concertina and played for dances, making two 
 dollars a night, and General Hendricks for years pointed 
 with pride to the fact that when the Exchange National 
 Bank of Sycamore Ridge opened for business the first 
 morning, standing at the head of the line of depositors 
 was John Barclay, with his concertina under his arm, just 
 as he had returned from a country dance at daylight, 
 waiting to be first in line, with $178.53 in his pocket to 
 deposit. That deposit slip, framed, still hangs over the 
 desk in the office of the president of the bank, and when 
 John Barclay became famous, it was always a part of the 
 "Art Loan Exhibit," held by the women in Barclay 
 Memorial Hall. 
 
 That summer of '67 John capitulated to life, held his 
 hands up for the shackles and put on shoes in summer for 
 the first time. Also, he only went swimming twice — 
 both times at night, and he bought his first box of paper 
 collars and his mother tried to make his neckties like 
 those in Dorman's store ; but some way she did not get 
 the hang of it, and John bought a Sunday necktie of 
 great pride, and he and his mother agreed that it was off 
 the tatl of Joseph's coat of many colours. But he wore it 
 only on state occasions. At work, he made an odd figure 
 limping over the dirt heaps and into the excavations boss- 
 ing men old enough to be his father. He wore a serious 
 face in those days, — for a boy, — and his mouth was al- 
 most hard, but something burned in his eyes that was 
 more than ambition, though that lighted his face like a 
 flame, and he was always whistling or singing. At night 
 
66 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 he and Bob Hendricks wandered away together, and some* 
 times they walked out under the stars and talked as boys 
 will talk of their little world and the big world about 
 them, or sometimes they sat reading at one or the other's 
 home, and one would walk home with the other, and the 
 other walk a piece of the way back. They read poetry 
 and mooned ; " Lalla Rookh " appealed to John because 
 of its music and melody, and both boys devoured Byron, 
 and gobbled over the " Corsair " and the " Giaour " and 
 " Childe Harold " with the book above the table, and came 
 back from the barn on Sundays licking their chops after 
 surreptitiously nibbling "Don Juan." But they had 
 Captain Mayne Reid and Kingsley as an antidote, and 
 they soon got enough of Byron. 
 
 The two boys persuaded each other to go away to 
 school, and John chose the state university because it 
 was cheap and because he heard he could get work in 
 Lawrence to carry him through. He did not recollect 
 that his mother had any influence in the matter ; but in 
 those days she always seemed to be sitting by the lamp in 
 their little home, sewing, with his shirts and underwear 
 strewn about her. She had a permanent place in the 
 town schools, and the Barclay home had grown to a 
 kitchen and two bedrooms as well as the big room with its 
 fireplace. His mother's hair was growing gray at the 
 temples, but her clear, firm, unwrinkled skin and strong 
 broad jaw kept youth in her countenance, and as Martin 
 Culpepper wrote in the Biography, where he names the 
 pioneers of Sycamore Ridge whose lives influenced Watts 
 Mc Hurdle's, " the three graces, Faith, Hope, and Charity, 
 were mirrored in her smile." 
 
 One night when the boy came in tired after his night's 
 ramble, he left his mother, as he often did those last 
 nights before he went away to school, bending over her 
 work, humming a low happy -noted song, even though the 
 hour was late. He lay in his bed beside the open window 
 looking out into the night, dreaming with open eyes about 
 life. Perhaps he actually dreamed a moment, for he did 
 not hear her come into the room ; but he felt her bend 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 57 
 
 over him, and a tear dropped on his face from hers. He 
 turned toward her, and she put her arms about his neck. 
 Then she sobbed : " Oh, good-by, my little boy — good- 
 by. I am coming here to bid you good-by, every night 
 now." He kissed her hand, and she was silent a moment, 
 and then she spoke : " I know this is the last of it all, 
 John. You will never come back to me again — not you, 
 but a man. And you will seem strange, and I will seem 
 strange." She paused a moment to let the cramp in her 
 throat leave, then she went on : "I was going to say so 
 many things — when this tinje came, but they're all gone. 
 But oh, my boy, my little tender-hearted boy — be a good 
 man — just be a good man, John." And then she sobbed 
 for an unrestrained minute : " O God, when you take my 
 boy away, keep him clean, and brave, and kind, and — O 
 God, make him — make him a good man." And with a 
 pat and a kiss she rose and said as she left him, "Now 
 good night, Johnnie, go to sleep." 
 
 In the Sycamore Ridge Banner for September 12, 1867, 
 appeared some verses by Watts McHurdie, beginning : — 
 
 " Hail and farewell to thee, friend of my youth, 
 Pilgrim who seekest the Fountain of Truth, 
 I Hail and farewell to thy innocent pranks, 
 
 No more can I send thee for left-handed cranks. 
 Farewell, and a tear laves the ink on my pen, 
 For ne'er shall I 'noint thee with strap-oil again." 
 
 It was a noble effort, and in his notes to the McHurdie 
 poems following the Biography published over thirty years 
 after those lines were written. Colonel Culpepper writes : 
 " This touching, though somewhat humorous, poem was 
 written on the occasion of the departure for college of one 
 who since has become listed with the world's great captains 
 of finance — none other than Honourable John Barclay, 
 whose fame is too substantial to need encomium in these 
 humble pages. Suffice it to say that between these two 
 men, our hero, the poet, and the great man of affairs, there 
 has always remained the closest friendship, and each carries 
 in his bosom, wrapped in the myrrh of fond memory, the 
 
68 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 deathless blossom of friendship, that sweetest flower in the 
 conservatory of the soul." 
 
 The day before John left for Lawrence he met Lieuten- 
 ant Jacob Dolan. 
 
 " So ye're going to college — ay, Johnnie ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mr, Dolan," replied the boy. 
 
 " Well, they're all givin' you somethin', Johnnie : Watts 
 hete has given a bit of a posey in verse ; and my friend. 
 General Hendricks, I'm told, has given you a hundred- 
 dollar note ; and General Philemon Ward has given you 
 Wendell Phillips' orations ; and your sweetheart — God 
 bless her, whoever she is — will be givin' ye the makins' 
 of a broken heart ; and your mother'll be givin' you her 
 blessin' — and the saints' prayers go with 'em ; and me, 
 havin' known your father before you and the mother that 
 bore you, and seein' her rub the roses off her cheeks tryin' 
 to keep your ornery little soul in your worthless little 
 body, I'll give you this sentiment to put in your pipe and 
 smoke : John Barclay, man — if they ever he's a law agin 
 damn fools, the first raid the officers should make is on the 
 colleges. And now may ye be struck blind before ye get 
 your education and dumb if it makes a fool of ye." And 
 so slapping the boy on the back, Jake Dolan went down 
 the street winding in and out among the brick piles and 
 lumber and mortar boxes, whistling " Tread on the Tail of 
 me Coat." 
 
 For life was all so fine and gay with Lieutenant Dolan 
 in those days. And he whistled and sang, and thought 
 what he pleased, and said what he pleased, and did what he 
 pleased, and if the world didn't like it, the world could 
 picket its horses and get out of Jacob Dolan's livery barn. 
 For Mr. Dolan was thinking that from the livery-stable to 
 the office of sheriff is but a step in this land of the free 
 and home of the brave ; so he carried his head back and his 
 chest out and invited insult in the fond hope of provoking 
 assault. He was the flower of the times, — effulgent, rather 
 gaudy, and mostly red I 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Good times came to Sycamore Ridge in the autumn. 
 The dam across the creek was furnishing power for a flour- 
 mill and a furniture factory. The endless worm of wagons 
 that was wriggling through the town carrying movers to 
 the West, was sloughing many of its scales in Sycamore 
 Ridge. Martin Culpepper had been East with circulars 
 describing the town and adjacent country. He had 
 brought back three stage loads of settlers, and was selling 
 lots in Culpepper's addition faster than they could be sur- 
 veyed. The Frye blacksmith shop had become a wagon 
 shop, and then a hardware store was added ; the flag flut- 
 tered from the high flagstaff over the Exchange National 
 Bank building, and all day long farmers were going from 
 the mUl to the bank. General Philemon Ward gave up 
 school-teaching and went back to his law office ; but he 
 was apt to take sides with President Andrew Johnson too 
 vigorously for his own good, and clients often avoided his 
 office in fear of an argument. Still he was cheerful, and 
 being only in his early thirties, looked at the green hills 
 afar from his pasture and was happy. The Thayer House 
 was filled with guests, and the Fernalds had money in the 
 bank ; Mary Murphy and Gabriel Carnine were living hap- 
 pily ever after, and Nellie Logan was clerking in Dorman's 
 Dry Goods store and making Watts McHurdie understand 
 that she had her choice between a preacher and a drummer. 
 Other girls in the dining room of the Thayer House were 
 rattling the dinner dishes and singing " Sweet Belle Ma- 
 hone" and "Do you love me, Molly Darling?" to ensnare 
 the travelling public that might be tilted back against the 
 veranda in a mood for romance. And as John and Bob 
 that hot September afternoon made the round of the stores 
 and offices bidding the town good-by, it seemed to them 
 that perhaps they were seizing the shadow and letting the 
 
 59 
 
60 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 substance fade. For it was such a good-natured busy little 
 place that their hearts were heavy at leaving it. 
 
 But that evening John in his gorgeous necktie, his 
 clean paper collar, his new stiff hat, his first store clothes, 
 wearing proudly his father's silver watch and chain, set 
 out to say good-by to Ellen Culpepper, and his mother, 
 standing in the doorway of their home, sighed at his limp 
 and laughed at his strut — the first laugh she had enjoyed 
 in a dozen days. 
 
 John and Bob together went up the stone walk leading 
 across a yard, still littered with the debris of building, to 
 the unboxed steps that climbed to the veranda of the Cul- 
 pepper house. There they met Colonel Culpepper in his 
 shirt-sleeves, walking up and down the veranda admiring 
 the tall white pillars. When he had greeted the boys, he 
 put his thumbs in his vest holes and continued his parade 
 in some pomp. The boys were used to this attitude of 
 the colonel's toward themselves and the pillars. It al- 
 ways followed a hearty meal. So they sat respectfully 
 while he marched before them, pointing occasionally, when 
 he took his cigar from his mouth and a hand from his vest, 
 to some feature of the landscape in the sunset light that 
 needed emphatic attention. 
 
 " Yes, sir, young gentlemen," expanded the colonel, 
 "you are doing the right and proper thing — the right 
 and proper thing. Of all the avocations of youth, I con- 
 ceive the pursuit of the sombre goddess of learning to be the 
 most profitable — entirely the most profitable. I myself, 
 though a young man, — being still on the right side of forty, 
 — have reaped the richest harvest from my labours in 
 the classic shades. Twenty years ago, young gentlemen, 
 I, like you, left my ancestral estates to sip at the Pierian 
 spring. In point of fact, I attended the institution founded 
 by Thomas Jefferson, the father of the American democ- 
 racy — yes, sir." He put his cigar back in his mouth and 
 added, " Yes, sir, you are certainly taking a wise and, I may 
 say, highly necessary step — " 
 
 Mrs. Culpepper, small, sprightly, blue-eyed, and calm, 
 entered the veranda, and cut the colonel off with : " Good 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 61 
 
 evening, boys. So you are going away. Well — well 
 miss you. The girls will be right out." 
 
 But the colonel would not be quenched ; his fires were 
 burning deeply. " As I was saying, Mrs. Culpepper," he 
 went on, " the classic training obtained from a liberal edu- 
 cation such as it was my fortune — " 
 
 Mrs. Culpepper smiled blandly as she put in, " Now, pa, 
 these boys don't care for that." 
 
 " But, my dear, let me finish. As I started to say : the 
 flowers of poetry, Keats and his large white plumes, the 
 contemplation of nature's secrets, the reflective study of — " 
 
 "Yes, — here's your coat now, pa," said the wife, 
 returning from a dive into the hall. " John, how's your 
 ma going to get on without you ? And, pa, be sure don't 
 forget the eggs for breakfast. I declare since we've moved 
 up here so far from the stores, we nearly starve." 
 
 The colonel waited a second while a glare melted into a 
 smile, and then backed meekly into the arms stretched high 
 to hold his alpaca coat. As he turned toward the group, he 
 was beaming. "If it were not," exclaimed the colonel, 
 addressing the young men with a quizzical smUe, " that 
 there is a lady present — a very important lady in point of 
 fact, — I might be tempted to say, 'I will certainly be 
 damned !' " And with that the colonel lifted Mrs. Cul- 
 pepper off her feet and kissed her, then lumbered down the 
 steps and strode away. He paused at the gate to gaze at 
 the valley and turned to look back at the great unfinished 
 house, then swung into the street and soon his hat disap- 
 peared under the hill. 
 
 As he went Mrs. Culpepper said, " Let them say what 
 they will about Mart Culpepper, I always tell the girls if 
 they get as good a man as their pa, they will be doing 
 mighty well." 
 
 Then the girls appeared bulging in hoops, and ruflies, 
 with elbow sleeves, with a hint of their shoulders showing 
 and with pink ribbons in their hair. Clearly it was a state 
 occasion. The mother beamed at them a moment, and 
 walked around Molly, saying, "I told you that was all 
 right," and tied Ellen's hair ribbon over, while the young 
 
62 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 people were chattering, and before the boys knew it, she 
 had faded into the dusk of the hall, and the clattering of 
 dishes came to them from the rear of the house. John 
 fancied he felt the heavy step of Buchanan Culpepper, and 
 then he heard : " Don't you talk to me, Buck Culpepper, 
 about woman's work. You'll do what I tell you, and if I 
 say wipe dishes — " the voice was drowned hj the rattle 
 of a passing wagon. And soon the young people on the front 
 porch were so busy with their affairs that the house behind 
 them and its affairs dropped to another world. They say, 
 who seem to know, that when any group of boys and girls 
 meet under twenty-five serious years, the recording angel 
 puts down his pen with a sigh and takes a needed nap. But 
 when the group pairs off, then Mr. Recorder pricks up his 
 ears and works with both hands, one busy taking what the 
 youngsters say, and the other busy with what they would 
 like to say. And shame be it upon the courage of youth 
 that what they would like to say fills the larger book. And 
 marvel of marvels, often the book that holds what the boys 
 would say is merely a copy of what the girls would like to 
 hear, and so much of the work is saV^d to the angel. 
 
 It was nine o'clock when the limping boy and the slen- 
 der girl foUpwed the tall youth and the plump little girl 
 down the walk from the Culpepper home through the gate 
 and into the main road. And the couple that walked be- 
 hind took the opposite direction from that which they 
 took who walked ahead. Yet when John and Ellen 
 reached the river and were seated on the mill-dam, where 
 the roar of the falling water drowned their voices, Ellen 
 Culpepper spoke first : " That looks like them over on the 
 bridge. I can see Molly, and Bob's hat about three feet 
 above her." 
 
 " I guess so," returned the boy. He was reaching be- 
 hind him for clods and pebbles to toss ^ into the white 
 foaming flood below them. The girl reached back and 
 got one, then another, then their hands met, and she 
 pulled hers away and said, " Get me some stones." He 
 gave her a handful, and she threw the pebbles away 
 slowly and awkwardly, one at a time. There was a long 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 63 
 
 gap in their talk while they threw the pebbles. The girl 
 closed it with, "Ma made old Buck wipe the dishes." 
 Then she giggled, " Poor Buckie." 
 
 John managed to say, "Yes, I heard him." Then he 
 added, "What does your mother think of Bob?" 
 
 "Oh, she likes him fine. But she's glad you're all go- 
 ing away." 
 
 The boy asked why and the girl returned, " Watch me 
 hit that log." She threw, and missed the water. 
 
 " Why ? " persisted the boy. 
 
 The girl was digging in a crevice for a stone and said, 
 " Can you get that out ? " 
 
 John worked at it a moment and handed it to her with, 
 "Why?" 
 
 She threw it, standing up to give her arm strength. 
 She sat down and folded her hands and waited for another 
 "why." When it came she said, "Oh, you know why." 
 When he protested she answered, "Ma thinks Molly's 
 too young." 
 
 "Too young for what?" demanded the boy, who knew. 
 
 " Too young to be going with boys." 
 
 There was a long pause, then he managed to say it, 
 "She's no younger than you were — nor half as old." 
 
 "When?" returned the girl, giving him the broadside 
 of her eyes for a second, and letting them droop. The 
 eyes bewitched the boy, and he could not speak. At 
 length the girl shivered, "It's getting cold — I must go 
 home." 
 
 The boy found voice. "Aw no. Bob and Molly are 
 still up there." 
 
 She started to rise, he caught her hand, but she pulled 
 it away and resigned herself for a moment. Then she 
 looked at him a long second and said, "Do you remem- 
 ber years ago at the Frye boy's party — when we were 
 little tots, and I chose you ? " 
 
 The boy nodded his head and turned full toward her 
 with serious eyes. He devoured her feature by feature 
 with his gaze in the starlight. The moon was just rising 
 at the end of the mill-dam behind them, and its light fell 
 
64 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 on her profile. He cried out, "Yes, Ellen, do you — do 
 you?" 
 
 She nodded her head and spoke quickly, "That was 
 the time you got your hands stuck in the taffy and had to 
 be soaked out." 
 
 They laughed. John tried to get the moment back. 
 " Do you remember the rubber ring I gave you?" 
 
 She grew bold and turned to him with her heart in her 
 face: "Yes — yes, John, and the coffee-bean locket. I've 
 got them both in a little box at home." Then, scam- 
 pering back to her reserve, she added, " You know ma says 
 I'm a regular rat to store things away." She felt that 
 the sudden reserve chilled him, for in a minute or two she 
 said, looking at the bridge : " They're going now. We 
 mustn't stay but a minute." She put her hand on the 
 rock between them, and said, "You remember that night 
 when you went away before?" Before he answered she 
 went on : "I was counting up this afternoon, and it's six 
 years ago. We were just children then." 
 
 Again the boy found his voice : " Ellen Culpepper, 
 we've been going together seven years. Don't you think 
 that's long enough ? " 
 
 " We were just children then," she replied. 
 
 The boy leaned awkwardly toward her and their hands 
 met on the rock, and he withdrew his a.j he asked, " Do 
 you — do you ? " 
 
 She bent toward him, and looked at him steadily as she 
 nodded her head again and again. She rose to go, say- 
 ing, " We mustn't stay here any longer." 
 
 He caught her hand to stop her, and said, "Ellen — 
 Ellen, promise me just one thing." She looked her ques- 
 tion. He cried, "That you won't forget — just that you 
 won't forget." 
 
 She took his hand and stood before him as he sat, hop- 
 ing to stay her. She answered : " Not as long as I live-, 
 John Barclay. Oh, not as long as I live." Then she ex- 
 claimed : " Now — " and her voice changed, " we just 
 must go, John ; Molly's gone, and it's getting late." She 
 helped him limp over the rocks and up the steep road, but 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 65 
 
 when they reached the level, she dropped his hand, and 
 they walked- home slowly, looking back at the moon, so 
 that they might not overtake the other couple. Once or 
 twice they stopped and sat on lumber piles in the street, 
 talking of nothing, and it was after ten o'clock when they 
 came to the gate. The girl looked anxiously up the walk 
 toward the house. "They've come and gone," she said. 
 She moved as if to go away. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't go right in," he begged. 
 
 "Oh — I ought to," she replied. They were silent. 
 The^ roar of the water over the dam came to them on the 
 evening breeze. She put out her hand. 
 
 " Well," he sighed as he rested his lame foot, and 
 started, "well — good-by." 
 
 She turned to go, and then swiftly stepped toward him, 
 and kissed him, and ran gasping and laughing up the walk. 
 
 The boy gazed after her a moment, wondering if he 
 should follow her, but while he waited she was gone, and he 
 heard her lock the door after her. Then he limped down 
 the road in a kind of swoon of joy. Sometimes he tried 
 to whistle — he tried a bar of Schubert's " Serenade," but 
 consciously stopped. Again and again under his breath 
 as loud as he dared, he called the name " Ellen " and stood 
 gazing at the moon, and then tried to hippety-hop, but 
 his limp stopped that. Then he tried whistling the 
 " Miserere," but he pitched it too high, and it ran out, so 
 he sang as he turned across the commons toward home, 
 and that helped a little ; and he opened the door of his 
 home singing, " How can I leave thee — how can I bear to 
 part? " The light was burning in the kitchen, and he 
 went to his mother and kissed her. His face was aglow, 
 and she saw what had happened to him. She put him 
 aside with, " Run on to bed now, sonny ; I've got a little 
 work out here." And he left her. In the sitting room 
 only the moon gave light. He stood at the window a 
 moment, and then turned to his melodeon. His hands 
 fell on the major chord of "G," and without knowing 
 what he was playing he began " Largo." He played his 
 soul into his music, and looking up, whispered the name 
 
66 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " Ellen" rapturously over and over, and then as the music 
 mounted to its climax the whole world's mystery, and his- 
 personal thought of the meaning of life revelled through 
 his brain, and he played on, not stopping at the close but 
 wandering into he knew not what mazes of harmony. 
 When his hands dropped, he was playing " The Long and 
 Weary Day," and his mother was standing behind him 
 humming it. When he rose from the bench, she ran her 
 fingers through his hair and spoke the words of the song, 
 " ' My lone watch keeping,' John, ' my lone watch keep- 
 ing.' But I think it has been worth while." 
 
 Then she left him and he went to bed, with the moon 
 in his room, and the murmur of waters lulling him to sleep. 
 But he looked out into the sky a long time before his dream 
 came, and then it slipped in gently through the door of a 
 nameless hope. For he wished to meet her in the moon 
 that night, but when they did meet, the white veil of the 
 falling waters of the dam blew across her face and he 
 could not brush it away. For one is bold in dreams. 
 
 A little after sunrise the next morning John rode away 
 from his mother's door, on one of his horses, leading the 
 other one. He was going up the hill to get Bob Hen- 
 dricks, and the two were to ride to Lawrence. He had been 
 promised work, carrying newspapers, and the Yankee in 
 him made him believe he could find work for the other 
 horse. As the boy turned into Main Street waving his 
 mother good-by, he saw the places where he and Ellen 
 Culpepper had stopped the night before, and they looked 
 different some way, and he could not realize that he was in 
 the same street. 
 
 As he climbed the hiU, he passed General Ward, work- 
 ing in his flower garden, and the man sprang over the 
 fence and came into the road, and put his hand on the 
 horse's bridle, saying, "Stop a minute, John: I just 
 wanted to say something." He hesitated a moment be- 
 fore going on: "You know back where I ctfme from — 
 back in New England — the name of John Barclay stands 
 for a good deal — more than you can realize, John. Your 
 father was one of the first martyrs of our cause. I guess 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 67 
 
 your mother never has told you, but I'm going to — your 
 father gave up a business career for this cause. His 
 father was rich — very rich, and your grandfather was set 
 on your father going into business." John looked up the 
 hill toward the Hendricks home, and Ward saw it, and 
 mistook the glance for one of impatience. "Johnnie," 
 said the man, his fine thiji features glowing with earnest- 
 ness, "Johnnie — I wish I could get to your heart, boy. 
 I want to make you hear what I have to say with your 
 soul and not with your ears, and I know youth is so deaf. 
 Your grandfather was angry when your father entered the 
 ministry and came out here. He thought it was folly. 
 The old man offered to give fifty thousand dollars to the 
 Kansas-Nebraska cause, and that would have sent a good 
 many men out here. But your father said no. He said 
 money wouldn't win this cause. He said personal sacrifice 
 was all that would win it. He said men must give up 
 themselves, not their money, to make this cause win — and 
 so he came ; and there was a terrible quarrel, and that is 
 why your mother has stayed. She had faith in God, too 
 — faith that her life some way in His Providence would 
 prove worth something. Your father and mother, John, 
 believed in God — they believed in a God, not a Moloch ; 
 your father's faith has been justified. The death he died 
 was worth millions to the cause of liberty. It stirred the 
 whole North, as the miserable little fifty thousand dollars 
 that Abijah Barclay offered never could have done. But 
 your mother's sacrifice must find its justification in you. 
 And she, not your father, made the final decision to give 
 up everything for human freedom. She has endured 
 poverty, Johnnie — " the man's voice was growing tense, 
 and his eyes were ablaze ; "you know how she worked, 
 and if you fail her, if you do not live a consecrated life, 
 John, your mother's life has failed. I don't mean a pious 
 life ; God knows I hate sanctimony. But I mean a life 
 consecrated to some practical service, to an ideal — to 
 some actual service to your fellows — not money service, 
 but personal service. Do you understand ? " Ward 
 leaned forward and looked into the boy's face. He took 
 
68 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 hold of Jolin's arm as he pleaded, "Johnnie — boy — 
 Johnnie, do you understand ? " 
 
 The boy answered, " Yes, General — I think I get your 
 meaning." He picked up his bridle, and Ward relaxed 
 his hold on the boy's arm. The man's hand dropped and 
 he sighed, for he saw only a boy's face, and heard a boy's 
 politeness in the voice that went on, " Thank you. Gen- 
 eral, give my love to Miss Lucy." And the youth rode 
 on up the hill. 
 
 In a few minutes the boys were riding down the steep 
 clay bank that led to the new iron bridge across the ford 
 of the Sycamore, and for half an hour they rode chattering 
 through the wood before they came into the valley and 
 soon were climbing the bluff which they had seen the night 
 before from the Culpepper home. On the brow of the 
 bluff Bob said, " Hold on — " He turned his horse and 
 looked back. The sun was on the town, and across on 
 the opposite hill stood the colonel's big house with its 
 proud pillars. No trees were about it in those days, and 
 it and thd Hendricks house stood out clearly on the hori- 
 zon. But on the top of the Culpepper home were two little 
 figures waving handkerchiefs. The boys waved back, and 
 John thought he could tell Ellen from her sister, and the 
 night and its joy came back to him, and he was silent. 
 
 They had ridden half an hour without speaking when 
 Bob Hendricks said, "Awful fine girls — aren't they?" 
 
 " That's what I've always told you," returned John. 
 
 After another quarter of a mile Bob tried it again. 
 " The colonel's a funny old rooster — isn't he? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know. That day at the battle of Wil- 
 son's Creek when he walked out in front of a thou and sol- 
 diers and got a Union flag and brought it back to tlie line, 
 he didn't look very funny. But he's windy all right.'' 
 
 Again, as they crossed a creek and the horses were 
 drinking. Bob said: "Father thinks General Ward's a 
 crank. He says Ward will keep harping on about those 
 war bonds, and quarrelling because the soldiers got their 
 pay in paper money and the bondholders in gold, until 
 people will think every one in high places is a thief." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 69 
 
 "Oh, Ward's all right," answered John. "He's just 
 talking; he likes an argument, I guess. He's kind of 
 built that way." 
 
 It was a poor starved-to-death school that the boys 
 found at Lawrence in those days ; with half a dozen in- 
 structors — most of whom were still in their twenties; 
 with books lent by the instructors, and with appliances 
 devised by necessity. But John was happy ; he was mak- 
 ing money with his horses, doing chores for his board, and 
 carrying papers night and morning besides. The Taoy's 
 industry was the marvel of the town. His limp got him 
 sympathy, and he capitalized the sympathy. Indeed, he 
 would have capitalized his soul, if it had been necessary. 
 For his Yankee blood was beginning to come out. Before 
 he had been in school a year he had swapped, traded, and 
 saved until he had two teams, and was working them 
 with hired drivers on excavation contracts. In his sum- 
 mer vacations he went to Topeka and worked his two 
 teams, and by some sharp practice got the title to a third. 
 He was rollicking, noisy, good-natured, but under the 
 boyish veneer was a hard indomitable nature. He was 
 becoming a stickler for his rights in every transaction. 
 
 " John," said Bob, one day after John had cut a particu- 
 larly lamentable figure, gouging a driver in a settlement, 
 "don't you know that your rights are often others' 
 wrongs?" 
 
 John was silent a moment. He looked at the driver mov- 
 ing away, and then the boy's face set hard and he said: 
 " Well — what's the use of blubbering over him ? If I 
 don't get it, some one else will. I'm no charitable institu- 
 tion for John Walruff's brewery ! " And he snapped the 
 rubber band on his wallet viciously, and turned to his books. 
 
 But on the other hand he wrote every other day to his 
 mother and every other day to Ellen Culpepper with un- 
 wavering precision. He told his mother the news, and 
 he told Ellen Culpepper the news plus some Emerson, 
 something more of "Faust," with such dashes of Long- 
 fellow and Ruskin as seemed to express his soul. He 
 never wrote to Ellen of money, and so strong was her in« 
 
70 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 fluence upon him that when he had written to her after his 
 quarrel with the driver, he went out in the night, hunted 
 the man up, and paid him the disputed wages. Then 
 he mailed Ellen Culpepper's letter, and was a lover living 
 , in an ethereal world as he walked home babbling her name 
 in whispers to the stars. Often when this mood was not 
 upon him, and a letter was due to Ellen, he went down- 
 stairs in the house where he lived and played the piano 
 to bring her near to him. That never failed to change his 
 face as by a miracle. " When John comes upstairs," wrote 
 Bob Hendricks to Molly, " he is as one in a dream, with 
 the mists of the music in his eyes. I never bother him 
 then. He will not speak to me, nor do a thing in the 
 world, until that letter is written, sealed, and stamped. 
 Then he gets up, yawns and smiles sheepishly and perhaps 
 hits me with a book or punches me with his fist, and then we 
 wrestle over the room and the bed like bear cubs. After 
 the wrestle he comes back to himself. I wonder why ? " 
 
 And Ellen Culpepper read those letters from John Bar- 
 clay over and over, and curiously enough she understood 
 them ; for there is a telepathy between spirits that meet 
 as these two children's souls had met, and in that concord 
 words drop out and only thoughts are merchandized. Her 
 spirit grew with his, and so "through all the world she 
 followed him." 
 
 But there came a gray dawn of a May morning when 
 John Barclay clutched his bedfellow and whispered, 
 "Bob, Bob — look, look." When the awakened one saw 
 nothing, John tried to scream, but could only gasp, " Don't 
 you see Ellen — there — there by the table ?" But what- 
 ever it was that startled him fluttered away on a beam of 
 sunrise, and Bob Hendricks rose with the frightened boy, 
 and went to his work with him. 
 
 Two days later a letter came telling him that Ellen 
 Culpepper was dead. 
 
 Now death — the vast baflling mystery of death — is 
 Fate's strongest lever to pry men from their philosophy. 
 And death came into this boy's life before his creed was 
 set and hard, and in those first days while he walked far 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 71 
 
 afield, he turned his face to the sky in his lonely sorrow, 
 and when he cried to Heaven there was a silence. 
 
 So his heart curdled, and you kind gentlemen of the 
 jury who are to pass on the case of John Barclay in this 
 story, remember that he was only twenty years old, and 
 that in all his life there was nothing to symbolize the joy 
 of sacrifice except this young girl. All his boyish life she 
 had nurtured the other self in his soul, — the self that 
 might have learned to give and be glad in the giving. 
 And when she went, he closed his Emerson and opened his 
 Trigonometry, and put money in his purse. ^ 
 
 There came a time when Ellen Culpepper was to him as 
 a dream. But she lived in her mother's eyes, and through 
 all the years that followed the mother watched the little 
 girl grow to maturity and into middle life with the other 
 girls of her age. And even when the little headstone 
 on the Hill slanted in sad neglect, Mrs. Culpepper's old 
 eyes still saw Ellen growing old with her playmates. And 
 she never saw John Barclay that she did not think of Ellen 
 — and what she would have made of him. 
 
 And what would she have made of him? Maybe a 
 poet, maybe a dreamer of dreams — surely not the hard, 
 grinding, rich man that he became in this world. 
 
 1 To THE Publisher. — "In returning the Mss. of the life of John Bar- 
 clay, which you sent for my verification as to certain dates and incidents, 
 let me first set down, before discussing matters pertaining to his later life, 
 my belief that your author has found in the death of Ellen Culpepper an 
 incident, humble though it is, that explains much in the character of Mr. 
 Barclay. The incident probably produced a mental shock like that of a 
 psychological earthquake, literally sealing up the spring of his life as it 
 was flowing into consciousness at that time, and the John Barclay of his 
 boyhood and youth became subterranean, to appear later in life after the 
 weakening of his virility under the strain of the crushing events of his fifties. 
 Yet the subterranean Barclay often appeared for a moment in his life, glowed 
 in some kind act and sank again. Ellen Culpepper explains It all. How 
 many of our lives are similarly divided, forced upward or downward by 
 events, Heaven only knows. We do not know our own souls. I am sure 
 John never knew of the transformation. Surely ' we are fearfully and 
 wonderfully made.' . . . The other dates and incidents are as I have 
 indicated. . . . Allow me to thank you for your kindness in sending me 
 the Mss., and permit me to subscribe myself, 
 
 "Yours faithfully, 
 
 "Philemon R. Waed." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 John Barclay returned to Sycamore Ridge in 1872 a 
 full-fledged young man. He was of a slight build and 
 rather pale of face, for five years indoors had rubbed the 
 sunburn off. During the five years he had been absent 
 from Sycamore Ridge he had acquired a master's degree 
 from the state university, and a license to practise law. 
 He was distinctly dapper, in the black and white checked 
 trousers, the flowered cravat, and tight-fitting coat of the 
 period ; and the first Monday after he and his mother 
 went to the Congregational Church, whereat John let out 
 his baritone voice, he was invited to sing in the choir. 
 Bob Hendricks came home a year before John, and with 
 Bob and Watts McHurdie singing tenor at one end of the 
 choir, and John and Philemon Ward holding down the 
 other end of the line, with Mrs. Ward, Nellie Logan, 
 Molly Culpepper, and Jane Mason of Minneola, — grown 
 up out of short dresses in his absence, — all in gay colours 
 between the sombre clothes of the men, the choir in the 
 Congregational Church was worth going miles to see — if 
 not to hear. 
 
 Now you know, of course, — or if you do not know, it is 
 high time you were learning, — that when Fate gives a 
 man who can sing a head of curly hair, the devil, who is 
 after us all, quits worrying about that young person. For 
 the Old Boy knows that a voice and curly hair are mort- 
 gages on a young man's soul that few young fellows ever 
 pay off. Now there was neither curly head nor music in 
 all the Barclay tribe, and when John sang " Through the 
 trees the night winds murmur, murmur low and sweet," 
 his mother could shut her eyes and hear Uncle Leander, 
 the black sheep of three generations of Thatchers. So 
 that the fact that John had something over a thousand 
 
 72 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 73 
 
 dollars to put in General Hendricks' bank, and owned 
 half a dozen town lots in the various additions to the 
 town, made the mother thankful for the Grandfather 
 Barclay's blood in him. But she saw a soul growing into 
 the boy's face that frightened her. What others ad- 
 mired as strength she feared, for she knew it was ruth- 
 lessness. What others called shrewdness she, remember- 
 ing his Grandfather Barclay, knew might grow into blind, 
 cruel greed, and when she thought of his voice and his 
 curly hair, and recalled Uncle Leander, the curly-headed, 
 singing ne'er-do-well of her family, and then in the boy's 
 hardening mouth and his canine jaw saw Grandfather 
 Barclay sneering at her, she was uncertain which blood 
 she feared most. So she managed it that John should go 
 into partnership with General Ward, and Bob Hendricks 
 managed it that the firm should have offices over the bank, 
 and also that the firm was made attorneys for the bank, — 
 the highest mark of distinction that may come to a law 
 firm in a country town. The general realized it and was 
 proud. But he thought the young man took it too much 
 as a matter of course. 
 
 "John," said the general, one day, as they were dividing 
 their first five-hundred-dollar fee, "you're a lucky dog. 
 Everything comes so easily with you. Let me tell you 
 something ; I've figured this out : if you don't give it 
 back some way — give it back to the world, or society, or 
 your fellows, — or God, if you like to bunch your good 
 luck under one head, — you're surely going to suffer for it. 
 There is no come-easy-go-easy in this world. I've learned 
 that much of the scheme of things." 
 
 " You mean that I've got to pay as I go, or Providence 
 will keep books on me and foreclose ? " asked John, as he 
 stood patting the roll of bills in his trousers pocket. 
 
 " That's the idea, son," ,smiled the elder man. 
 
 The younger man put his hand to his chin and grinned. 
 " I suppose," he replied, " that's why so many men keep 
 the title to their religious proclivities in their wife's 
 name." He went out gayly, and the elder man heard 
 the boyish limp almost tripping down the stairs. Ward 
 
74 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 walked to the window, straightening his white tie, and 
 stood looking into the street at the young man shak- 
 ing hands and bowing and raising his hat as he went. 
 Ward's hair was graying at the temples, and his thin 
 smooth face was that of a man who spends many hours 
 considering many things, and he sighed as he saw John 
 turn a corner and disappear. 
 
 " No, Lucy, that's not it exactly," said the general that 
 afternoon, as he brought the sprinkler full of water to the 
 flower bed for the eighth time, and picketed little Harriet 
 Beecher Ward out of the watermelon patch, and wheeled 
 the baby's buggy to the four-o'clocks, where Mrs. Ward 
 was working. "It isn't that he is conceited — the boy 
 isn't that at all. He just seems to have too little faith in 
 God and too much in the ability of John Barclay. He 
 thinks he can beat the game — can take out more happi- 
 ness for himself than he puts in for others." 
 
 The wife looked up and put back her sunbonnet as she 
 said, " Yes, I believe his mother thinks something of the 
 kind." 
 
 One of the things that surprised John when he came 
 home from the university was the prominence of Lige 
 Bemis in the town. When John left Sycamore Ridge to 
 go to school, Bemis was a drunken sign-painter married to 
 a woman who a few years before had been the scandal of 
 half a dozen communities. And now though Mrs. Bemis 
 was still queen only of the miserable unpainted Bemis domi- 
 cile in the sunflowers at the edge of town, Lige Bemis 
 politically was a potentate of some power. General Hen- 
 dricks consulted Bemis about politics. Often he was 
 found in the back room of the bank, and Colonel Culpep- 
 per, although he was an unterrified Democrat, in his cam- 
 paign speeches referred to Bemis as "a diamond in the 
 rough." John was sitting on a roll of leather one day in 
 Watts McHurdie's shop talking of old times when Watts 
 recalled the battle of Sycamore Ridge, and the time when 
 Bemis came to town with the Red Legs and frightened 
 Mrs. Barclay. 
 
 " Yes — and now look at him," exclaimed John, " dressed 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 75 
 
 up like a gambler, and referred to in the Banner as ' Hon. 
 E. W. Bemis ' ! How did he do it ? " 
 
 McHurdie sewed two or three long stitches in silence. 
 He leaned over from his bench to throw his tobacco quid 
 in the sawdust box under the rusty stove, then the little 
 man scraped his fuzzy jaw reflectively with his blackened 
 hand as if about to speak, but he thought better of it and 
 waxed his thread. He showed his yellow teeth in a smile, 
 and motioned John to come closer. Then he put his head 
 forward, and whispered confidentially: — 
 
 " What'd you ruther do or go a-fishing ? " 
 
 " But why ? " persisted the young man. 
 
 " Widder who ? " returned Watts, grinning and putting 
 his hand to his ear. 
 
 When John repeated his question the third time, Mc- 
 Hurdie said : — 
 
 " I know a way you can get rich mighty quick, sonny." 
 And when the boy refused to "bite," Watts went on: 
 " If any one asks you what Watts McHurdie thinks about 
 politics so long as he is in the harness business, you just 
 take the fellow upstairs, and pull down the curtain, and 
 lock the door, and tell him you don't know, and not to tell 
 a living soul." 
 
 With Bob Hendricks, John had little better success in 
 solving the mystery of the rise of Bemis. " Father says 
 he's effective, and he would rather have him for him than 
 against him," was the extent of Bob's explanation. 
 
 Ward's answer was more to the point. He said: "Lige 
 Bemis is a living example of the power of soft soap in 
 politics. We know — every man in this county knows — 
 that Lige Bemis was a horse thief before the war, and 
 that he was a cattle thief and a camp-follower during the 
 war ; and after the war we know what he was — he and 
 the woman he took up with. Yet here he has been a 
 member of the legislature and is beginning to be a figure 
 in state politics, — at least the one to whom the governor 
 and all the fellows write when they want information 
 about this county. Why? I'll tell you: because he's 
 committed every crime and can't denounce one and goes 
 
76 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 about the country extenuating things and oiling people 
 up with his palaver. Now he says he is a lawyer — yes, 
 sir, actually claims to be a lawyer, and brought his 
 diploma into court two years ago, and they accepted it. 
 But I know, and the court knows, and the bar knows it 
 was forged; it belonged to his dead brother back in 
 Hornellsville, New York. But Hendricks downstairs 
 said we needed Lige in the county-seat case, so he is a 
 member of the bar, taking one hundred per cent for collect- 
 ing accounts for Eastern people, and giving the country a 
 black eye. A man told me he was on over fifty notes 
 for people at the bank; he signs with every one, and 
 Hendricks never bothers him. He managed to get into 
 all the lodges, right after the war when they were reor- 
 ganized, and he sits up with the sick, and is pall-bearer 
 — regular professional pall-bearer, and I don't doubt gets 
 a commission for selling coffins from Livingston." Ward 
 rose from the table his full six feet and put his hands in 
 his pocket and stretched his legs as he added, "And 
 when you think how many Bemises in the first, second, or 
 third degree there are in this government, you wonder if 
 the Democrats weren't right when they declared the war 
 was a failure." 
 
 The general spoke as he did to John partly in anger 
 and partly because he thought the youth needed the 
 lesson he was trying to implant. " You know, Martin," 
 explained the general, a few days later, to Colonel Cul- 
 pepper, "John has come home a Barclay — not a Barclay 
 of his father's stripe. He has taken back, as they say. 
 It's old Abijah — with the mouth and jaw of a wolf. I 
 caught him palavering with a juror the other day while 
 we had a case trying." 
 
 The colonel rested his hands on his knees a moment in 
 meditation and smiled as he replied : " Still, there's his 
 mother. General. Don't ever forget that the boy's mother 
 is Mary Barclay ; she has bred most of the wolf out of him. 
 And in the end her blood will tell." 
 
 And now observe John Barclay laying the footing stones 
 of his fortune. He put every dollar he could get into 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 77 
 
 town lots, paying for all lie bought and avoiding mort- 
 gages. Also he joined Colonel Culpepper in putting the 
 College Heights upon the market. " For what," explained 
 the colonel, when the propriety of using the name for his 
 addition was questioned, when no college was there nor 
 any prospect of a college for years to come — " what is 
 plainer to the prophetic eye than that time will bring to 
 this magnificent city an institution of learning worthy of 
 our hopes ? I have noticed," added the colonel, waving his 
 cigar broadly about him, " that learning is a shy goddess ; 
 she has to be coaxed — hence on these empyrean heights 
 we have provided for a seat of learning ; therefore College 
 Heights. Look at the splendid vista, the entrancing view, 
 in point of fact." It was the large white plumes dancing 
 in the colonel's prophetic eyes. So it happened that more 
 real estate buyers than clients came to the office of Ward 
 and Barclay. But as the general that fall had been out 
 of the office running for Congress on the Greeley ticket, 
 still protesting against the crime of paying the soldiers in 
 paper and the bondholders in gold, he did not miss the 
 clients, and as John saw to it that there was enough law 
 business to keep Mrs. Ward going, the general returned 
 from the canvass overwhelmingly beaten, but not in the 
 least dismayed ; and as Jake Dolan put it, " The general 
 had his say and the people had their choice — so both are 
 happy." 
 
 As the winter deepened John and Colonel Culpepper 
 planted five hundred elm trees on the campus on College 
 Heights, lining three broad avenues leading from the town 
 to the campus with the trees. John rode into the woods 
 and picked the trees, and saw that each one was properly 
 set. And the colonel noticed that the finest trees were 
 on Ellen Avenue and spoke of it to Mrs. Culpepper, who 
 only said, "Yes, pa — that's just like him." And the 
 colonel looked puzzled. And when the colonel ac^ded, 
 "They say he is shining up to that Mason girl from 
 Minneola, that comes here with Molly," his wife returned, 
 " Yes, I expected that sooner than now." The colonel 
 gave the subject up. The ways of women were past his 
 
78 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 finding out. But Mrs. Culpepper had heard Jane Mason 
 sing a duet in church with John Barclay, and the elder 
 woman had heard in the big contralto voice of the girl 
 something not meant for the preacher. And Mrs. Cul- 
 pepper heard John answer it, so she knew what he did not 
 know, what Jane Mason did not know, and what only 
 Molly Culpepper suspected, and Bob Hendricks scoffed at. 
 
 As for John, he said to Bob : " I know why you always 
 want me to go over with you and Molly to get the 
 Mason girl — by cracky, I'm the only fellow in town that 
 will let you and Molly have the back seat coming home 
 without a fuss I No, Robbie — you don't fool your Uncle 
 John." And so when there was to be special music at the 
 church, or when any other musical event was expected, 
 John and Bob would get a two-seated buggy, and drive to 
 Minneola and bring the soloist back with them. And 
 there would be dances and parties, and coming from Min- 
 neola and going back there would be much singing, " The 
 fox is on the hill, I hear him calling still," was a favour- 
 ite, but " Come where the lilies bloom " rent the mid- 
 night air between the rival towns many times that winter 
 and spring of '73. And never once did John try to get 
 the back seat. But there came a time when Bob Hendricks 
 told him that Molly told him that Jane had said that 
 Molly and Bob were pigs — never to do any of the driving. 
 And the next time there was a trip to Minneola, John said 
 as the young people were seated comfortably for the re- 
 turn trip, " Molly, I heard you said that I was a pig to do 
 all the driving, and not let you and Bob have a chance. 
 Was that true? " 
 
 " No — but do you want to know who did say it ? " 
 answered Molly, and Jane Mason looked sti'aight ahead 
 and cut in with, " Molly Culpepper, if you say another 
 word, I'll never speak to you as long as I live." But she 
 glanced down at Barclay, who caught her eye and saw the 
 smile she was swallowing, and he cried: "I don't believe 
 you ever said it, Molly, — it must have been some one else." 
 And when they had all had their say, — all but Jane Mason, 
 — John saw that she was crying, and the others had to 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 79 
 
 sing for ten minutes without her, before they could coax 
 away her temper. And crafty as he was, he did not know 
 it was temper — he thought it was something entirely 
 different. 
 
 For the craft of youth always is clumsy. The business 
 of youth is to fight and to mate. Wherever there is young 
 blood, there is " boot and horse," and John Barclay in his 
 early twenties felt in him the call for combat. It came 
 with the events that were forming about him. For the 
 war between the states had left the men restless and un- 
 satisfied who had come into the plain to make their homes. 
 They had heard and followed in their youth the call John 
 Barclay was hearing, and after the war was over, they were 
 still impatient with the obstacles they found in their paths. 
 So Sycamore Ridge and Minneola, being rival towns, had 
 to fight. The men who made these towns knew no better 
 settlement than the settlement by force. And even dur- 
 ing his first six months at home from school, when John 
 sniffed the battle from afar, he was glad in his soul that 
 the fight was coming. Sycamore Ridge had the county- 
 seat ; but Minneola, having a majority of the votes in the 
 county, was trying to get the county-seat, and the situa- 
 tion grew so serious for Sycamore Ridge that General 
 Hendricks felt it necessary to defeat Philemon Ward for 
 the state senate so that Sycamore Ridge could get a law 
 passed that would prevent Minneola's majority from 
 changing the county-seat. This was done by a law which 
 Hendricks secured, giving the county commissioners the 
 right to build a court-house by direct levy, without a vote 
 of the people, — a court-house so large that it would settle 
 the county-seat matter out of hand. 
 
 The general, however, took no chances even with his 
 commissioners. For he had his son elected as one, and with 
 the knowledge that John was investing in real estate in 
 -the Ridge ana had an eye for the main chance, the gen- 
 eral picked John for the other commissioner. The place 
 was on the firing-line of the battle, and John took it 
 almost greedily. As the spring of '73 opened, there were 
 alarms and rumours of strife on every breeze, and youth 
 
80 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 was happy and breathed the fight into its nostrils like a 
 balsam. For all the world of Sycamore Ridge was young 
 then, and all the trees were green in the eyes of the men 
 who kept up the town. Each town had its hired despera- 
 does, and there were pickets about each village, and drills 
 in the streets of the two towns, and a martial spirit all 
 over the county. And as John limped about his tasks in 
 those stirring spring days, he felt that he was coming into 
 his own. But it was all a curious mock combat, — that 
 between the towns, — for though the pickets drilled, and the 
 bad men swaggered on the streets, and the bullies roared 
 their anathemas, the social relations between the towns 
 were not seriously disturbed. Youths and maidens came 
 from Minneola to the Ridge for parties and dances, and 
 from the Ridge young men went to Minneola to weddings 
 and festivals of a social nature unmolested, for it takes a 
 real war — and sometimes more than that — to put a bar 
 across the mating ground of youth. So Bob and Molly 
 and John drove to Minneola time and again for Jane 
 Mason, and other boys and girls came and went from 
 town to town, while the bitterness and the bickering and 
 the mimic war between the rival communities went on. 
 
 Dolan was made sheriff, and Bemis county attorney, and 
 with those two officers and a majority of the county com- 
 missioners the Ridge had the forces of administration with 
 her. And so one night Minneola came with her wrinkled 
 front of war; viz., forty fighting men under Gabriel Carnine 
 and an ox team, prepared to take the county records by 
 force and haul them home by main strength. But Lycur- 
 gus Mason, whose wife had locked him in the cellar that 
 night to keep him from danger, was the cackling goose 
 that saved Rome ; for when, having escaped his wife's vigi- 
 lance, he came riding down the wind from Minneola to 
 catch up with his fellow-townsmen, his clatter aroused the 
 men of the Ridge, and they hurried to the court-house and 
 greeted the invaders with half a thousand armed men in 
 the court-house yard. And in a crisis where craft and 
 cunning would not help him, courage came out of John 
 Barclay's soul for the first time and into his life as hev 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 81 
 
 limped through the guns into the open to explain to the 
 men from Minneola when they finally arrived that Lycurgus 
 Mason had not betrayed them, but had rushed into the 
 town, thinking his friends were there ahead of him. It 
 was a plucky thing for John to do, considering that his 
 death would stop the making of the levy for the court- 
 house that was to be recorded in a few days. But the 
 young man's blood tingled with joy as he jumped the 
 court-house fence and went back to his men. There was 
 something like a smile from Jane Mason in his joy, but 
 chiefly it was the joy that youth has in daring, that thrilled 
 him. And the next day, or perhaps it was the next, — at 
 any rate, it was a Sunday late in Jane, — when an armed 
 posse from Minneola came charging down on the town at 
 noon, John ran from his office unseen, over the roofs of 
 buildings upon which as a boy he had romped, and ducking 
 through a second-story window in Frye's store, got two 
 kegs of powder, ran out of the back door, under the ex- 
 posed piling supporting the building, put the two kegs of 
 powder in a wooden culvert under J;he ammunition wagons 
 of the Minneola men, who were battling with the town in 
 the street, and taking a long fuse in his teeth, crawled 
 back to the alley, lit the fuse, and ran into the street to 
 look into the revolver of J. Lord Lee — late of the Red 
 Legs — and warn him to run or be blown up with the 
 wagons. And when the explosion came, knocking him 
 senseless, he woke up a hero, with the town bending over 
 him, and Minneola's forces gone. 
 
 And so John and the town had their fling together. 
 And we who sit among our books or by our fire — or if 
 not that by our iron radiator exuding its pleasance and com- 
 fort — should not sniff at that day when blood pulsed quicker, 
 and joy was keener, and life was more vivid than it is 
 to-day. 
 
 Thirty -five years later — in August, 1908, to be exact — 
 the general, in his late seventies, sat in McHurdie's harness 
 shop while the poet worked at his bench. On the floor 
 beside the general was the historical edition of the Syca- 
 more Ridge Banner — rather an elaborate affair, printed on 
 
82 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 glos8y paper and bedecked with many photogravures of 
 old scenes and old faces. A page of the paper was devoted 
 to the County Seat War of '73. The general had furnished 
 the material for most of the article, — though he would not 
 do the writing, — and he held the sheet with the story upon 
 it in his hand. As he read it in the light of that later 
 day, it seemed a sordid story of chicanery and violence — 
 the sort of an episode that one would expect to find follow- 
 ing a great war. The general read and reread the old 
 story of the defeat of Minneola, and folded his paper and 
 rolled it into a wand with which he conjured up his spirit 
 of philosophy. " Heigh-ho," he sighed. " We don't know 
 much, do we ? " 
 
 McHurdie made no reply. He bent closely over his 
 work, and the general went on: "I was mighty mad when 
 Hendricks defeated me for the state senate in '72, just to 
 get that law passed cheating Minneola out of a fair vote 
 on the court-house question. But it's come out all right." 
 
 The harness maker sewed on, and the general reflected. 
 Finally the little man at the bench turned his big dimmed 
 eyes on his visitor, and asked, " Did you think. General, 
 that you knew more than the Lord about making things 
 come out right ? " There was no reply and McHurdie 
 continued, " Well, you don't — I've got that settled in 
 my mind." 
 
 There was silence for a time, and Ward kept beating his 
 leg with the paper wand in his hand. " Watts," said the 
 general, finally, " I know what it was — it was youth. 
 John Barclay had to go through that period. He had to 
 fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did. Do 
 you remember that night the Minneola -"ellows came up 
 with their ox team and their band of killers to take the 
 county records — " and there was more of it — the old 
 story of the town's wild days that need not be recorded, 
 and in the end, in answer to some query from the general 
 on John's courage, Watts replied, " John was always a bold 
 little fice — he never lacked brass." 
 
 " Was he going with Jane Mason then. Watts, — I for- 
 get ? " queried the general. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 83 
 
 "Yes — yes," replied McHurdie. "Don't you remem- 
 ber that very next night she sang in the choir — well, John 
 had brought her over from Minneola two days before, and 
 that Sunday when the little devil went in the culvert across 
 Main Street and blew up the Minneola wagons, Jane was in 
 town that day — ■. I remember that ; and man — man — I 
 heard her voice say things to him in the duet that night 
 that she would have been ashamed to put in words." 
 
 The two old men were silent. "That was youth, too, 
 Watts, — fighting and loving, and loving and fighting, — 
 that's youth," sighed the general. 
 
 " Well, Johnnie got his belly full of it in his day, as old 
 Shakespeare says, Phil — and in your day you had yours, 
 too. Every dog. General — every dog — you know. " The 
 two voices were silent, as two old men looked back through 
 the years. 
 
 McHurdie put the strap he was working upon in the 
 water, and turned with his spectacles in his hands to his 
 comrade. " Maybe it's this way : with a man, it's fighting 
 and loving before we get any sense ; and with a town it's 
 the same way, and I guess with the race it's the same way 
 — fighting and loving and growing sensible after it's over. 
 Maybe so — maybe so, Phil, comrade, but man, man," he 
 said as he climbed on his bench, " it's fine to be a fool I " 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 In Sycamore Ridge every one knows Watts McHurdie, 
 and every one takes pride in the fact that far and wide the 
 Ridge is known as Watts McHurdie's town, and this too in 
 spite of the fact that from Sycamore Ridge Bob Hendricks 
 gained his national reputation as a reformer and the fur- 
 ther fact that when the Barclays went to New York or 
 Chicago or to California for the winter in their private car, 
 they always registered from Sycamore Ridge at the great 
 hotels. One would think that the town would be known 
 more as Hendricks' town or Barclay's town ; but no — 
 nothing of the kind has happened, and when the rich and 
 the great go forth from the Ridge, people say: " Oh, yes. 
 Sycamore Ridge — that's Watts McHurdie's town, who 
 wrote — " but people from the Ridge let the inquirers get 
 no farther; they say: "Exactly — it's Wjatts McHurdie's 
 town — - and you ought to see him ride in the open hack 
 with the proprietor of a circus when it comes to the Ridge 
 and all the bands and the calliope are playing Watts' song. 
 The way the people cheer shows that it is really Watts 
 McHurdie's town." So when Colonel Martin Culpepper 
 wrote the "Biography of Watts McHurdie" which was 
 published together with McHurdie's " Complete Poetical 
 and Philosophical Works," there was naturally much dis- 
 cussion, and the town was more or less divided as to what 
 part of the book was the best. But the old settlers, — 
 those who, during the drouth of '60, ate mince pies with 
 pumpkins as the fruit and rabbit meat as the filling and 
 New Orleans black-strap as the sweetening, the old set- 
 tlers who knew Watts before he became famous, — they 
 like best of all the chapters in the colonel's Biography the 
 one entitled "At Hymen's Altar." And here is a curious 
 
 84 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 85 
 
 thing about it : in that chapter there is really less of Watts 
 and considerably more of Colonel Martin Culpepper than 
 in any other chapter. 
 
 But the newcomers, those who came in the prosperous 
 days of the 70's or 80's, never could understand the par- 
 tiality of the old settlers for the "Hymen's Altar" chapter. 
 Lycurgus Mason also always took the view that the 
 " Hymen " chapter was drivel. 
 
 " Now, John, be sensible — " Lycurgus insisted one night 
 in 1903 when the two were eating supper in Barclay's 
 private car on a side-track in Arizona; "don't be like my 
 wife — she always drools over that chapter, too. But 
 you know my wife — " Lycurgus always referred to Mrs. 
 Mason with a grand gesture as to his dog or his horse, 
 which were especially desirable chattels. "My wife, — 
 it's just like a woman, — she sits and reads that, and laughs 
 and weeps, and giggles and sniffs, and I say, ' What's the 
 matter with you, anyway ? ' " 
 
 John Barclay pushed a button. To the porter he said, 
 « Bring me that little red book in my satchel." The book 
 had been published but a few weeks, and John always 
 carried a copy around with him in those days to give to a 
 friend. When the porter brought the book, Barclay read 
 aloud, " Ah, truly hath the poet said, ' Marriages are made 
 in heaven.' " 
 
 But Lycurgus Mason pulled his napkin from under his 
 chin and moved back from the table, dusting the crumbs 
 from his obviously Sunday clothes. "There you go — 
 that's it ; 'as the poet says. ' John, if you heard that ' as the 
 poet says ' as often as I do — " He could not finish the fig- 
 ure. But he sniffed out his disgust with " as the poet says." 
 " It wasn't so bad when we were in the hotel, and she was 
 busy with something else. But now — but now — " he 
 repeated it the third time, " but now — honest, every time 
 that woman goes to get up a paper for the Hypatia Club, 
 she gets me in the parlour, and rehearses it to me, and the 
 dad-binged thing is simply packed full of 'as the poet 
 sayses.' And about that marriages being made in 
 heaven, I tell my wife this : I say, ' Maybe so,' but if 
 
86 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 they are, I know one that was made on a busy day when 
 the angels were thinking of something else.' " 
 
 And John Barclay, who knew Mrs. Mason and knew 
 Lycurgus, knew that he would as soon think of throwing 
 a bomb at the President as to say such a thing to her ; so 
 John asked credulously : " You did ? Well, well I Say, 
 what did she say to that ? " 
 
 " That's it — " responded Lycurgus. " That's it. "What 
 could she say? I had her." He walkea the length of 
 the room proudly, with his hands thrust into his pockets. 
 
 Barclay moved his chair to the rear of the car, where he 
 sat smoking and looking into the clear star-lit heavens 
 above the desert. And his mind went back thirty years 
 to the twilight in June after he had set off the powder 
 keg in the culvert under Main Street in Sycamore Ridge, 
 and he tried to remember how Jane Mason got overfrom 
 Minneola — did he bring her over the day before, or was 
 she visiting at the Culpeppers', or did she come over 
 that day ? It puzzled him, but he remembered well that 
 in the Congregational choir he and Jane sang a duet in an 
 anthem, " He giveth his beloved sleep." And he hummed 
 the old aria, a rather melancholy tune, as he sat on the car 
 platform in Arizona that night, and her voice came back 
 — a deep sweet contralto that took " G " below middle " C " 
 as clearly as a tenor, and in her lower register there was a 
 passion and a fire that did not blaze in the higher notes. 
 For those notes were merely girlish and untrained. That 
 June night in '73 was the first night that he and Jane 
 Mason ever had lagged behind as they walked up the hill 
 with Bob and Molly. And what curious things stick in 
 the memory ! The man on the rear of the car remembered 
 that as they left the business part of Main Street behind 
 and walked up the hill, they came to a narrow cross-walk, 
 a single stone in width, and that they tried to walk upon 
 it together, and that his limp made him jostle her, and 
 she said, " We mustn't do that." 
 
 " What? " he inquired. 
 
 " Oh — you know — walk on one stone. You know 
 what it's a sign of. " 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 87 
 
 " Do you believe in signs?" he asked. She kept hold of 
 his arm, and kept him from leaving the stone. She was 
 taller than he by a head, and he hated himself for it. 
 They managed to keep together until they crossed the 
 street and came into the broader walk. Then she drew a 
 relieved breath and answered : " Oh, I don't know. Some- 
 times I do." They were lagging far behind their friends, 
 and the girl hummed a tune, then she said, " You know 
 I've always believed in my ' Star light — star bright — first 
 star I've seen to-night,' just as I believe in my prayers." 
 And she looked up and said, " Oh, I haven't said it yet." 
 She picked out her star and said the rhyme, closing with, 
 " I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish to- 
 night." 
 
 And sitting on the car end in Arizona thirty years 
 after, he tried to find her star in the firmament above him. 
 He was a man in his fifties then, and the night she showed 
 him her star was more than thirty years gone by. But he 
 remembered. We are curious creatures, we men, and we 
 remember much more than we pretend to. For our mothers 
 in many cases were women, and we take after them. 
 
 As Barclay stood in the door of his car debating whether 
 or not to go in, the light from the chimney of the sawmill 
 on the hill attracted his attention, and because he was in 
 a mood for it, the flying sparks trailing across the night 
 sky reminded him of the fireworks that Fourth of July in 
 1873, when he and Jane Mason and Bob and Molly spent 
 the day together, picnicking down in the timber and coming 
 home to dance on the platform under the cottonwood-bough 
 pavilion in the evening. It was a riotous day, and Bob and 
 Molly being lovers of long acceptance assumed a paternal 
 attitude to John and Jane that was charming in the main, 
 but sometimes embarrassing. And of all the chatter he 
 only remembered that Jane said : " Think how many years 
 these old woods have been here — how many hundred 
 years — maybe when the mound-builders were here ! Don't 
 you suppose that they are used to — to young people — 
 oh, maybe Indian lovers, and all that, and don't you sup- 
 pose the trees see these young people loving and marrying, 
 
88 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 and growing old and ugly and unhappy, and that they 
 some way feel that they are just a little tired of it all ? " 
 
 If any one replied to her, he had no recollection of it, 
 for after that he saw the dance and heard the music, and 
 then events seemed to slip along without registering in 
 his memory. There must have been the fifth and the 
 sixth of July in 1873, for certainly there was the seventh, 
 and that was Sunday; he remembered that well enough, 
 for in the morning there was a council in his office to 
 discuss ways and means for the week's work in the 
 county-seat trouble. Tuesday was the day which the new 
 law designated as the one wlaen the levy must be made 
 for the court-house improvements that would hold the 
 county-seat in Sycamore Ridge. At four o'clock, after the 
 Su9day council, John and Bob drove out of Sheriff Jake 
 Dolan's stable with his best two-seated buggy, and told 
 him they would be back from Minneola at midnight or 
 thereabout after taking Jane Mason home, and the two 
 boys drove down IVfain Street with the girls, waving to 
 every one with their hats, while the girls waved their 
 parasols, and the town smiled ; for though all the world 
 loves a lover, in Sycamore Ridge it has been the custom, 
 since the days when Philemon Ward first took Miss Lucy 
 out to drive, for all the town to jeer at lovers as they pass 
 down street in buggies and carriages I And so thirty 
 years slipped from Barclay as he stood in the doorway of 
 his car looking at the Arizona stars. A flicker of light 
 high up in the sky-line seemed to move. It was the head- 
 light of a train coming over the mountain. A switchman 
 with a lantern was passing near the car, and Barclay called 
 to him, " Is that headlight No. 2 ? " And wheb the man 
 affirmed Barclay's theory, he asked, "How long does it 
 take it to -get down here ? " 
 
 " Oh, she comes a-humming," replied the man. " If she 
 doesn't jump the track, she'll be down in eight minutes." 
 
 Inside the car Barclay heard a watch snap, and knew 
 that Lycurgus Mason didn't believe anything of the kind 
 and proposed to get at the facts. So Barclay sat down on 
 the platform ; but his mind went back to the old days, and 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 89 
 
 the ride through the woods along the Sycamore that Sun- 
 day night in July came to him, with all its fragrance and 
 stillness and sweetness. He recalled that they came into 
 the prairie just as the meadow-lark was crying its last 
 plaintive twilight trill, and the western sky was glowing 
 with a rim of gold upon the tips of the clouds. The 
 beauty of the prairie and the sky and the calm of the even- 
 ing entered into their hearts, and they were silent. Then 
 they left the prairie and went into the woods again, on 
 the river road. And before they came out of that road 
 into the upland. Fate turned a screw that changed the 
 lives of all of them. For in a turn of the road, in a deep 
 cut made by a ravine, Gabriel Carnine, making the last 
 stand for Minneola, stepped into the path and took the 
 horses by the bridles. The shock that John felt that 
 night when he realized what had happened came back 
 even across the years. And as the headlight far up in 
 the mountain above the desert slipped into a tunnel, 
 though it flashed out again in a few seconds, while it was 
 gone, all the details of the kidnapping of the young people 
 in the buggy hurried across his mind. Even the old anxi- 
 ety that he felt lest Sycamore Ridge would think him a 
 traitor to their cause, when they should find that he was 
 not ,there to sign the tax levy and save the court-house 
 and the county-seat, came back to him as he gazed at 
 the mountain, waiting for the headlight, and he remem- 
 bered how he made a paper trail of torn bits from a Con- 
 gregational hymn-book, left in Bob's pocket from the 
 morning service, dropping the bits under the buggy wheels 
 in the dust so that the men from the Ridge would see the 
 trail and follow the captives. In his memory he saw 
 Jake Dolan, who had followed the trail where it led to 
 Carnine's farm, come stumbling into the farm-house Tues- 
 day where they were hidden, and John, in memory, heard 
 Jake whisper that he had left his dog with the rescuing 
 party to lead the rescuers to him if he was on the right 
 trail and did not return. 
 
 And then as Barclay's mind went back to the long 
 Tuesday, when he should have been at the Ridge to sign 
 
90 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 the tax levy, the headlight flashed out of the tunnel. But 
 these were fading pictures. The one image that was in 
 his mind — clear through all the years — was of a wood and 
 a tree, — a great, spreading, low-boughed elm, near Car- 
 nine's house where the young people were held prisoners, 
 and Jane Mason sitting with her back against the tree, and 
 lying on the dry grass at her feet his own slight figure ; 
 sometimes he was looking up at her over his brow, and 
 sometimes his head rested on the roots of the tree beside 
 her, and she looked down at him and they talked, and no 
 one was near. For through youth into middle life, and 
 into the dawn of old age. That Day was marked in his life. 
 The day of the month — he forgot which it was. The day 
 of the week — that also left him, and there came a time 
 when he had to figure back to recall the year ; but for all 
 that, there was a radiance in his life, an hour of calm joy 
 that never left him, and he called it only — That Day. 
 That Day is in every heart ; in yours, my dear fat Mr. 
 Jones, and in yours, my good dried-up Mrs. Smith; and 
 in yours, Mrs. Goodman, and in yours, Mr. Badman ; 
 maybe it is upon the sea, or in the woods, or among the 
 noises of some great city — but it is That Day. And no 
 other day of all the thousands that have come to you is 
 like it. 
 
 Why should he remember the ugly farm-yard, the hard 
 faces of the men, the straw-covered frame they called a 
 barn, and the unpainted house ? All these things passed 
 by him unrecorded, as did the miserable fare of the table, 
 the hard bed at night, and the worry that must have 
 gnawed at his nerves to know that perhaps the town was 
 thinking him false to it, or that his mother, guessing the 
 truth, was in pain with terror, or to feel that a rescuing 
 party coming at the wrong time would bring on a fight 
 in which the girls would be killed. Only the picture of 
 Jane Mason, fine and lithe and strong, with the pink 
 cheeks of twenty, and the soft curves of childhood still 
 playing about her chin and throat as he saw it from the 
 ground at her feet, — that picture was etched into his 
 heart, and with it the recollection of her eyes when she 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 91 
 
 said, " John, — you don't think I — I knew of this — be- 
 forehand, do you ? " Just that sentence — those were the 
 only words left in his memory of a day's happiness. And 
 he never heard a locust whirring in a tree that it did not 
 bring back the memory of the spreading tree and the touch 
 
 — the soft, quick, shy touch of her lingers in his hair, and 
 the fire that was in her eyes. 
 
 It was in the dusk of Tuesday evening that Jake Dolan's 
 dog came into the yard where the captives were, and Jake 
 disowned him, and joined the men who stoned the faithful 
 creature out to the main road. But the prisoners knew 
 that their rescuers would follow the dog, so at supper the 
 three men from the Ridge sat together on a bench at the 
 table while Mrs. Carnine and the girls waited on the men 
 
 — after the fashion of country places in those days. 
 Dolan managed to say under his breath to Barclay, " It's 
 all right — but the girls must stay in the house to-night." 
 And John knew that if he and Bob escaped with horses 
 before ten o'clock, they could reach the Ridge in time to 
 sign the levy before midnight. Darkness fell at eight, 
 and a screech-owl in the wood complained to the night. 
 Dolan rose and stretched and yawned, and then began to 
 talk of going to bed, and Gabriel Carnine, whose turn it 
 was to sleep because he had been up two nights, shuiSed 
 off to the straw-covered stable to lie down with the Texan 
 who was his bunk mate, leaving half a dozen men to guard 
 the prisoners. An hour later the screech-owl in the wood 
 murmured again, this time much closer, and Dolan rose and 
 took off his hat and threw it in the straw beside him. He 
 was looking at the time anxiously toward the wood. But 
 the next moment from behind the barn in the opposite 
 direction something attracted them. It was a glare of 
 light, and the guards noticed it at the same time. A last 
 year's straw stack next to the barn was afire. Jane Mason 
 was standing in the back door of the house, and in the 
 hurried blur of moving events John divined that she had 
 slipped out and fired the stack. In an instant there was 
 confusion. The men were on their feet. They must fight 
 fire, or the barn would go. Dolan ran with the men to the 
 
92 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 straw stack. " We'll help you," he cried. " I'll wake 
 Gabe." There was hurrying for water pails. The women 
 appeared, crying shrilly, and in the glare that reddened 
 the sky the yard seemed f uU of mad men racing heedlessly. 
 
 " John," whispered Jane, coming up to him as he drew 
 water from the well, "let me do this. There are two 
 horses in the pasture. You and Bob go — fly — fly." 
 The Texan came running from the barn, which was begin- 
 ning to blaze. Dolan and Carnine still were in it. Then 
 from the wood back of the camp fifty men appeared, riding 
 at a gallop. Lige Bemis and General Ward rode in front 
 of the troop of horsemen. Carnine was still in the burn- 
 ing barn asleep, and there was no leader to give command 
 to the dazed guards. Ward and Bemis ran up, motioning 
 the men back, and Ward cried, " Shall we help you save 
 your stock and barn, or must we fight ? " It was addressed 
 to the crowd, but before they could answer, Dolan 
 stumbled out of the barn through the smoke and flames 
 crying, "Boys, — boys, — I can't find him." He saw the 
 rescuing party and shouted, " Boys, — Gabe's in there 
 asleep and I can't find him." The wind had suddenly 
 veered, and the crackling flames had reached the straw 
 roof of the barn. The fire was gaining headway, and the 
 three buckets that were coming from the well had no 
 effect on it. As the last horse was pulled out of the door, 
 one side of the straw wall of the barn fell away on fire and 
 showed Gabriel Carnine sleeping not ten feet from the 
 flames. Lige Bemis soused his handkerchief in water, tied 
 it over his mouth, and ran in. He grabbed the sleeping 
 man and dragged him through the flames ; but both were 
 afire as they came into the open. 
 
 Now in this story Elijah Westlake Bemis is not shown 
 often in a heroic light. Yet he had in his being the 
 making of a hero, for he was brave. And heroism, after 
 all, is only effective reliance on some virtue in a crisis, in 
 spite of temptations to do the easy excusable thing. And 
 when Lige Bemis sneaks through this story in unlovely 
 guise, remember that he has a virtue that once exalted 
 even him. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 93 
 
 " Gabe Carnine," said Ward, as the barn fell and there 
 was nothing more to fear, " we didn't fire your haystack ; 
 I give you my word on that. But we are going to take 
 these boys home now. And you better let us alone." 
 
 That John Barclay remembered, and then he remem- 
 bered being in the front yard of the farm-house a moment 
 — alone with Jane Mason, his bridle rein over his arm. 
 Her hair was down, and she looked wild and beautiful. 
 The straw was still burning back of the house, and the 
 glow was everywhere. He always remembered that she 
 held his hand and would not let him go, and there two 
 memories are different ; for she always maintained that he 
 did, right there and then, and he recollected that as he 
 mounted his horse he tried to kiss her and failed. Per- 
 haps both are right — who knows ? But both agree that 
 as he sat there an instant on his horse, she threw kisses at 
 him and he threw them back. And when the men rode 
 away, she stood in the road, and he could see her in the 
 light of the waning fire, and thirty years passed and still 
 he saw her. 
 
 As the headlight of the train lit up the cinder yard, 
 and brought the glint of the rails out of the darkness, 
 John Barclay, a thousand miles away and thirty years 
 after, fancied he could see her there in the railroad yards 
 beside him waving her hands at him, smiling at him with 
 the new-found joy in her face. For there is no difference 
 between fifty-three and twenty-three when men are in 
 love, and if they are in love with the same woman in both 
 years, her face will never change, her smile will always 
 seem the same. And to John Barclay there on the rear 
 platform of the car, with the crash of the great train in 
 his ears, the same face looked out of the night at him that 
 he saw back in his twenties, and he knew that the same 
 prayer to the same God would go up that night for him 
 that went up from the same lips so long ago. The man 
 on the car platform rose from his chair, and went into the 
 car. 
 
 "Well," he said to Lycurgus Mason as the old man 
 reached for his watch, " how about it ? " 
 
94 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Lycurgus replied as he put it back in his pocket, " Just 
 seven minutes and a half. She's covered a lot of track in 
 those seven minutes I " 
 
 And John Barclay looked back over the years, and saw 
 a boy riding like the wind through the night, changing 
 horses every half-hour, and trying to tell time from his 
 watch by a rising moon, but the moon was blown with 
 clouds like a woman's hair, and he could not see the hands 
 on the watch face. So as he looked at the old man sit- 
 ting crooked over in the great leather chair, John Barclay 
 only grunted, "Yes — she's covered a long stretch of 
 country in those seven minutes." And he picked the 
 Biography off the table and read to himself : " I some- 
 times think that only that part of the soul that loves is 
 saved. The rest is dross and perishes in the fire. Whether 
 the love be the love of woman or the love of kind, or the 
 love of God that embraces all, it matters not. That sanc- 
 tifies ; that purifies — that marks the way of the only sal- 
 vation the soul can know, and he who does not love with 
 the fervour of a passionate heart some of God's creatures, 
 cannot love God, and not loving Him, is lost in spite of all 
 his prayers, in spite of all his aspirations. Therefore, if 
 you would live you must love, for when love dies the soul 
 shrivels. And if God takes what you love — love on ; for 
 only love will make you immortal, only love will cheat 
 death of its victory." 
 
 And looking at Lycurgus Mason fidgeting in his chair, 
 John Barclay wondered when he would die the kind of a 
 death that had come to the little old man before him, and 
 then he felt the car move under him, and knew they were 
 going back to Sycamore Ridge. 
 
 " Day after to-morrow," said Barclay, meditatively, as he 
 heard the first faint screaming of the heavily laden wheels 
 under him, " day after to-morrow. Daddy Mason, we will 
 be home with Colonel Culpepper and his large white 
 plumes." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 This chapter might have had in it " all the quality, 
 pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war " if it had 
 not been for the matters that came up for discussion at 
 the meeting of the Garrison County Old Settlers' Associa- 
 tion this year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eight. 
 For until that meeting the legend of the last hour of the 
 County-seat War of '73 had flourished unmolested; but 
 there General Philemon Ward rose and laid an axe at the 
 root of the legend, and while of course he did not destroy 
 it entirely, he left it scarred and withered on one side and 
 therefore entirely unfitted for historical purposes. It 
 seems that Gabriel Carnine was assigned by President 
 John Barclay of the Association to prepare and read a paper 
 on " The Rise, Decline, and Fall of Minneola." Certainly 
 that was a proper subject considering the fact that corn 
 has been growing over the site of Minneola for twenty 
 3' ears. And surely Gabriel Carnine, whose black beard 
 has whitened in thirty years' faithful service to Sycamore 
 Ridge, whose wife lies buried on the Hill, and whose chil- 
 dren read the Sycamore Ridge Banner in the uttermost 
 parts of the earth, — surely Gabriel Carnine might have 
 been trusted to tell the truth of the conflict waged be- 
 tween the towns a generation ago. But men have curi- 
 ous works in them, and unless one has that faith in God 
 that gives him unbounded faith in the goodness of man, 
 one should not open men up in the back and watch the 
 wheels go 'round. For though men are good, and in the 
 long run what they do is God's work and is therefore ac- 
 ceptable, no man is perfect. There goes Lige Bemis past 
 the post-ofiice, now, for instance ; when he was in the legis- 
 lature in the late sixties, every one knows that Minneola 
 raised twenty thousand dollars in cash and offered it to 
 Lige if he would pretend to be sick and quit work on the 
 
96 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Sycamore Ridge county-seat bill. He could have fooled 
 us, and could have taken the money, which was certainly 
 more than he could expect to get from Sycamore Ridge. 
 Did he take it ? Not at all. A million would not have 
 tempted him. He was in that game; yet ten days after 
 he refused the offer of Minneola, he tried to blackmail his 
 United States senator out of fifty dollars, and sold his vote 
 to a candidate for state printer for one hundred dollars and 
 flashed the bill around Sycamore Ridge proudly for a week 
 before spending it. 
 
 So Gabriel Carnine must not be blamed if in that paper 
 on Minneola, before the Old Settlers' Association, he let 
 out the pent-up wrath of thirty years ; and also if in the 
 discussion General Ward unsealed his lips for the first 
 time and blighted the myth that told how a hundred Min- 
 neola men had captured the court-house yard on the night 
 that John Barclay and Bob Hendricks rode home from their 
 captivity to sign the tax levy. Legend has always said 
 that Lige Bemis, riding half a mile ahead of the others that 
 night, came to the courtyard; found it guarded by Min- 
 neola men, rode back, met John and Bob and the general 
 crossing the bridge over the old ford of the Sycamore, and 
 told them that they could not get into the court-house until 
 the men came up who had ridden out to rescue the com- 
 missioners, — perhaps a quarter of an hour behind the 
 others, — and that even then there must be a fight of 
 doubtful issue ; and further that it was after eleven o'clock, 
 and soon would be too late to sign the levy. The forty 
 thousand people in Garrison County have believed for 
 thirty years that finding the court-house yard in posses- 
 sion of the enemy, Bemis suggested going through the 
 cave by the Barclays' home, which had its west opening in 
 the wall of the basement of the court-house ; and further- 
 more, tradition has said that Bemis led John and Bob 
 through the cave, and with crowbars and hammers they 
 made a man-sized hole in the wall, crawled through it, 
 mounted the basement stairs, unlocked the commissioners' 
 room, held their meeting in darkness, and five minutes 
 before twelve o'clock astonished the invading forces by 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 97 
 
 lighting a lamp in their room, signing the levy that Bemis, 
 as county attorney, had prepared the Sunday before, and 
 slipping with it into the basement, through the cave and 
 back to the troop of horsemen as they were jogging 
 across the bridge on their way back from Carnine's farm. 
 And here are the marks of General Ward's axe — 
 verified by Gabriel Carnine : first, that there were no 
 Minneola invaders in possession of the court-house, but 
 only a dozen visitors loafing about town that night to 
 watch developments ; second, that the regular pickets were 
 out as usual, and an invading force could not have stolen 
 in ; and third, that Bemis knew it, but as his political for- 
 tunes were low, he rode ahead of the others, hatched up 
 the cock-and-bull story about the guarded court-house, 
 and persuaded the boys to let him lead them into a roman- 
 tic adventure that would sound well in the campaign and 
 help to insure his reelection the following year. In view 
 of the general's remarks and Gabriel Carnine's corrobora- 
 tive statement, and in view of the bitterness with which 
 Carnine assailed the whole Sycamore Ridge campaign, how 
 can a truthful chronicler use the episode at all? History 
 is a fickle goddess, and perhaps Pontius Pilate, being 
 human and used to human errors and human weakness, 
 is not so much to blame for asking, " What is truth? " and 
 then turning away before he had the answer. 
 
 Walking home from the meeting through Mary Barclay 
 Park, Barclay's mind wandered back to the days when he 
 won his first important lawsuit — the suit brought by Min- 
 neola to prevent the collection of taxes under the midnight 
 levy to build the court-house. It was that lawsuit which 
 brought him to the attention of the legal department of the 
 Fifth Parallel Railroad Company, and his employment by 
 that company to defeat the bonds of its narrow-gauged com- 
 petitor, that was seeking entrance into Garrison County, 
 was the beginning of his career. And in that fight to 
 defeat the narrow-gauged railroad, the people of Garrison 
 County learned something of Barclay as well. He and 
 Bemis went over the county together, — the little fox and 
 the old coyote, the people called them, — and where men 
 
98 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 were for sale, Bemis bought them, and where they were 
 timid, John threatened them, and where they were neither, 
 both John and Bemis fought with a ferocity that made 
 men hate but respect the pair. And so though the Fifth 
 Parallel Railroad never came to the Ridge, its successor, 
 the Corn Belt Road, did come, and in '74 John spoke in 
 every schoolhouse in the county, urging the people to vote 
 the bonds for the Corn Belt Road, and his employment as 
 local attorney for the company marked his first step into 
 the field of state politics. For it gave him a railroad pass, 
 and brought him into relations with the men who manipu- 
 lated state affairs ; also it made him a silent partner of Lige 
 Bemis in Garrison County politics. 
 
 But even when he was county commissioner, less than 
 two dozen years old, he was a force in Sycamore Ridge, 
 and there were days when he had four or five thousand 
 dollars to his credit in General Hendricks' bank. The 
 general used to look over the daily balances and stroke 
 his iron-gray beard and say : " Robert, John is doing 
 well to-day. Son, I wish you had the acquisitive faculty. 
 Why don't you invest something and make something ? " 
 But Bob Hendricks was content to do his work in the 
 bank, and read at home one night and slip over to the Cul- 
 peppers' the next night, and so long as the boy was steady 
 and industrious and careful, his father had no real cause 
 for complaint, and he knew it. But the town knew that 
 John was getting on in the world. He owned half of 
 Culpepper's second addition, and his interest in College 
 Heights was clear; he never dealt in equities, but paid 
 cash and gave warranty deeds for what he sold. It was 
 believed around the Ridge that he could " clean up," for 
 fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, and when he called 
 Mrs. Mason of the Mason House, Minneola, into the dining 
 room one afternoon to talk over a little matter with her, 
 he found her most willing. It was a short session. After 
 listening and punctuating his remarks with " of courses " 
 and " yeses " and " so's," Mrs. Mason's reply was : — 
 
 " Of course, Mr. Barclay," — the Mr. Barclay he remem- 
 bered as the only time in his life he ever had it from her, — 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 99 
 
 " of course, Mr. Barclay, that is a matter rather for j'ou 
 and Mr. Mason to settle. You know," she added, folding 
 her hands across her ample waist, " Mr. Mason is the head 
 of the house ! " Then she lifted her voice, perhaps fear- 
 ing that matters might be delayed. "Oh, pal" she 
 cried. " Pa ! Come in here, please. There's a gentle- 
 man to see you." 
 
 Lycurgus Mason came in with a tea towel in his hands 
 and an apron on. He heard John through in a dazed 
 way, his hollow eyes blinking with evident uncertainty as 
 to what was expected of him. When Barclay was through, 
 the father looked at the mother for his cue, and did not 
 speak for a moment. Then he faltered: " Why, yes, — yes, 
 — I see ! Well, ma, what — " And at the cloud on her 
 brow Lycurgus hesitated again, and rolled his apron about 
 his hands nervously and finally said, " Oh — well — what- 
 ever you and her ma think will be all right with me, I 
 guess." And having been dismissed telepathically, Lycur- 
 gus hurried back to his work. 
 
 It was when John Barclay was elected President of the 
 Corn Belt Railway, in the early nineties, that Lycurgus 
 told McHurdie and Ward and Culpepper and Frye, as the 
 graybeards wagged around the big brown stove in the 
 harness shop one winter day : " You know ma, she never 
 saw much in him, and when I came in the room she was 
 about to tell him he couldn't have her. Now, isn't that 
 like a woman ? — no sense about men. But I says: ' Ma, 
 John Barclay's got good blood in him. His grandpa died 
 worth a million, — and that was a pile of money for them 
 days; ' so I says, 'If Jane Mason wants him, ma,' I says, 
 ' let her have him. Remember what a fuss your folks 
 made over me getting you,' I says; 'and see how it's 
 turned out.' Then I turned to John — I can see the 
 little chap now a-standing there with his dicky hat in his 
 hand and his pipe-stem legs no bigger than his cane, and 
 his gray eyes lookin' as wistful as a dog's when you got a 
 bone in your hand, and I says, ' Take her along, John; 
 take her along and good luck go with you,' I says; 'but,' 
 I says, ' John Barclay, I want you always to remember 
 
100 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Jane Mason has got a father.' Just that way I says. I 
 tell you, gentlemen, there's nothing like having a wife that 
 respects you." The crowd in the harness shop wagged 
 their heads, and Lycurgus went on: " Now, they ain't many 
 women that would just let a man stand up like that and, 
 as you may say, give her daughter right away under her 
 nose. But my wife, she's been well trained." 
 
 In the pause that followed. Watts McHurdie's creaking 
 lever was the only sound that broke the silence. Then 
 Watts, who had been sewing away at his work with wav- 
 ing arms, spoke, after clearing his throat, " I've heard 
 many say that she was sich." And the old man cackled, 
 and it became a saying among them and in the town. 
 
 One who goes back over the fifty years that have passed 
 since Sycamore Ridge became a local habitation and a 
 name finds it difficult to realize that one-third of its life 
 was passed before the panic of '73, which closed the Hen- 
 dricks' bank. For those first nineteen years passed as the 
 life of a child passes, so that they seem only sketched in ; 
 yet to those who lived at all, to those like Watts McHur- 
 die and Philemon Ward, who now pass their happiest mo- 
 ments mooning over tilted headstones in the cemetery on 
 the Hill, those first nineteen years seem the longest and the 
 best. And that fateful year of '73 to them seems the most 
 portentous. For then, perhaps for the first time, they 
 realized the cruel uncertainty of the struggle for exist- 
 ence. With the terrible drouth of '60 this realization did 
 not come ; for the town was young, and the people were 
 young ; only Ezra Lane was a graybeard in all the town 
 in the sixties ; and youth is so sure ; there is no hazard 
 under thirty. In the war they fought and marched and 
 sang and starved and died, and were still young. But 
 when the financial panic of '73 spread its dread and its 
 trouble over the land, youth in Sycamore Ridge was gone ; 
 it was manhood that faced these things in the Ridge, and 
 manhood had cares, had given hostages to fortune, and life 
 was serious and hard ; and big on the horizon was the fear 
 of failure. General Hendricks swayed in the panic of '73 ; 
 and the time marked him, took the best of the light from 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 101 
 
 his eye, and put the slightest perceptible hobble on his feet. 
 To Martin Culpepper and Watts McHurdie and Philemon 
 Ward and Jacob Dolan and Oscar Fernald, the panic 
 came in their late thirties and early forties, a flash of 
 lightning that prophesied the coming of the storm and 
 stress of an inexorable fate. 
 
 The wedding of John Barclay and Jane Mason occurred 
 in September, 1873, two days after he had stood on the 
 high stone steps of the Exchange National Bank and 
 made a speech to the crowd, telling them he was the 
 largest depositor in the bank, and begging them to stop 
 the run. But the run did not stop, and the day before 
 John's wedding the bank did not open ; the short crop 
 and the panic in the East were more than Garrison County 
 people could stand. But all the first day of the , bank's 
 closing and all the next day John worked among the 
 people, reassuring them. So that it was five o'clock in 
 the evening before he could start to Minneola for his 
 wedding. 
 
 And such a wedding 1 One would say that when hard 
 times were staring every one in the face, social forms 
 would be observed most simply. But one would say so 
 without reckoning with Mrs. Lycurgus Mason. As the 
 groom and the bridesmaid and best man rode up from 
 Sycamore Valley, two miles from Minneola, in the early 
 falling dusk that night, the Mason House loomed through 
 the darkness, lighted up like a steamboat. " You'll have 
 to move along, John," said Bob Hendricks ; " I think I 
 heard her whistle." 
 
 On the sidewalk in front of the hotel they met Mrs. 
 Mason in her black silk with a hemstitched linen apron 
 over it. She ushered them into the house, took them to 
 their rooms, and whirled John around on a pivot, it 
 seemed to him, with her interminable directions. His 
 mother, who had come over to Minneola the day before, 
 came to his room and quieted her son, and as he got 
 ready for what he called the " ordeal," he could hear Mrs. 
 Mason swinging doors below stairs, walking on her heels 
 through the house, receiving belated guests from Syca- 
 
102 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 more Ridge and the country, — for the whole county had 
 been invited, — and he heard her carrying out a dog that 
 had sneaked into the dining room. 
 
 The groom missed the bride, and as h6 was tying his 
 necktie, — which reminded him of General Ward by its 
 whiteness, — he wondered why she did not come to him. 
 He did not know that she was a prisoner in her room, 
 while all the young girls in Sycamore Ridge and Min- 
 neola were looking for pins and hooking her up and step- 
 ping on each other's skirts. For one wedding is like all 
 weddings — whether it be in the Mason House, Minneola, 
 or in Buckingham Palace. And some there are who 
 marry for love in Minneola, and some for money, and 
 some for a home, and some for Heaven only knows what, 
 just as they do in the chateaux and palaces and mansions. 
 And the groom is nobody and the bride is everything, as 
 it was in the beginning and as it shall be ever after. 
 Probably poor Adam had to stand behind a tree neg- 
 lected and alone, while Lilith and girls from the land of 
 Nod bedecked Eve for the festivities. Men are not made 
 for ceremonies. And so at all the formal occasions of 
 this life — whether it be among the great or among the 
 lowly, in the East or the West, at weddings, christenings, 
 and funerals — man hides in shame and leaves the affairs 
 to woman, who leads him as an ox, even a muzzled ox, that 
 treadeth out the corn. " The doomed man," whispered 
 John to Bob as the two in their black clothes stood at the 
 head of the stair that led into the parlour of the Mason 
 House that night, waiting for the wedding march to begin 
 on the cabinet organ, " ate a hearty supper, consisting of 
 beefsteak and eggs, and after shaking hands with his 
 friends he mounted the gallows with a firm step ! " 
 
 Then he heard the thud of the music book on the or- 
 gan, the creak of the treadle, — and when he returned 
 to consciousness he was Mrs. Mason's son-in-law, and 
 proud of it. And she, — bless her heart and the hearts of 
 all good women who give up the joy of their lives to us 
 poor unworthy creatures, — she stood by the wax-flower 
 wreath under the glass case on the whatnot in the corner, 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 103 
 
 and wept into her real lace handkerchief; and wished 
 with all the earnestness of her soul that she could think 
 of some way to let John know that his trousers leg was 
 wrinkled over his left shoe top. But she could not solve 
 the problem, so she gave herself ug to the consolation of 
 her tears. Yet it should be set down to her credit that 
 when the preacher's amen was said, hers was the first head 
 up, and while the others were rushing for the happy pair 
 she was in the kitchen with her apron on dishing up the 
 wedding supper. Well might the Sycamore Ridge Weekly 
 Banner declare that the " tables groaned with good things." 
 There were not merely a little piddling dish of salad, a bite 
 of cake, and a dab of ice-cream. There were turkey and 
 potatoes and vegetables and fruit and bread and cake and 
 pudding and pie — four kinds of pie, mark you — and pre- 
 serves, and " Won't you please, Mrs. Culpepper, try some 
 of that piccalilli ? " and " Oh, Mrs. Ward, if you just would 
 have a slice of that fruit cake," and " Now, General, -=— a 
 little more of the gravy for that turkey dressing — it is 
 such a long ride home, " or " Colonel, I know you like corn 
 bread, and I made this myself as a special compliment to 
 Virginia." 
 
 And through it all the bride sat watching the door — 
 looking always through the crowd for some one. Her 
 face was anxious and her heart was clouded, and when the 
 guests had gone and the house was empty, she left her 
 husband and slipped out of the back door. There, after 
 the glare of the lamps had left her eyes, she saw a little 
 man walking with his head down, out near the barn, and 
 she ran to him and threw her arms about him and kissed 
 him, and when she led Lycurgus Mason, who was all 
 washed and dressed, back through the kitchen to her 
 husband, John saw that the man's eyelids were red, and 
 that on the starched cuffs were the marks of tears. For 
 to him she was only his little girl, and John afterward 
 knew that she was the only friend he had in the world. 
 " Oh, father, why didn't you come in ? " cried the daughter. 
 " I missed you so ! " The man blinked a moment at the 
 lights and looked toward his wife, who was busy at a table, 
 
104 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 as he said : "Who ? Me? " and then added : " I was just 
 lookin' after their horses. I was coming in pretty soon. 
 You oughtn't to bother about me. Well, John," he smiled, 
 as he put out his hand, "the-seegars seems to be on you 
 — as the feller says." And John put his arm about 
 Lycurgus Mason, as they walked out of the kitchen, and 
 Jane reached for her gingham apron. Then life began 
 for Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay in earnest. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Forty thousand words — and that is the number we 
 have piled up in this story — is a large number of words to 
 string together without a heroine. That is almost as bad 
 as the dictionary, in which He and She are always hun- 
 dreds o± pages apart and never meet, — not even in the 
 " Z's " at the end, — which is why the dictionary is so un- 
 popular, perhaps. But this is the story of a man, and 
 naturally it must have many heroines. For you know 
 men — they are all alike I First, Mrs. Mary Barclay was 
 a heroine — you saw her face, strong and clean and sharply 
 chiselled with a great purpose ; then Miss Lucy — black- 
 eyed, red-cheeked, slender little Miss Lucy — was a heroine, 
 but she married General Ward ; and then Ellen Culpep- 
 per was a heroine, but she fluttered out of the book into 
 the sunlight, and was gone ; and then came Jane Mason, 
 
 — and you have seen her girlish beauty, and you will see 
 it develop into gentle womanhood ; but the real heroinej 
 
 — of the real story, — you have not seen her face. You 
 have heard her name, and have seen her moving through 
 these pages with her back consciously turned to you — for 
 being a shy minx, she had no desire to intrude until she 
 was properly introduced. And now we will whirl her 
 around that you may have a good look at her. 
 
 Let us begin at the ground: as to feet — they are not 
 too small — say three and a half in size. And they sup- 
 port rather short legs — my goodness, of course she has 
 legs — did you think her shoes were pinned to her over- 
 skirt? Her legs carry around a plump body, — not fat — 
 why, certainly not — who ever heard of a fat heroine (the 
 very best a heroine can do for comfort is to be plump) — 
 and so beginning the sentence over again, being a plump 
 little body, there is a neck to account for — a neck which 
 
 105 
 
106 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 we may look at, but which is so exquisite that it would be 
 hardly polite to consider it in terms of language. Only 
 when we come to the chin that tips the oval of the face 
 may we descend to language, and even then we must rise 
 and flick the red mouth with but a passing word. But this 
 much must be plainly spoken. The nose does turn up — 
 not much — but a little (Bob used to say, just to be good 
 and out of the way) I That, however, is mere personal 
 opinion, and of little importance here. But the eyes are 
 brown — reddish brown, with enough white at the corners 
 to make them seem liquid ; only liquid is not the word. 
 For they are radiant — remember that word, for we may 
 come back to it, after we are done with the brow — a wide 
 brow — low enough for Dickens and Thackeray and Char- 
 lotte Bronte, and for Longfellow and Whittier and Will 
 Carleton in his day, and high enough for Tennyson at the 
 temples, but not so high but that the gate of the eyes 
 has to shut wearily when Browning would sail through 
 the current of her soul. As to hair — Heaven knows there 
 is plenty of that, but it had rather a checkered career. 
 As she clung to her mother's apron and waved her father 
 away to war, she was a tow-headed little tot, and when he 
 came back from the field of glory he thought he could 
 detect a tendency to red in it, but the fire smouldered 
 and went out, and the hair turned brown — a dark brown 
 with the glint of the quenched fires in it when it blew in 
 the sun. Now frame a glowing young face in that soft 
 waving hair, and you have a picture that will speak, and 
 if the picture should come to life and speak as it was in 
 the year of our Lord 1873, the first word of all the words 
 in the big fat dictionary it would utter would be Bob. 
 And so you may lift up your face and take your name and 
 place in this story — Molly Culpepper, heroine. And 
 when you lift your face, we may see something more than 
 its pretty features: we shall see a radiant soul. For scien- 
 tists have found out that every material thing in this uni- 
 verse gives off atomic particles of itself, and some elements 
 are more radiant than others. And there is a paralleling 
 quality in the spiritual world, and some souls give off 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 107 
 
 more of their colour and substance than others, though 
 what it is they radiate we do not know. Even the scien- 
 tists do not know the material things that the atoms radi- 
 ate, so why should we be asked to define the essence of 
 souls ? Yet from the soul of Molly Culpepper, in joy and 
 in sorrow, in her moments of usefulness and in her deepest 
 woe, her soul glowed and shed its glory, and she grew even 
 as she gave her substance to the world about her. For 
 that is the magic of God's mystery of life. 
 
 And now having for the moment finished our discussion 
 on the radio-activity of souls, let us go back to the story. 
 
 Mary Barclay rode home from her son's wedding that 
 night with Bob Hendricks and Molly Culpepper. They 
 were in a long line of buggies that began to scatter out 
 and roam across fields to escape the dust of the roads. 
 " Well," said Mrs. Barclay, as they pulled up the bank of 
 the Sycamore for home, "I suppose it will be you and 
 Molly next. Bob?" 
 
 It was Molly who replied: "Yes. It is going to be 
 Thanksgiving." 
 
 "Well, why not?" asked Mrs. Barclay. 
 
 "Oh — they all seem to think we shouldn't, don't you 
 know, Mrs. Barclay — with all this hard times — and the 
 bank closing. And hasn't John told you of the plan he's 
 worked out for Bob to go to New York this winter ? " 
 
 The buggy was nearing the Barclay home. Mrs. Bar- 
 clay answered, " No," and the girl went on. 
 
 " Well, it's a big wheat land scheme — and Bob's to go 
 East and sell the stock. They worked it out last night 
 after the bank closed. He'll tell you all about it." 
 
 Mrs. Barclay was standing by the buggy when the girl 
 finished. The elder woman bade the young people good 
 night, and turned and went into the yard and stood a 
 moment looking at the stars before going into her lonely 
 house. The lovers let the tired horses lag up the hill, 
 and as they turned into Lincoln Avenue the girl was 
 saying : " A year's so long. Bob, — so long. And you'U 
 be away, and I'm afraid." He tried to reassure her; but 
 she protested : " You are all my life, — big boy, — all my 
 
108 A CERTAIN RICH MAIM 
 
 life. I was only fourteen, just a little girl, when j'ou 
 came into my life, and all these long seven years you are 
 the only human being that has been always in my heart. 
 Oh, Bob, Bob, — always." 
 
 What a man says to his sweetheart is of no importance. 
 Men are so circumscribed in their utterances — so tongue- 
 tied in love. They all say one thing ; so it need not be 
 set down here what Bob Hendricks said. It was what the 
 king said to the queen, the prince to the princess, the duke 
 to the lady, the gardener to the maid, the troubadour to 
 his dulcinea. And Molly Culpepper replied, " When are 
 you going. Bob?" 
 
 The young man picked up the sagging lines to turn out 
 for Watts McHurdie's buggy. He had just let Nellie 
 Logan out at the Wards', where she lived. After a " Hello, 
 Watts; getting pretty late for an old man like you," 
 Hendricks answered : " Well, you know John — when he 
 gets a thing in his head he's a regular tornado. There 
 was an immense crowd in town to-day — depositors and all 
 that. And do you know, John went out this afternoon 
 with a paper in his hand, and five hundred dollars he dug 
 out of his safe over in the office, and he got options to lease 
 their land for a year signed up by the owners of five thou- 
 sand acres of the best wheat land in Garrison County. He 
 wants twenty thousand acres, and pretty well bunched 
 down in Pleasant and Spring townships, and I'm going in 
 four days." The young man was full of the scheme. He 
 went on : " John's a wonder, Molly, — a perfect wonder. 
 He's got grit. Father wouldn't have been able to stand 
 up under this — but John has braced him, and has cheered 
 up the people, and I believe, before the week is out, we will 
 be able to get nearly all the depositors to agree to leave 
 their money alone for a year, and then only take it out on 
 thirty days' notice. And if we can get that, we can open 
 up by the first of the month. But I've got to go on to 
 Washington to see if I can arrange that with the comp- 
 troller of the currency." 
 
 They were standing at the Culpepper gate as he spoke. 
 A light in the upper windows showed that the parents 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 109 
 
 were in. Buchanan came ambling along the walk and 
 went through the gate between them without speaking. 
 When he had closed the door, the girl came close to her 
 lover. He took her in his arms, and cried, " Oh, darling, 
 
 — only four more days together." He paused, and in the 
 starlight she saw on his face more than words could hare 
 told her of his love for her. He was a silent youth ; the 
 spoken word came haltingly to his lips, and as often hap- 
 pens, words were superfluous to him in his moments of 
 great emotion. He put her hands to his lips, and moaned, 
 for the hour of parting seemed to be hurrying down upon 
 him. , Finally his tongue found liberty. " Oh, sweet- 
 heart — sweetheart," he cried, "always remember that 
 you are bound in my soul with the iron of youth's first 
 love — my only love. Oh, I never could again, dear, — only 
 you — only you. After this it would be a sacrilege." 
 
 They stood silent in the joy of their ecstacy for a long 
 minute, then he asked gently: " Do you understand, Molly, 
 
 — do you understand ? this is forever for us, Molly, — for- 
 ever. When one loves as we love — with our childhood 
 and youth welded into it all — whom God hath joined — " 
 he stammered ; " oh, Molly, whom God hath joined," he 
 whispered, and his voice trembled as he sighed again, and 
 kissed her, "whom God hath joined. Oh, God — God, 
 God! " cried the lover, as he closed his eyes with his lips 
 against her hair. 
 
 The restless horses recalled the lovers to the earth. It 
 was Molly who spoke. "Bob — Bob — I can't let you 
 go!" 
 
 Molly Culpepper had no reserves with her lover. She 
 went on whispering, with her face against his heart: 
 " Bob — Bob, big boy, I am going to tell you something 
 truthy true, that I never breathed to any one. At night 
 
 — to-night, in just a few minutes — when I go up to my 
 room — all alone — I get your picture and hold it to me 
 close, and holding it right next to my very heart, Bob, I 
 pray for you." She paused a moment, and then continued, 
 " Oh, and — I pray for us — Bob — I pray for us." Then 
 she ran up the stone walk, and on the steps she turned to 
 
110 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 throw kisses at him, but he did not move until he heard 
 the lock click in the front door. 
 
 At the livery-stable he found "Watts McHurdie bending 
 over some break in his buggy. They walked up the street 
 together. At the corner where they were about to part 
 the little man said, as he looked into the rapturous face of 
 the lanky boy, " Well, Bob, — it's good-by, John, for you, 
 I suppose ? " 
 
 "Oh — I don't know," replied the other from his en- 
 chanted world and then asked absently, " Why ? " 
 
 "Well, it's nature, I guess. She'll take all his time 
 now." He rubbed his chin reflectively, and as Bob turned 
 to go Watts said : " My Heavens, how time does fly I It 
 just seems like yesterday that all you boys were raking 
 over the scrap-pile back of my shop, and slipping in and 
 nipping leather strands and braiding them into whips, and 
 I'd have to douse you with water to get rid of you. I 
 got a quirt hanging up in the shop now that Johnnie Bar- 
 clay dropped one day when I got after him with a pan of 
 water. It's a six-sided one, with eight strands down in 
 the round part. I taught him how to braid it." He 
 chewed a moment and spat before going on : " And now 
 look at him. He's little, but oh my." Something was 
 working under McHurdie's belt, for Bob could hear it 
 chuckling as he chewed : " Wasn't she a buster ? It's 
 funny, ain't it — the way we all pick big ones — we sawed- 
 ofFs"? The laugh came — a quiet, repressed gurgle, and 
 he added: "Yes — by hen, and you long-shanks always 
 pick little dominickers. Eh ? " He chewed a meditative 
 cud before venturing, "That's what I told her comin' 
 home to-night." Bob knew whom he meant. The man 
 went on : "But when she saw them — him so little she'll 
 have to shake the sheet to find him — and her so big and 
 busting, I seen her — you know," he nodded his head 
 wisely to indicate which " her " he meant. " I saw her 
 a-eying me, out of the corner of her eye, and looking at 
 him, and then looking at the girl, and looking at herself, 
 and on the way home to-night I'm damned if I didn't have 
 to put off asking her another six months." He sighed and 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN lU 
 
 continued, "And the first thing I know the drummer or 
 the preacher'!! get her." He chewed for a minute in peace 
 and chucliled, "Wei! — Bob, I suppose you'l! be next?" 
 He did not wait for an answer, but spolce up quickly, 
 " Well, Bob, good night — good night," and hurried to his 
 shop. 
 
 The next day the people that blackened Main Street in 
 Sycamore Ridge talked of two things — the bank failure 
 and the new Golden Belt Wheat Company. Barclay en- 
 listed Colonel Culpepper, and promised him two dollars 
 for every hundred-acre option to lease that he secured at 
 three dollars an acre — the cash on the lease to be paid 
 March first. Barclay's plan was to organize a stock com- 
 pany and to sell his stock in the East for enough to raise 
 eight dollars an acre for every acre he secured, and to use 
 the five dollars for making the crop. He believed that 
 with a good wheat crop the next year he could make 
 money and buy as much land as he needed. But that 
 year of the panic John capitalized the hardship of his 
 people, and made terms for them, which they could not 
 refuse. He literally sold them their own want. For the 
 fact that he had a little ready money and could promise 
 more before harvest upon' which the people might live — 
 however miserably was no concern of his — made it pos- 
 sible for him to drive a bargain little short of robbery. 
 It was Bob's part of the business to float the stock com- 
 pany in the East among his father's rich friends. John 
 was to furnish the money to keep Bob in New York, 
 and the Hendricks' connections in banking circles were 
 to furnish the cash to float the proposition, and the 
 Hendricks' bank — if John could get it opened again 
 — was to guarantee that the stock subscribed would 
 pay six per cent interest. So there was no honeymoon 
 for John Barclay. When he dropped the reins and helped 
 his bride out of the buggy the next morning in front of 
 the Thayer House, he hustled General Ward's little boy 
 into the seat, told him to drive the team to Dolan's stable, 
 and waving the new Mrs. Barclay good-by, limped in a 
 trot over to the bank. In flve minutes he was working 
 
112 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 in the crowd, and by night had the required number of 
 the depositors ready to agree to let their money lie a year 
 on deposit, and that matter was closed. He was a 
 solemn-faced youth in those days, with a serious air about 
 him, and something of that superabundance of dignity 
 little men often think they must assume to hold their own. 
 The town knew him as a trim little man in a three- 
 buttoned tail-coat, with rather extraordinary neckties, 
 a well-brushed hat, and shiny shoes. To the country peo- 
 ple he was "limping Johnnie," and General Ward, watch- 
 ing Barclay hustle his way down Main Street Saturday 
 afternoons, when the sidewalk and the streets were full 
 of people, used to say, "Busier 'n a tin pedler." And 
 he said to Mrs. Ward, " Lucy, if it's true that old 
 Grandpa Barclay got his start carrying a pack, you can 
 see him cropping out in John, bigger than a wolf." 
 
 But the general had little time to devote to John, for 
 he was state organizer of a movement that had for its 
 object the abolition of middlemen in trade, and he was 
 travelling most of the time. The dust gathered on his 
 law-books, and his Sunday suit grew frayed at the edges 
 and shiny at the elbows, but his heart was in the cause, 
 and his blue eyes burned with joy when he talked, and he 
 was happy, and had to travel two days and nights when 
 the fourth baby came, and then was too late to serve on 
 the committee on reception, and had to be satisfied with a 
 minor place on the committee on entertainment and amuse- 
 ments of which Mrs. Culpepper was chairman. But John 
 turned in half of a fee that came from the East for a law- 
 suit that both he and Ward had forgotten, and Miss Lucy 
 would have named the new baby Mary Ward, but the 
 general stood firm for Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Sitting 
 at Sunday dinner with the Wards on the occasion of 
 Elizabeth Cady Stanton Ward's first monthly birthday, 
 John listened to the general's remarks on the iniquity of 
 the money power, and the wickedness of the national 
 banks, and kept respectful and attentive silence. The 
 worst the young man did was to wink swiftly across the 
 table at Watts McHurdie, who had been invited by Mrs. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 113 
 
 Ward with malice prepense and seated by Nellie Logan. 
 The wink came just as the general, waving the carving 
 knife, was saying : " Gentlemen, it's the world-old fight 
 — the fight of might against right. When I was a boy 
 like you, John, the fight was between brute strength and 
 the oppressed ; between slaves and masters. Now it is 
 between weakness and cunning, between those who would 
 be slaveholders if they could be, and those who are fight- 
 ing the shackles." And Mrs. Ward saw the wink, and 
 John saw that she saw it, and he was ashamed. 
 
 So before the afternoon was over, Mr. and Mrs. John 
 Barclay went over to Hendricks's, picking up Molly Cul- 
 pepper on the way, and the three spent the evening with 
 the general and Miss Hendricks — a faded mousy little 
 wopaan in despairing thirties; and before the open fire 
 they sat and talked, and John played the piano for an hour, 
 and thought out an extra kink for the Golden Belt Wheat 
 Company's charter. He jabbered about it to Jane as they 
 walked home, and the next day it became a fact. 
 
 "That boy," said the colonel to his assembled family 
 one evening as they dined on mush and dried peaches, and 
 coffee made of parched corn, " that John Barclay certainly 
 and surely is a marvel. Talk about drawing blood from 
 a turnip, — why, he can strike an artery in a pumpkin." 
 The colonel smiled reflectively as he proceeded : " Chicago 
 lawyer came in on the stage this afternoon, — kinder get- 
 ting uneasy about a little interest I owed to an Ohio man on 
 that College Heights property, and John took that Chicago 
 lawyer up to his oflBce, and talked him into putting the 
 interest in a second mortgage with all the interest that will 
 fall due till next spring, and then traded him Golden Belt 
 Wheat Company stock for the mortgage and a thousand 
 dollars besides." 
 
 " Well, did John give you back the mortgage, father ? " 
 asked Molly. 
 
 "No, sis, — that wouldn't be business," replied the colo- 
 nel, as he stirred his dried peaches into his third dish of 
 mush for dessert ; " business is business, you know. John 
 took the mortgage over to the bank and discounted it for 
 
114 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 some money to buy more options with. John surely does 
 make things hum." 
 
 " Yes, and he's made Bob resign from the board of com- 
 missioners, and won't let him come home Christmas, and 
 keeps him on fifty dollars a month there in New York — 
 all the same," returned the girl. 
 
 The colonel looked at his daughter a moment in sympa- 
 thetic silence ; then he put his thumbs in the armholes of 
 his vest and tilted back in his chair and answered : " Oh, 
 well, my dear, — when you are living in a brown-stone house 
 on Fifth Avenue down in New York, stepping on a nigger 
 every which way you turn, you'll thank John that he did 
 keep Bob at work, and not bring him back here to pin on 
 a buffalo tail, drink crick water, eat tumble weeds, and run 
 wild. I say, and I fear no contradiction when I say it, 
 that John Barclay is a marvel — a living wonder in point 
 of fact. And if Bob Hendricks wants to come back here 
 and live on the succulent and classic bean and the luscious, 
 and I may say tempting, flapjack, let him come, Molly 
 Farquhar Culpepper, let him come." The colonel, proud 
 of his language, looked around the family circle. " And 
 we at our humble board, with our plain though — shall I 
 say nutritive — yes, nutritive and wholesome fare, should 
 thank our lucky stars that John Barclay keeps the Golden 
 Belt Wheat Company going, and your husband and father 
 can make a more or less honest dollar now and then to 
 supply your simple wants." 
 
 The colonel had more in his mind, for he rose and began 
 to pace the floor in a fine frenzy. But Mrs. Culpepper 
 looked up for an instant from her tea, and said, " You 
 know you forgot the mail to-day, father," and he replied, 
 "Yes, that's so." Then added: "Molly dear, will you 
 bring me my overcoat — please ? " 
 
 The girl bundled her father into his threadbare blue 
 army overcoat with the cape. He stood for a moment 
 absently rattling some dimes in his pocket. Then the 
 faintness of their jingle must have appealed to him, for 
 he drew a long breath, and walked majestically away. 
 He was a tall stout man in the midst of his forties, with a 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 115 
 
 military goatee and black flowing mustaches, and he wore 
 his campaign hat pinned up at the side with the brass 
 military pin and swayed with "some show of swagger as he 
 walked. His gift of oratory he did not bring to the flower 
 of its perfection except at lodge. He was always sent as 
 a delegate to Grand Lodge, and when he came home men 
 came from aU over the county to see the colonel exemplify 
 the work. But as he marched to funerals under his large 
 white plume and with his sword dangling at his side, 
 Colonel Martin Culpepper, six feet four one way and four 
 feet two the other, was a regal spectacle, and it wUl be 
 many years before the town will see his like again. 
 
 The colonel walked over to the post-office box and got 
 his mail, then took a backless chair and drew it up to the 
 sand box in which the stove sat, and the conversation be- 
 came general in its nature, ranging from Emerson's theory 
 of the cosmos and the whiskey ring to the efficacy of a 
 potato in the pocket for rheumatism. Finally when they 
 had come to their " don't you remembers " about the battle 
 of Wilson's Creek, General "Ward, with his long coat but- 
 toned closely about him, came shivering into the store to 
 get some camphor gum and stood rubbing his cold hands 
 by the stove while the clerk was wrapping up the package. 
 His thin nose was red and his eyes watered, and he had 
 little to say. When he went out the colonel said, " What's 
 he going to run for this year ? " 
 
 " Haven't you heard ? " replied McHurdie, and to the 
 colonel's negative Watts replied, " Governor — the up- 
 rising's going to nominate him." 
 
 " Yes," said Frye, " and he'll go off following that fool- 
 ishness and leave his wife and children to John or the 
 neighbours." 
 
 " Do you suppose he thinks he'll win ? " asked the 
 Colonel. 
 
 " Naw," put in McHurdie ; " I was talking to him only 
 last week in the shop, and he says, ' Watts, you boys 
 don't understand me.' He says, 'I don't want their 
 offices. What I want is to make them think. I'm sowing 
 seed. Some day it will come to a harvest — maybe long 
 
116 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 after I'm dead and gone.' I asked him if a little seed 
 wouldn't help out some for breakfast, and he didn't answer. 
 Then he said : ' Watts — what you need is faith — faith in 
 God and not in money. There are no Christians ; they 
 don't believe in God, or they'd trust Him more. They 
 don't trust God ; they trust money. Yet I tell you it will 
 work. Go ahead — do your work in the world, and you 
 won't starve nor your children beg in the streets.' " Mc- 
 Hurdie stopped a moment to gnaw his plug of tobacco. 
 " The general's gitting kind of a crank — and I told 
 him so." 
 
 " What did he say ? " inquired the colonel. 
 
 "Oh, he just laughed," replied McHurdie; "he just 
 laughed and said if he was a crank I was a poet, and 
 neither was much good at the note window of the bank, 
 and we kind of made it up." 
 
 And so the winter evening grew old, and one by one 
 the cronies rose and yawned and went their way. Even- 
 ing after evening went thus, and. was it strange that in 
 the years that came, when the sunset of life was gilding 
 things for Watts McHurdie, he looked through the golden 
 haze and saw not the sand in the pit under the stove, not 
 the rows of drugs on the wall, not the patent medicine 
 bottles in their faded wrappers, but as he wrote many 
 years after in "Autumn Musing": — 
 
 " Those nights when Wisdom was our guide 
 And Friendship was the glow, 
 That warmed our souls like living coals, 
 Those nights of long ago." 
 
 Nor is it strange that Martin Culpepper, his commentator, 
 conning those lines through the snows of many winters, 
 should be a little misty as to details, and having taken his 
 pen in hand to write, should set down this note : — 
 
 " These lines probably refer to the evenings which the 
 poet passed in a goodly company of choice spirits during the 
 early seventies. E'en as I write. Memory, with tender 
 hand, pushes back the sombre curtain, and I see them now 
 — that charmed circle; the poet with the brow of Jove 
 and Minerva's lips ; the rugged warrior at his side, with 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 117 
 
 the dignity of Mars himself ; perhaps some Croesus with 
 his gold, drawn by the spell of Wisdom's enchantment 
 into the magic circle ; and this your humble didciple of 
 Thucydides, sitting spellbound under the drippings of 
 the sacred font, getting the material for these pages. 
 That was the Golden Age ; there were giants in those 
 days." 
 
 And so there were, Colonel Martin Culpepper of the 
 Great Heart and the " large white plumes " — so there 
 were. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 It was a cold raw day in March, 1874. Colonel Cul- 
 pepper was sitting in the office of Ward and Barclay over 
 the Exchange National Bank waiting for the junior 
 member of the firm to come in ; the senior member of the 
 firm, who had just brought up an arm load of green hick- 
 ory and dry hackberry stove wood, was standing beside 
 the box-shaped stove, abstractedly brushing the sawdust 
 and wormwood from his sleeves and coat front. The 
 colonel was whistling and whittling, and the general kept 
 on brushing after the last speck of dust had gone from his 
 shiny coat. He walked to the window and stared into the 
 ugly brown street. 
 
 Two or three minutes passed, and Colonel Culpepper, 
 anxious for the society of his kind, spoke. " Well, Gen- 
 eral, what's the trouble ? " 
 
 "Nothing in particular, Martin. I was just question- 
 ing the reality of matter and the existence of the universe 
 as you spoke; but it's not important." The general 
 shivered, and turned his kind blue eyes on his friend in a 
 smile, and then bethought him to put the wood in the 
 stove. 
 
 While he was jamming in a final stick, Colonel Cul- 
 pepper inquired, " Well, am I an appearance or an entity?" 
 
 The general put the smoking poker on the floor, and 
 turned the damper in the pipe as he answered : " That's 
 what I can't seem to make out. You know old Emerson 
 says a man doesn't amount to much as a thinker until he 
 has doubted the existence of matter. And I just got to 
 thinking about it, and wondering if this was a real world 
 after all — or just my idea of one." The two men smiled 
 at the notion, and Ward went on : " All right, laugh if 
 you want to, but if this is a real world, whose world is 
 
 118 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 119 
 
 it, your world or my world ? Here is John Barclay, for 
 instance. Sometimes I get a peek at his world." Ward 
 picked up the poker and sat down and hammered the toe 
 of a boot with it as he went on : " John's world is the 
 Golden Belt Wheat Company, wheat pouring a steady 
 stream into boundless bins, and money flowing in golden 
 ripples over it all. Sometimes Bob Hendricks' head 
 rises above the tide long enough to gasp or cry for help 
 and beg to come home, but John's golden flood sweeps 
 over him again, and he's gone. And here's your world, 
 Martin, wherein every one is kind and careless, and gener- 
 ous and good, and full of smiles and gayety. And there's 
 Lige Bemis' world, full of cunning and hypocrisy, and 
 meanness and treachery and plotting — a hell of a world it 
 is, with its foundations on hate and deceit — but it's his 
 world, and he has the same right to it that I have to mine. 
 And there's old Watts' world — " The general sighted 
 along the poker over his toe to the stove side whereon a 
 cornucopia wriggled out of nothing and poured its rich- 
 ness of fruit and grain into nothing. "There's Watts' 
 world, full of stuffed Personifications, Virtue, Pleasure, 
 Happiness, Sin, Sorrow, and God knows what of demigods, 
 with the hay of his philosophy sticking out of their eye- 
 holes. You know about his maxims, Mart; he actually 
 lives by 'em, and no matter how common sense yells at 
 him to get off the track, old Watts just goes on following 
 his maxims, and gets butted into the middle of next 
 week." 
 
 The colonel was making a hole in the stick in his hands, 
 and his attention was fixed on the whittling, but he added, 
 "And your own world. General — how about your own 
 world ? " 
 
 " My world," replied the general, as he pulled at the 
 bows of his rather soiled white tie, and evened them, " My 
 world — "the general jabbed the poker spear-like into 
 the floor, " I guess I'm a kind of a transcendentalist I " 
 
 The colonel blew the chips through the hole in his 
 stick ; he bored it round in the pause that followed before 
 he spoke. 
 
120 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " A transcendentalist, eh ? Well, pintedly, General, that 
 is what I may call a soft impeachment, as the poet says — 
 a mighty soft impeachment. I've heard you called a lot 
 worse names than that — and I may say," here the crow's- 
 feet began scratching for a smile around the colonel's 
 eyes, "proved, sir, with you as the prosecuting witness." 
 
 The two men chuckled. Then the general, balancing 
 himself, with the poker point on the floor, as he tilted 
 back went on : " My world, Mart Culpepper, is a world in 
 which the ideal is real — a world in a state of flux with 
 thoughts of to-day the matter of to-morrow ; my world is 
 a world of faith that God will crystallize to-day's aspira- 
 tions into to-morrow's justice; my world," the general rose 
 and waved his poker as if to beat down the forces of ma- 
 terialism about him, " my world is the substance of things 
 hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. " He paused. 
 "As I was saying," he continued at last, " if this is a real 
 world, if matter actually exists and this world is not a 
 dream of my consciousness, whose world is it, my world, 
 your world. Watts McHurdie's world, Lige's world, or 
 John's world ? It can't be all of 'em." He put the poker 
 across the stove hearth, and sank his hands deeply into his 
 pockets as he continued : " The question that philosophy 
 never has answered is this : Am I a spectre and you an 
 essence, or are you a spectre and am I an essence ? Is it 
 your world or mine ? " 
 
 The two men looked instinctively at the rattling door- 
 knob,' and John Barclay limped into the room. His face 
 was red with the cold and the driving mist. He walked 
 to the stove and unbuttoned his ulster, while the colonel 
 put the subject of the debate before him. The general 
 amended the colonel's statement from time to time, but the 
 young man only smiled tolerantly and shook his head. 
 Then he went to his desk and pulled a letter from a 
 drawer. 
 
 " Colonel, I've got a letter here from Bob. The thing 
 doesn't seem to be moving. He only sold about a thou- 
 sand dollars' worth of stock last month — a falling off of 
 forty per cent, and we must have more or we can't take up 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 121 
 
 our leases. He's begging like a dog to come tome for a 
 week, but I can't let him. We need that week." He 
 limped over to the elder and put his hand on the taU man's 
 arm as he said : " Now, Colonel, that was what I sent for 
 you about. You kind of speak to Molly and have her 
 write him and tell him to hold on a little while. It's 
 business, you know, and we can't afford to have sentiment 
 interfere with business." 
 
 The colonel, standing by the window, replied, after 
 a pause : " I can see where you are right, John. Business 
 is business. You got to consider that." He looked into 
 the street below and saw General Hendricks come shud- 
 dering into the cold wind. " How's he getting on ? " 
 asked Culpepper, nodding towards Hendricks, who seemed 
 unequal to the gale. 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. Colonel, — times are hard." 
 
 " My, how he's aging I " said the colonel, softly. 
 
 After a silence Barclay said : " There's one thing sure 
 — I've got it into his hard old head that Bob is doing 
 something back there, and he couldn't earn his salt here. 
 Besides," added Barclay, as if to justify himself against an 
 accusing conscience, " the old man does all the work in the 
 bank now, with time to spare." 
 
 It was the day of army overcoats, and the hard times 
 had brought hundreds of them from closets and trunks. 
 General Hendricks, fluttering down the street in his faded 
 blue, made a rather pathetic figure. The winter had 
 whitened his hair and withered his ruddy face. His un- 
 equal struggle with the wind seemed some way symbolical 
 of his life, and the two men watched him out of sight 
 without a word. The colonel turned toward his own blue 
 overcoat which lay sprawling in a chair, and Barclay said 
 as he helped the elder man squeeze into it, " Don't forget 
 to speak to Molly, Colonel," and then ushered him to the 
 door. For a moment Colonel Culpepper stood at the bot- 
 tom of the stairs, partly hesitating to go into the windy 
 street, and partly trying to think of some way in which 
 he could get the subject on his mind before his daughter in 
 the right way. Then as he stood on the threshold with 
 
122 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 his nose in the storm, he recalled General Ward's discourse 
 about the different worlds, and he thought of Molly's 
 world of lovers' madness, and that brought up his own 
 youth and its day-dreams, and Molly flew out of his mind 
 and her mother came in, and he saw her blue-eyed and fair 
 as she stood before him on their wedding-day. With that 
 picture in his heart he breasted the storm and went home 
 whistling cheerfully, walking through his world like a 
 prince. 
 
 When the colonel left the office of Ward and Barclay, the 
 partners retired into their respective worlds and went sail- 
 ing through space, each world upon its own axis. The 
 general in a desultory way began writing letters to reform- 
 ers urging them to prepare for the coming struggle ; but 
 John was head over heels in the business of the Golden 
 Belt Wheat Company, and in an hour had covered two 
 sheets of foolscap with figures and had written a dozen 
 letters. The scratch, scratch of his pen was as regular as 
 the swish of a piston. On the other hand, the general 
 often stopped and looked off into space, and three times 
 he got up to mend the fire. At the end of the afternoon 
 Mrs. Ward came in, her cheeks pink with the cold ; she 
 had left the seven-year-old to care for the one-year-old, and 
 the five-year-old to look after the three-year-old, and had 
 come scurrying through the streets in a brown alpaca dress 
 with a waterproof cape over her shoulders. She and the 
 general spoke for a few moments in their corner, and she 
 hurried out again. The general finished the letter he 
 was writing and wrote another, and then backed up to the 
 stove with his coat tails in front of him and stood benignly 
 watching Barclay work, Barclay felt the man's attention, 
 and whirling about in his chair licking an envelope flap, he 
 said, " Well, General — what's on your mind?" 
 
 " I was just thinking of Lucy — that's all," replied the 
 general. Barclay knew that the Wards had gone through 
 the winter on less than one hundred dollars, and it oc- 
 curred to the younger man that times might be rather 
 hard in the Ward household. So he asked, " Are you wor- 
 ried about money matters. General?" 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 123 
 
 The general's smile broadened to a grin. " Well, to be 
 exact, Lucy and I just counted cash — it's in her pocket- 
 book, and we find our total cash assets are eight dollars 
 and thirty-nine cents, and it's got to tide us over till grass." 
 He stroked his lean chin, and ran his hands through his 
 iron-gray hair and went on, " That's plenty, the way 
 we've figured it out — Lucy and I only eat one meal a day 
 anyway, and the children seem to eat all the time and that 
 averages it up." He smiled deprecatingly and added : 
 " But Lucy's got her heart set on a little matter, and 
 we've decided to spend eighty-seven cents, as you might 
 say riotously, and get it. That's what we were talking 
 about." 
 
 Barclay entered into the spirit of Ward's remarks and 
 put in: "But the National debt, General — if you have 
 all that money to spare, why don't you pay it off ? Practise 
 what you preach, General." 
 
 The smile faded from Ward's face. He was not a man 
 to joke on what he regarded as sacred things. He replied: 
 "Yes, yes, that's just it. My share of the interest on that 
 debt this winter was just seventy-five cents, and if it wasn't 
 for that, we would have had enough to get them; as it is, 
 we are going to cut out meat for a week — we figured it 
 all out just now — and get them anyway. She's down at 
 the store buying them." 
 
 " Buying what ? " asked Barclay. 
 
 The general's face lighted up again with a grin, and he 
 replied: "Now laugh — dog-gone you — buying flower 
 seeds I " They heard a step at the bottom of the stairs, 
 and the general strode to the door, opened it, and called 
 down, " All right, Lucy — I'm coming," and buttoning 
 up his coat, he whisked himself from the room, and Barclay, 
 looking out of the window, watched the two forms as they 
 disappeared in the dusk. But appearances are so decep- 
 tive. The truth is that what he saw was not there at all, 
 but only appeared on his retina; the two forms that he 
 seemed to see were not shivering through the twilight, but 
 were walking among dahlias and coxcombs and four- 
 o'clocks and petunias and poppies and hollyhocks on a 
 
124 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 wide lawn whereon newly set elm trees were fluttering 
 their faint green foliage in the summer breeze. Yet John 
 Barclay would have sworn he saw them there in the cold 
 street, with the mist beating upon them, and curiously 
 corroborative of this impression is a memory he retained 
 of reflecting that since the general's blue overcoat had 
 disappeared the winter before, he had noticed that little 
 Thayer had a blue Sunday suit and little Elizabeth Cady 
 Stanton had appeared wrapped in a blue baby coat. But 
 that only shows how these matter-of-fact people are fooled. 
 For though the little Wards were caparisoned in blue, and 
 though the general's blue overcoat did disappear about 
 that time, the general and Lucy Ward have no recollection 
 of shivering home that night, but instead they know that 
 they walked among the flowers. 
 
 And John, looking into the darkening street, must have 
 seen something besides the commonplace couple that he 
 thought he saw ; for as he turned away to light his lamp 
 and go to work again, he smiled. Surely there was nothing 
 to smile at in the thing he saw. Perhaps God was trying 
 to make him see the flowers. But he did not see them, and 
 as it was nearly an hour before six o'clock, he turned to 
 his work under the lamp and finished his letter to Bob 
 Hendricks. When it was written, he read it over care- 
 fully, crossing his " t's " and dotting his " i's," and as no 
 one was in the room he mumbled it aloud, thus : — 
 
 " Dear Bob : — Don't get blue ; it -will be all right. Stick to it. I 
 am laying a ■wire that will get you an audience with Jay Gould. Make 
 the talk of your life there. You may be able to interest him — if just 
 for a few dollars. Offer him anything. Give him the stock if he will 
 let us use his name. 
 
 " Don't get uneasy about Molly, Bob. Jane and I see that she goes 
 to everything, and we've scared her up a kind of brevet beau — an 
 old rooster named Brownwell — Adrian Pericles Brownwell, who has 
 blown in here and bought the Banner from Ezra Lane. Brownwell is 
 from Alabama. Do you remember. Bob, that day at Wilson's Creek 
 after we got separated in the Battle I ran into a pile of cavalry writh- 
 ing in a road? Well, there was one face in that awful struggling mass 
 that I always remembered — and I never expect to see such a look of 
 fear on a man's face again — he was a young fellow then, but now he's 
 thirty-five or so. Well — that was this man Brownwell. I asked him 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 12S 
 
 about it the other day. How he ever got out alive, I don't know ; but 
 the fact that he should turn up here proves that this is a small world. 
 Brownwell also is a writer from Writersville. You should see the way 
 he paints the lily in the Banner every week. You remember old Cap 
 Lee — J. Lord Lee of the Red Legs — and Lady Lee, as they called her 
 when she was a sagebrush siren with the ' Army of the Border ' before 
 the War? Well, read this clipping from the Banner of this week: 
 ' The wealth, beauty, and fashion of Minneola — fairest village of the 
 plain — were agog this week over the birth of a daughter to Lord and 
 Lady Lee, whose prominence in our social circles makes the event one 
 of first importance in our week's annals. Little Beatrix, for so they 
 have decided to christen her, will some day be a notable addition to 
 our refined and gracious circles. Welcome to you, little stranger.' 
 
 " Now you know the man 1 You needn't be jealous of him. How- 
 ever, he has frozen to the Culpeppers because they are from the South, 
 and clearly he thinks they are the only persons of consequence in town- 
 So he beans Molly around with Jane and me to the concerts and socia- 
 bles and things. He is easily thirty-five, walks with a cane, struts 
 like a peacock, and Molly and Jane are having great sport with him. 
 Also he is the only man in town with any money. He brought five 
 thousand dollars in gold, real money, — his people made it on contra- 
 band cotton contracts during the War, they say, — and he has been the 
 only visible means of support the town has had for three months. 
 But in the meantime don't worry about Molly, Bob, she's all right, and 
 business is business, you know, and you shouldn't let such things inter- 
 fere with it. But in another six months we'll be out of the woods and 
 on our way to big money." 
 
 Now another strange thing happened to John Barclay 
 that evening, and this time it was what he saw, not what 
 he failed to see, that puzzled him. For just as he sealed 
 the letter to his friend, and thumped his lean fist on it to 
 blot the address on the envelope and press the mucilage 
 down, he looked around suddenly, though he never knew 
 why, and there, just outside the rim of light from his lamp- 
 shade, trembled the image of Ellen Qulpepper with her 
 red and black checked flannel dress at her shoe tops and 
 his rubber button ring upon her finger. She smiled at 
 him sweetly for a moment and shook her head sadly, and 
 her curls fluttered upon her shoulders, and then she seemed 
 to fade into the general's desk by the opposite wall. John 
 was pallid and frightened for a moment ; then as he looked 
 at the great pile of letters before him he realized how 
 tired and worn he was. But the face and the eyes haunted 
 
126 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 him and brought back old memories, and that night he 
 and Jane and Molly Culpepper went to Hendricks', and he 
 played the piano for an hour in the firelight, and dreamed 
 old dreams. And his hands fell into the chords of a song 
 that he sang as a boy, and Molly came from the fire and 
 stood beside him while they hummed the words in a low 
 duet : — 
 
 " Let me believe that you love as you loved 
 Long, long ago — long ago." 
 
 But when he went out into the drizzling night, and he 
 and Jane left Molly at home, he stepped into the whirling 
 yellow world of gold and grain, and drafts and checks, and 
 leases and mortgages, and Heaven knows what of plots and 
 schemes and plans. So he did not heed Jane when she 
 said, " Poor — poor little Molly," but replied as he latched 
 the Culpepper gate, "Oh, MoUy'U be all right. You 
 can't mix business and pleasure, you know. Bob must 
 stay." 
 
 And when Molly went into the house, she found her 
 mother waiting for her. The colonel's courage had 
 failed him. The mother took her daughter's hand, and 
 the two walked up the broad stairs together. 
 
 "Molly," said the mother, as the girl listlessly went 
 about her preparations for bed, "don't grieve so about 
 Bob. Father and John need him there. It's business, 
 you know." 
 
 The daughter answered, " Yes, I know, but I'm so lone- 
 some — so lonesome." Then she sobbed, "You know he 
 hasn't written for a whole week, and I'm afraid — afraid !" 
 
 When the paroxysm had passed, the mother said : " You 
 know, my dear, they need him there a little longer, and 
 he wants to come back. Your father told me that John 
 sent word to-day that you must not let him come." The 
 girl's face looked the pain that struck her heart, and she 
 did not answer. " Molly dear," began the mother again, 
 " can't you write to Bob to-morrow and urge him to stay 
 — for me ? For all of us ? It is so much to us now — 
 for a little while — to have Bob there, sending back money 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 127 
 
 for the company. I don't know what father would do 
 if it wasn't for the company — and John." 
 
 The daughter held her mother's hand, and after gasp- 
 ing down a sob, promised, and then as the sob kept tilting 
 back in her throat, she cried : " But oh, mother, it's such a 
 big world — so wide, and I am so afraid — so afraid of 
 something — I don't know what — only that I'm afraid." 
 
 But the mother soothed her daughter, and they talked 
 of other things until she was quiet and drowsy. 
 
 But when she went to sleep, she dreamed a strange 
 dream. The next day she could not untangle it, save 
 that with her for hours as she went about her duties was 
 the odour of lilacs, and the face of her lover, now a young 
 eager face in pain, and then, by the miracle of dreams, 
 grown old, bald at the temples and brow, but fine and 
 strong and clean — like a boy's face. The face soon left 
 her, but the smell of the lilacs was in her heart for days — 
 they were her lilacs, from the bushes in the garden. 
 As days and weeks passed, the dream blurred into the gray 
 of her humdrum life and was gone. And so that day and 
 that night dropped from time into eternity, and who 
 knows of all the millions of stars that swarmed the 
 heavens, what ones held the wandering souls of the simple 
 people of that bleak Western town as they lay on their 
 pillows and dreamed. For if our waking hours are passed 
 in worlds so wide apart, who shall know where we walk 
 in dreams ? 
 
 It is thirty years and more now since John Barclay 
 dreamed of himself as the Wheat King of the Sycamore 
 Valley, and in that thirty years he had considerable time 
 to reflect upon the reasons why pride always goeth before 
 destruction. And he figured it out that in his particular 
 case he was so deeply engrossed in the money he was 
 going to make that first year, that he did not study the 
 simple problem of wheat-growing as he should have studied 
 it. In those days wheat-growing upon the plains had not 
 yet become the science it is to-day, and many Sycamore 
 Valley farmers planted their wheat in the fall, and failed 
 to make it pay, and many other Sycamore Valley farmers 
 
128 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 planted their wheat in the spring, and failed, while many 
 others succeeded. The land had not been definitely 
 staked off and set apart by experience as a winter wheat 
 country, and so the farmers operating under the Golden 
 Belt Wheat Company, in the spring of 1874, planted their 
 wheat in March. 
 
 That was a beautiful season on the plains. April rains 
 came, and the great fields glowed green under the mild 
 spring sun. And Bob Hendricks, collecting the money 
 from his stock subscriptions, poured it into the treasury 
 of the company, and John Barclay spent the money for 
 seed and land and men to work the land, and so confident 
 was he of the success of the plan that he borrowed every 
 dollar he could lay his hands on, and got leases on more 
 land and bought more seed and hired more men, in the 
 belief that during the summer Hendricks could sell stock 
 enough to pay back the loans. To Colonel Culpepper, 
 Barclay gave a block of five thousand dollars' worth of 
 the stock as a bonus in addition to his commission for his 
 work in securing options, and the colonel, feeling himself 
 something of a capitalist, and being in funds from the 
 spring sale of lots in College Heights addition, invested 
 in new clothes, bought some farm products in Missouri, 
 and went up and down the earth proclaiming the glories 
 of the Sycamore Valley, and in May brought two car-loads 
 of land seekers by stages and wagons and buggies to 
 Sycamore Ridge, and located them in Garrison County. 
 And in his mail when he came home he found a notice 
 indicating that he had overdrawn his account in the bank 
 five hundred dollars, and that his note was due fOr five 
 hundred more on the second mortgage which he had given 
 the previous fall. 
 
 For two days he was plunged in gloom, and Barclay, 
 observing his depression and worming out of the colonel 
 the cause, persuaded General Hendricks to put the over- 
 draft and the second mortgage note into one note for a 
 thousand dollars plus the interest for sixty days until the 
 colonel could make a turn, and after that the colonel 
 was happy again. He forgot for a moment the responsi- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 129 
 
 bility of wealth and engaged himself in the task of mak- 
 ing the Memorial Day celebration in Sycamore Ridge the 
 greatest event in the history of the town. Though there 
 were only five soldiers' graves to decorate, the longest pro- 
 cession Garrison County had ever known wound up the 
 hill to the cemetery, and Colonel Martin Culpepper in his 
 red sasli, with his Knights Templar hat on, riding up and 
 down the line on an iron-gray stallion, was easily the 
 most notable figure in the spectacle. Even General Hen- 
 dricks, revived by the pomp of the occasion, heading the 
 troop of ten veterans of the Mexican War, and General 
 Ward, in his regimentals, were inconsequential compared 
 with the colonel. And his oration at the graves, after 
 the bugles had blown taps, kept the multitude in tears for 
 half an hour. John Barclay's address at the Opera House 
 that afternoon — the address on "The Soldier and the 
 Scholar" — was so completely overshadowed by the colo- 
 nel's oratorical flight that Jane teased her husband about 
 the eclipse for a month, and never could make him laugh. 
 Moreover, the Banner that week printed the colonel's ora- 
 tion in full and referred to John's address as "a few sen- 
 sible remarks by Hon. John Barclay on the duty of 
 scholarship in times of peace." But here is the strange 
 thing about it — those who read the colonel's oration 
 were not moved by it; the charm of the voice and the 
 spell of the tall, handsome, vigorous man and the emotion 
 of the occasion were needed to make the colonel's oratory 
 move one. Still, opinions differ even about so palpable 
 a proposition as the ephemeral nature of the colonel's 
 oratory. For the Banner that week pronounced it one of 
 the classic oratorical gems of American eloquence, and 
 the editor thereof brought a dozen copies of the paper 
 under his arm when he climbed the hill to Lincoln 
 Avenue the following Sunday night, and presented them 
 to the women of the Culpepper household, whom he was 
 punctilious to call "the ladies," and he assured Miss 
 Molly and Mistress Culpepper — he was nice about those 
 titles also — that their father and husband had a great 
 iuture before him in the forum. 
 
130 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 It may be well to pause here and present so punctilious 
 a gentleman as Adrian Pericles Brownwell to the reader 
 somewhat more formally than he has been introduced. 
 For he will appear in this story many times. In the first 
 place he wore mustaches — chestnut-coloured mustaches 
 — that drooped rather gracefully from his lip to his jaw, 
 and thence over his coat lapels ; in the second place he 
 always wore gloves, and never was without a flower in 
 his long frock-coat ; and thirdly he clicked his cane on 
 the sidewalk so regularly that his approach was heralded, 
 and the company was prepared for the coming of a serious, 
 rather nervous, fiery man, a stickler for his social dues ; 
 and finally in those days, those sombre days of Sycamore 
 Ridge after the panic of '73, when men had to go to the 
 post-office to get their ten-dollar bills changed, Brownwell 
 had the money to support the character he assumed. He 
 had come to the Ridge from the South, — from that part 
 of the South that carried its pistol in its hip pocket and 
 made a large and serious matter of its honour, — that was 
 obvious ; he had paid Ezra Lane two thousand dollars for 
 the Banner, that was a matter of record; and he had 
 marched with some grandeur into General Hendricks' 
 bank one Saturday and had clinked out five thousand 
 dollars in gold on the marble slab at the teller's window, 
 and that was a matter attested to by a crowd of wit- 
 nesses. Watts McHurdie used to say that more people 
 saw that deposit than could be packed into the front 
 room of the bank with a collar stuffer. 
 
 But why Adrian Brownwell had come to the Ridge, and 
 where he had made his money — there myth and fable enter 
 into the composition of the narrative, and one man's 
 opinion is as good as another's. Curiously enough, all who 
 testify claim that they speak by the authority of Mr. 
 Brownwell himself. But he was a versatile and obliging 
 gentleman withal, so it is not unlikely that all those who 
 assembled him from the uttermost parts of the earth into 
 Sycamore Ridge for all the reasons in the longer catechism, 
 are telling the simple truth as they have reason to believe 
 it. What men know of a certainty is that he came, that 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 131 
 
 he hired the bridal chamber of the Thayer House for a 
 year, and that he contested John Barclay's right to be 
 known as the glass of fashion and the mould of form in 
 Garrison County for thirty long years, and then — but 
 that is looking in the back of the book, which is manifestly 
 unfair. 
 
 It is enough to know now that on that Sunday evening 
 after Memorial Day, in 1874, Adrian P. Brownwell sat on 
 the veranda of the Culpepper home slapping his lavender 
 gloves on his knee by way of emphasis, and told the com- 
 pany what he told General Beauregard and what General 
 Beauregard told him, at the battle of Shiloh ; also what 
 his maternal grandfather. Governor Papin, had said to 
 General Jackson, when his grandmother, then Mademoi- 
 selle Dulangpre, youngest daughter of the refugee duke 
 of that house, had volunteered to nurse the American 
 soldiers in Jackson's hospital after the battle of New 
 Orleans ; also, and with detail, what his father. Congress- 
 man Brownwell, had said on the capitol steps in December, 
 1860, before leaving for Washington to resign his seat in 
 Congress ; and also with much greater detail he re- 
 counted the size of his ancestral domain, the number of 
 the ancestral slaves and the royal state of the ancestral 
 household, and then with a grand wave of his gloves, and 
 a shrug of which Madam Papin might well have been 
 proud, " But 'tis all over ; and we are brothers — one 
 country, one flag, one God, one very kind but very busy 
 God ! " And he smiled so graciously through his great 
 mustaches, showing his fine even teeth, that Mrs. Cul- 
 pepper, Methodist to the heart, smiled back and was not 
 so badly shocked as she knew she should have been. 
 
 " Is it not so ? " he asked with his voice and his hands 
 at once. " Ah," he exclaimed, addressing Mrs. Culpepper 
 dramatically, " what better proof would you have of our 
 brotherhood than our common bondage to you? How- 
 ever dark the . night of our national discord — to-day, 
 North, South, East, West, we bask in the sunrise of some 
 woman's eyes." He fluttered his gloves gayly toward 
 MoUy and continued : — 
 
132 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " ' O ■when did morning ever b^eat, 
 And find such beaming eyes awake.' " 
 
 And so he rattled on, and the colonel had to poke his 
 words into the conversation in wedge-shaped queries, and 
 Mrs. Culpepper, being in due and proper awe of so much 
 family and such apparent consequence, spoke little and 
 smiled many times. And if it was "Miss Molly" this 
 and " Miss Molly " that, when the colonel went into the 
 house to lock the back doors, and " Miss Molly " the other 
 when Mrs. Culpepper went in to open the west bedroom 
 windows ; and even if it was " Miss Molly, shall we go 
 down town and refresh ourselves with a dish of ice- 
 cream ? " and even if still further a full-grown man 
 standing at the gate under the May moon deftly nips a 
 rose from Miss Molly's hair and holds the rose in both 
 hands to his lips as he bows a good night — what then? 
 What were roses made for and brown eyes and long lashes 
 and moons and May winds heavy with the odour of flowers 
 and laden with the faint sounds of distant herd bells tin- 
 kling upon the hills ? For men are bold at thirty -five, and 
 maidens, the best and sweetest, truest, gentlest maidens 
 in all the world, are shy at twenty-one, and polite to their 
 elders and betters of thirty-five — even when those elders 
 and betters forget their years ! 
 
 As for Adrian P. Brown well, he went about his daily 
 task, editing the Banner, making it as luscious and efful- 
 gent as a seed catalogue, with rhetorical pictures about as 
 florid and unconvincing. To him the town was a veritable 
 Troy — full of heroes and demigods, and honourables and 
 persons of nobility and quality. He used no adjective of 
 praise milder than superb, and on the other hand, Lige 
 Bemis once complained that the least offensive epithet he 
 saw in the Banner tacked after his name for two years 
 was miscreant. As for John Barclay, he once told Gen- 
 eral Ward that a man could take five dollars in to Brown- 
 well and come out a statesman, a Croesus or a scholar, as 
 the exigencies of the case demanded, and for ten dollars 
 he could combine the three. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 133 
 
 Yet for all that Brownwell ever remained a man apart. 
 No one thought of calling him "Ade." Sooner would 
 one nickname a gargoyle on a tin cornice. So the editor 
 of the Banner never came close to the real heart of Syca- 
 more Ridge, and often for months at a time he did not 
 know what the people were thinking. And that summer 
 when General Hendricks was walking out of the bank 
 every hour and looking from under his thin, blue-veined 
 hand at the strange cloud of insects covering the sky, and 
 when Martin Culpepper was predicting that the plague 
 of grasshoppers would leave the next day, and when John 
 Barclay was getting that deep vertical crease between his 
 eyes that made him look forty while he was still in his 
 twenties, Adrian P. Brownwell was chirping cheerfully 
 in the Banner about the " salubrious climate of Garrison 
 County," and writing articles about "our phenomenal 
 prospects for a bumper crop." And when in the middle 
 of July the grasshoppers had eaten the wheat to the 
 ground and had left the corn stalks stripped like bean- 
 poles, and had devoured every green thing in their path, 
 the Banner contained only a five-line item referring to 
 the plague and calling it a "most curious and unusual 
 visitation." But that summer the Banner was filled 
 with Brownwell's editorials on " The Tonic EfEect of the 
 Prairie Ozone," " Turn the Rascals Out," " Our Duty to 
 the South," and " The Kingdom of Corn." As a writer 
 Brownwell was what is called "fluent" and "genial." 
 And he was fond of copying articles from the Topeka 
 and Kansas City papers about himself, in which he was 
 referred to as "the gallant and urbane editor of the 
 Banner. " 
 
 But then we all have our weaknesses, and be it said 
 to the everlasting credit of Adrian Brownwell that he 
 understood and appreciated Watts McHurdie and Colonel 
 Culpepper better than any other man in town, and that he 
 printed Watts' poems on all occasions, and never referred 
 to him as anything less than " our honoured townsman," 
 or as " our talented and distinguished fellow-citizen," 
 and he never laughed at General Ward. But the best 
 
134 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 he could do for John Barclay — even after John had 
 become one of the world's great captains — was to wave 
 his gloves resignedly and exclaim, " Industry, thy name 
 is Barclay." And Barclay in return seemed never to 
 warm up to Brownwell. " Colonel," replied John to 
 some, encomium of his old friend's upon the new editor, 
 " I'll say this much. Certainly your friend is a prosper- 
 ous talker I " 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 The twenty-fifth of July, 1874, is a memorable day in 
 the life of John Barclay. For on that day the grasshop- 
 pers which had eaten off the twenty thousand acres of 
 wheat in the fields of the Golden Belt Wheat Company, 
 as though it had been cropped, rose and left the Missouri 
 Valley. They will never come back, for they are ploughed 
 under in the larva every year by the Colorado farmers who 
 have invaded the plains where once the " hoppers " had 
 their nursery; but all this, even if he had known it, would 
 not have cheered up John that day. For he knew that he 
 owed one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Eastern 
 stockholders of the company, and he had not a dollar to 
 show for it. He had expected to borrow the money needed 
 for the harvesting in the fall, and over and over and over 
 again he had figured with paper and pencil the amount of 
 his debt, and again and again he had tried to find some 
 way to pay even the interest on the debt at six per cent, 
 which the bank had guaranteed. While the locusts were 
 devouring the vegetation, he walked the hemp carpet that 
 ran diagonally across his office, and chased phantom after 
 phantom of hope that lured him up to the rim of a solution 
 of the problem, only to push him back into the abyss. He 
 walked with his hands deep in his trousers pockets and his 
 head down, and as General Ward was out organizing the 
 farmers in a revolt against the dominant party in the state, 
 Barclay was alone most of the time. The picture of that 
 barren office, with its insurance chromos, with its white, cob- 
 web-marked walls, with its dirty floor "partly covered with 
 an " X " of red-bordered hemp carpet reaching from the 
 middle to the four corners, the picture of the four tall un- 
 washed windows letting in the merciless afternoon sun to 
 fade the grimy black and white lithograph of William 
 
 135 
 
136 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Lloyd Garrison above the general's desk, never left John 
 Barclay's memory. It was like a cell on a prisoner's mind. 
 
 As he paced the room that last day of the visit of the 
 grasshoppers, General Hendricks came in. His hair had 
 whitened in the summer. The panic and the plague of the 
 locusts had literally wrung the sap out of his nerves. Old 
 age was pressing inexorably upon him, palsying his hands 
 on its rack, tripping his feet in its helpless mazes. His 
 dimmed eyes could see only ruin coming, coming slowly 
 and steadily toward him. In the panic, it came suddenly 
 and inspired fight in him. But this year there was some- 
 thing diabolical in its resistless approach. So he shrank 
 from his impending fate as a child trembles at some un- 
 known terror. But Barclay did not swerve. He knew 
 the affairs of the bank fairly well. He was a director who 
 never signed the quarterly statement without verifying 
 every item for himself. He had dreaded the general's 
 visit, yet he knew that it must come, and he pulled toward 
 the general a big hickory chair. The old man sank into 
 it and looked helplessly into the drawn hard face of the 
 younger man and sighed, " Well, John ? " 
 
 Barclay stood before him a second and then walked 
 down one arm of the " X " of the carpet and back, and up 
 another, and then turned to Hendricks with : " Now, don't 
 lose your nerve. General. You've got to keep your nerve. 
 That's about all the asset we've got now, I guess." 
 
 The general replied weakly: "I — I, I — I guess 
 you're right, John. I suppose that's about it." 
 
 " How do you figure it out, General ? " asked Barclay, 
 still walking the carpet. 
 
 The general fumbled for a paper in his pocket and 
 handed it to Barclay. He took it, glanced at it a moment, 
 and then said : " I'm no good at translating another man's 
 figures — how is it in short ? — Right down to bed-rock ? " 
 
 Hendricks seemed to pull himself together and replied: 
 " Well, something like ten thousand in cash against seventy 
 thousand in deposits, and fifty thousand of that time de- 
 posits, due next October, you know, on the year's agree- 
 ment. Of the ten thousand cash, four thousand belongs 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 137 
 
 to Brownwell, and is on check, and you have two thousand 
 on check." 
 
 " All right. Now, General, what do you owe ? " 
 
 "Well, you know that guarantee of your and Bob's 
 business — that nine thousand. It's due next week." 
 
 " And it will gut you ? " a,sked Barclay. 
 
 The old man nodded and sighed. Barclay limped care- 
 fully all over his " X," swinging himself on his heels at the 
 turns; his mouth was hardening, and his eyes were fixed 
 on the old man without blinking as he said : " General — 
 that's got to come. If it busts you — it will save us, and 
 we can save you after. That has just absolutely got to be 
 paid, right on the dot." 
 
 The old man could not have turned paler than he was 
 when he entered the room, but he rose halfway in his 
 chair and shook his leonine head, and then let his hands fall 
 limply on his knees as he cried: "No — no, John — I 
 can't. I can't." 
 
 Barclay put his hand on the back of the old man's chair, 
 and he could feel the firm hard grip of the boy through his 
 whole frame. Then after a moment's pause Barclay said: 
 " General, I'm in earnest about that. You will either 
 mail those dividend certificates according to your guaran- 
 tee on the first, or as sure as there is a God in heaven I'll 
 see that you won't have a dollar in your bank on the night 
 of the second." 
 
 The old man stood gasping. The eyes of the two men 
 met. Barclay's were bold and green and blazing. 
 
 "Boy! Boyl Boyl — " the old man faltered. "Don't 
 ruin me I Don't ruin me — "he did not finish the sentence, 
 but sank into his chair, and dropped his face to his breast 
 and repeated, " Don't, don't, don't," feebly for a few times, 
 without seeming to realize what he was saying. From 
 some outpost of his being reenforcements came. For he 
 rose suddenly, and shaking his haggard fist at the youth, 
 exclaimed in a high, furious, ctacking voice as he panted 
 and shook his great hairy head : " No — by God, no, by 
 God, no I You damned young cut-throat — you can break 
 my bank, but you can't bulldoze me. No, by God — no I " 
 
138 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 He started to leave the room. Barclay caught the old 
 man and swung him into a chair. The flint that Barclay's 
 nature needed had been struck. His face was aglow as 
 with an inspiration. 
 
 " Listen, man, listen I " Barclay cried. " I'm not going 
 to break your bank, I'm trying to save it." He knew that 
 the plan was ripe in his head, and as he talked it out, some- 
 thing stood beside him and marvelled at its perfection. 
 As its inherent dishonesty revealed itself, the old man's 
 face flinched, but Barclay went on unfolding his scheme. 
 It required General Hendricks to break the law half a 
 dozen ways, and to hazard all of the bank's assets, and all 
 of its cash. And it required him to agree not to lend a 
 dollar to any man in the county except as he complied 
 with the demands of the Golden Belt Wheat Company and 
 mortgaged his farm to Barclay. The plan that Barclay 
 set forth literally capitalized the famine that had followed 
 the grasshopper invasion, and sold the people their own 
 need at Barclay's price. Then for an hour the two men 
 fought it out, and at the end Barclay was saying: " I am 
 glad you see it that way, and I believe, as you do, that 
 they will take it a little better if we also agree to pay this 
 year's taxes on the land they put under the mortgage. It 
 would be a great sweetener to some of them, and I can slip 
 in an option to sell the land to us outright as a kind of a 
 joker in small type." His brassy eyes were small and 
 beady as his brain worked out the details of his plan. 
 He put his hands affectionately on General Hendricks' 
 shoulders as he added, " You mustn't forget to write to 
 Bob, General; hold him there whatever comes." 
 
 At the foot of the stairs the two men could hear the 
 heavy tread of Colonel Culpepper. As Hendricks went 
 down the stairs John heard the colonel's " Mornin', Gen- 
 eral," as the two men passed in the hallway. 
 
 "Mornin', Johnnie — how does your corporocity sa- 
 gashiate this mornin'?" asked the colonel. 
 
 Barclay looked at the colonel through little beady green 
 eyes and replied, — he knew not what. He merely dipped 
 an oar into the talk occasionally, he did not steer it, and 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 139 
 
 not until he emerged from his calculations twenty minutes 
 after the colonel's greeting did Barclay realize that the 
 colonel was in great pain. He was saying when Barclay's 
 mind took heed: " And now, sir, I say, now, having forced 
 his unwelcome and, I may say, filthy lucre upon me, the 
 impudent scalawag writes me to-day to say that I must 
 liquidate, must — liquidate, sir ; in short, pay up. I call 
 that impertinence. But no matter what I call it, he's 
 going to foreclose." Barclay's eyes opened to attention. 
 The colonel went on. " The original indebtedness was a 
 matter of ten thousand — you will remember, John, that's 
 what I paid for my share of the College Heights property, 
 and while I have disposed of some, — in point of fact sold 
 it at considerable profit, — yet, as you know, and as this 
 scoundrel knows, for'I have written him pointedly to that 
 effect, I have been temporarily unable to remit any sum 
 substantial enough to justify bothering him with it. But 
 now the scamp, the grasping insulting brigand, notifies me 
 that unless I pay him when the mortgage is due, — to be 
 plain, sir, next week, — he proposes to foreclose on me." 
 
 The colonel's brows were knit with trouble. His voice 
 faltered as he added: "And, John — John Barclay, my 
 good friend — do you realize that that little piece of prop- 
 erty out on the hill is all I have on earth now, except the 
 roof over my head ? And may — " here his voice slid into 
 a tenor with pent-up emotion — " maybe the contemptible 
 rapscallion will try to get that." The colonel had risen 
 and was pacing the floor. " What a damn disreputable 
 business your commerce is, anyway I John, I can't afford 
 to lose that property — or I'd be a pauper, sir, a pauper 
 peddling organs and sewing-machines and maybe teaching 
 singing-school." The colonel's face caught a rift of sun- 
 shine as he added, " You know I did that once before I was 
 married and came West — taught singing-school." 
 
 " Well, Colonel — let's see about it," said Barclay, ab- 
 sently. And the two men sat at the table and figured 
 up that the colonel's liabilities were in the neighbourhood 
 of twelve thousand, of which ten thousand were pressing 
 and the rest more or less imminent. At the end of their 
 
140 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 conference, Barclay's mind was still full of his own affairs. 
 But he said, after looking a moment at the troubled face 
 of the big black-eyed man whose bulk towered above him, 
 " Well, Colonel, I don't know what under heavens I can 
 do — but I'll do what I can." 
 
 The colonel did not feel Barclay's abstraction. But 
 the colonel's face cleared like a child's, and he reached 
 for the little man and hugged him off his feet. Then the 
 colonel broke out, "May the Lord, who heedeth the 
 sparrow's fall and protects all us poor blundering children, 
 bless you, John Barclay — bless you and all your house- 
 hold." There were tears in his eyes as he waved a grand 
 adieu at the door, and he whistled " Gay ly the Troubadour " 
 as he tripped lightly down the stairs. And in another 
 moment the large white plumes were dancing in his eyes 
 again. This time they waved and beckoned toward a sub- 
 scription paper which the colonel had just drawn up when 
 the annoying letter came from Chicago, reminding him of 
 his debt. The paper was for the relief of a farmer 
 whose house and stock had been burned. The colonel 
 brought from his hip pocket the carefully folded sheet 
 of foolscap which he had put away when duty called him 
 to Barclay. He paused at the bottom of the stair, backed 
 the paper on the wall, and wrote under the words set- 
 ting forth the farmer's destitution, " Martin Culpepper — 
 twenty-five dollars." He stood a moment in the stairway 
 looking into the street; the day was fair and beautiful; 
 the grasshoppers were gone, and with them went all the 
 vegetation in the landscape; but the colonel in his nankeen 
 trousers and his plaited white shirt and white suspenders, 
 under his white Panama hat, felt only the influence of the 
 genial air. So he drew out the subscription paper again 
 and erased the twenty-five dollars and put down thirty- 
 five dollars. Then as Oscar Fernald and Daniel Frye 
 came by with long faces the colonel hailed them. 
 
 " Boys," he said, " fellow named Haskins down in Fair- 
 view, with nine children and a sick wife, got burnt out 
 last night, and I'm kind of seeing if we can't get him some 
 lumber and groceries a.nd things. I want you boys," the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 141 
 
 colonel saw the clouds gathering and smiled to brush 
 them away, " yes, I want you boys to give me ten dollars 
 apiece." 
 
 " Ten dollars 1 " cried Fernald. 
 
 " Ten dollars I " echoed Frye. «' My Lord, man, there 
 isn't ten doUars in cash between here and the Missouri 
 River I " 
 
 " But the man and his children wiU starve, and his wife 
 will die of neglect." 
 
 " That's the Lord's affair — and yours, Mart," returned 
 Fernald, as he broke away from the colonel's grasp ; " you 
 and He brought them here." Frye went with Oscar, and 
 they left the colonel with his subscription pap^r in his 
 hand. He looked up and down the street and then drew 
 a long breath, and put the paper against the wall again and 
 sighed as he erased the thirty-five dollars and put down 
 fifty dollars after his name. Then he started for the bank 
 to see General Hendricks. The large white plumes were 
 still dancing in his eyes. 
 
 But so far as Barclay is concerned the colonel never 
 reached the bottom of the stairs, for Barclay had his desk 
 covered with law-books and was looking up contracts. 
 In an hour he had a draft of a mortgage and option to buy 
 the mortgaged land written out, and was copying it for 
 the printer. He took it to the Banner office and asked 
 Brownwell to put two men on the job, and to have the 
 proof ready by the next morning. 
 
 Brownwell waved both hands magnificently and with 
 much grace, and said : " Mr. Barclay, we will put three 
 men on the work, sir, and if you will do me the honour, I 
 will be pleased to bring the proof up Lincoln Avenue to 
 the home of our mutual friend. Colonel Culpepper, where 
 you may see it to-night." Barclay fancied that a compla- 
 cent smile wreathed Brownwell's face at the prospect of 
 going to the Culpeppers', and the next instant the man 
 was saying : " Charming young lady, Miss Molly ! Ah, 
 the ladies, the ladies — tliey will make fools of us. We 
 can't resist them." He shrugged and smirked and wiggled 
 his fingers and played with his mustaches. " Wine and 
 
142 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 women and song, you know — they get us all. But as f oi 
 me — no wine, no song — but — " he finished the sentence 
 with another flourish. 
 
 Barclay did what he could to smile good-naturedly and 
 assent in some sort of way as he got out of the room. 
 That night, going up the hill, he said to Jane : " Brown- 
 well is one of those fellows who regard all women — all 
 females is better, probably — as a form of vice. He's the 
 kind that coos like a pouter pigeon when he talks to a 
 woman." 
 
 Jane replied : " Yes, we women know them. They are 
 always claiming that men like you are not gallant ! " She 
 added, " You know, John, he's the jealous, fiendish kind 
 — with an animal's idea of honour." They walked on in 
 silence for a moment, and she pressed his arm to her side 
 and their eyes met in a smile. Then she said : " Doubt- 
 less some women like that sort of thing, or it would perish, 
 but I don't like to be treated like a woman — a she-crea- 
 ture. I like to be thought of as a human being with a soul. " 
 She shuddered and continued : " But the soul doesn't enter 
 even remotely into his scheme of things. We are just 
 bodies." 
 
 The Barclays did not stay late at the Culpeppers' that 
 night, but took the proofs at early bedtime and went 
 down the hill. An hour later they heard Molly Culpepper 
 and Brownwell loitering along the sidewalk. Brownwell 
 was saying : — 
 
 " Ah, but you. Miss Molly, you are like the moon, for — 
 
 " ' The moon looks on many brooks, 
 The brook can see no moon but this.' 
 
 And I — I am — " 
 
 The Barclays did not hear what he was ; however, they 
 guessed, and they guessed correctly — so far as that goes. 
 But Molly Culpepper did hear what he was and what he 
 had been and what he would be, and the more she parried 
 him, the closer he came. There were times when he forgot 
 the "Miss" before the "Molly," and there were other 
 times when she had to slip her hand from his ever so 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 143 
 
 deftly. And once when they were walking over a smooth 
 new wooden sidewalk coming home, he caught her swiftly 
 by the waist and began waltzing and humming " The Blue 
 Danube." And at the end of the smooth walk, she had to 
 step distinctly away from him to release 'his arm. But 
 she was twenty-one, and one does not always know how to 
 do things at twenty-one — even when one intends to do 
 them, and intends strongly and earnestly — that one would 
 do at forty-one, and so as they stood under the Culpepper 
 elm by the gate that night, — under the elm, stripped gaunt 
 and naked by the locusts, — and the July moon traced the 
 skeleton of the tree upon the close-cropped sod, we must 
 not blame Molly Culpepper too much even if she let him 
 hold her hand a moment too long after he had kissed it a 
 formal good night ; for twenty-one is not as strong as its 
 instincts. It is such a little while to learn all about a 
 number of important things in a big and often wicked 
 world that when a little man or a little woman, so new to 
 this earth as twenty-one years, gets a finger pinched in the 
 ruthless machinery, it is a time for tears and mothering 
 and not for punishment. And so when Adrian Brownwell 
 pulled the little girl o£E her feet and kissed her and asked 
 her to marry him all in a second, and she could only 
 struggle and cry " No, no! " and beg him to let her go — it 
 is not a time to frown, but instead a time to go back to 
 our twenty-ones and blush a little and sigh a little, and 
 maybe cry and lie a little, and in the end thank God for the 
 angel He sent to guard us, and if the angel slept — thank 
 God still for the charity that has come to us. 
 
 The next day John Barclay had Colonel Martin Cul- 
 pepper and Lige Bemis in his office galvanizing them with 
 his enthusiasm and coaching them- in their task. They 
 were to promise three dollars an acre, August 15, to 
 every farmer who would put a mortgage on his land for 
 six dollars an acre. The other three dollars was to cover 
 the amount paid by Barclay as rent for the land the year 
 before. They were also to offer the landowner a dol- 
 lar and a half an acre to plough and plant the land 
 by September 15, and another dollar to cultivate it 
 
144 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 ready for the harvest, and the company was to pay the 
 taxes on the land and furnish the seed. Barclay had 
 figured out the seed money from the sale of the mortgages. 
 The man was a dynamo of courage and determination, and 
 he charged the two men before him until they fairly 
 prickled with the scheme. He talked in short hard sen- 
 tences, going over and over his plan, drilling them to bear 
 down on the hard times and that there would be no other 
 buyers or renters for the land, and to say that the bank 
 would not lend a dollar except in this way. Long after 
 they had left his office, Barclay's voice haunted them. 
 His face was set and his eyes steady and small, and the 
 vertical wrinkle in his brow was as firm as an old scar. 
 He limped about the room quickly, but his strong foot 
 thumped the floor with a thud that punctuated his words. 
 
 They left, and he sat down to write a letter to Bob 
 Hendricks telling him the plan. He had finished two 
 pages when General Hendricks came in a-tremble and 
 breathless. The eyes of the two men met, and Hendricks, 
 replied: — 
 
 " It's Brownwell — the fat's in the fire, John. Brown- 
 well's going I " 
 
 "Going — going where?" asked the man at the desk,, 
 blankly. 
 
 " Going to leave town. He's been in and given notice: 
 that he wants his money in gold day after to-morrow." 
 
 " Well — well I " exclaimed Barclay, with his eyes star- 
 ing dumbly at nothing on the dingy white wall before^ 
 him. " Well — don't that beat the Jews? Going to leave 
 town I " He pulled himself together and gripped his, 
 chair as he said, "Not by a damn sight he ain't. He's 
 going to stay right here and sweat it out. We need that. 
 four thousand dollars in our business. No, you don't, 
 Mr. Man — " he addressed a hypothetical Brownwell. 
 " You're roped and tied and bucked and gagged, and you 
 stay here." Then he said, " You go on over to the bank. 
 General, and I'll take care of Brownwell." Barclay liter- 
 ally shoved the older man to the door. As he opened it- 
 he said, " Send me up a boy if you see one on the street.'" 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 145 
 
 In ten minutes Bi-ownwell was running up the stairs to 
 Barclay's oiBce in response to his note. He brought a 
 copy of the mortgage with him, and laid it before Barclay, 
 who went over it critically. He found a few errors and 
 marked them, and holding it in his hands turned to the 
 editor. 
 
 " Hendricks says you are going to leave town. Why ? " 
 asked Barclay, bluntly. He had discovered even that 
 early in life that a circuitous man is generally knocked off 
 his guard by a rush. Brownwell blinked and sputtered a 
 second or two, scrambling to his equilibrium. Before lie 
 could parry Barclay assaulted him again with : " Starving 
 to death, eh ? Lost your grip — going back to Alabama 
 with the banjo on your knee, are you? " 
 
 " No, sir — no, sir, you are entirely wrong, sir — entirely 
 wrong, and scarcely more polite, either." Brownwell 
 paused a minute and added : " Business is entirely satis- 
 factory, sir — entirely so. It is another matter." He 
 hesitated a moment and added, with the ghost of a smirk, 
 "A matter of sentiment — for — 
 
 " ' The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers, 
 Is always the first to be touched by the thorns.' " 
 
 Brownwell sat there flipping his gloves, exasperatingly; 
 Barclay screwed up his eyes, put his head on one side, and 
 suddenly a flash came into his face and he exclaimed, 
 " Come off, you don't mean it — not Molly ! " 
 
 The rejected one inclined his head. Barclay was about 
 to laugh, but instead he said, "Well, you are not a quitter ; 
 why don't you go ahead and get h^r ? " He glanced 
 instinctively at his letter to Bob Hendricks, and as if to 
 shield what he was going to say, put a paper over the 
 page, and then the seriousness of the situation came over 
 him. "You know women; cheer up, man — try again. 
 Stick to it — you'll win," cried Barclay. The fool might 
 go for so small a reason. It was no time for ribaldry. 
 " Let me tell you something," he went on. His eyes 
 opened again with a steady ruthless purpose in them, that 
 the man before him was too intent on his own pose to see. 
 
146 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Barclay put a weight upon the white sheet of paper that 
 he had spread over his letter to Bob Hendricks and then 
 went on. " Say, Brownwell, let me tell you something. 
 This town is right in the balance ; you can help." Some- 
 thing seemed to hold Barclay back, but he took the plunge. 
 " You can stay here and help. We need men like you." 
 Then he took a blind shot in the dark before going on — • 
 perhaps to give himself another chance. " Have you got 
 any more of that buried money — I mean more than you gave 
 General Hendricks — the kind that you dug up after the 
 war and scratched the mould off the eagles ? " 
 
 Brownwell flushed and replied, as he put one hand in his 
 coat and the other, with his stick and hat and gloves, be- 
 hind him : " That is my affair, sir. However, I will say 
 that I have." 
 
 "I thought so," retorted Barclay. "Now look here, 
 bring it to the Ridge. Here's the place to invest it and now's 
 the everlasting time. You jump in here and help us out, help 
 build up the town, and there's nothing too good for you." 
 Barclay was ready for it now. He did not flinch, but went 
 on : "Also here's your chance to help Colonel Culpepper. 
 He's to be closed out, and ten thousand would save him. 
 You know the kind of a man the colonel is. Stay with 
 the game, Mr. Man, stay with the game." He saw Brown- 
 well's eyes twitch. Barclay knew he had won. He added 
 slowly, " You understand ? " 
 
 Brownwell smiled benignly. Barclay looked nervously at 
 the unfinished letter on the table. Brownwell waved his 
 arms again dramatically, and replied : " Ah, thank you 
 — thank you. I shall play my hand out — and hearts 
 are trumps — are they not?" And he went out almost 
 dancing for joy. 
 
 When the man was gone Barclay shuddered; his con- 
 tempt for Brownwell was one of the things he prided him- 
 self on, and the intrigue revolted him. He stood a moment 
 at the window looking into the street absently. He became 
 conscious that some one was smiling at him on the crossing 
 below. Then automatically he heard himself say, " Oh, 
 MoUy, can you run up a minute ? " And a moment later she 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 147 
 
 was in the room. She was a bewitching little body in her 
 wide skirts and her pancake of a hat with a feather in it 
 as she sat there looking at her toes that morning, with her 
 bright eyes flashing up into his like rockets. But there were 
 lines under the eyes, and the rims of the eyelids were al- 
 most red — as red as pretty eyelids ever may be. Barclay 
 went right to the midst of the matter at once. He did not 
 patronize her, but told her in detail just the situation — 
 how the Golden Belt Wheat Company's interest must be 
 met by the bank under its guarantee, or Bob and his father 
 would be worse than bankrupts, they would be criminals. 
 He put Bob always in the foreground. Barclay unfolded to 
 her all the plans for going ahead with the work, and he told 
 her what they were doing for her father by giving him 
 employment. He marched straight up to the matter in 
 hand without flinching. 
 
 "Molly," he began without batting his eyes, "here is 
 where you come in. That fellow Brownwell was up here 
 this morning. Oh, you needn't shiver — I know all about 
 it. You had the honour of refusing him last night." To 
 her astonished, hurt face he paid no heed, but went on: 
 "Now he's going to leave town on account of you and pull 
 out four thousand dollars he's got in the bank. If he does 
 that, we can't pay our guarantee. You've got to call him 
 back." She flared up as if to stop him, but he went on : 
 "Oh, I know, Molly Culpepper — but this is no game of 
 London Bridge. It's bad enough, but it's business — cold 
 clammy business, and sometimes we have to do things in this 
 world for the larger good. That man simply can't leave 
 this town and you must hold him. It's ruin and perhaps 
 prison to Bob and his father if he goes ; and as for your 
 own father and mother — it makes them paupers, Molly. 
 There's no other way out of it." He paused a moment. 
 
 The girl's face blanched, and she looked at the floor and 
 spoke, " And Bob — when can he come back? " 
 
 "I don't know, Molly — but not now — he never was 
 needed there as he is now. It's a life-and-death matter, 
 Molly Culpepper, with every creature on earth that's 
 nearest and dearest to you — it makes or breaks us. 
 
148 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 It's a miserable business, I know well — but your duty is 
 to act for the larger good. You can't afford to send Bob 
 to jail and your people to tbe poorhouse just because — " 
 
 The girl looked up piteously and then cried out : " Oh, 
 John — don't, don't — I can't. It's awful, John — I can't." 
 
 " But, Molly," he replied as gently as he could, " you 
 must. You can't afford to be squeamish about this busi- 
 ness. This is a woman's job, Molly, not a child's." 
 
 She rose and looked at him a fleeting moment as if in 
 search of some mercy in his face. Then she looked away. 
 He stood beside her, barring her way to the door. " But 
 you'll try, Molly, won't you — you'll try ? " he cried. She 
 looked at him again with begging eyes and stepped around 
 him, and said breathlessly as she reached the door : " Oh, 
 I don't know, John — I don't know. I must think about 
 it." 
 
 She felt her way down the stairs, and stopped a minute 
 to compose herself before she crossed the street and walked 
 wearily up the hill. 
 
 That night at supper Colonel Culpepper addressed the 
 assembled family expansively. " The ravens, my dears, 
 the ravens. Behold Elijah fed by the sacred birds. By 
 Adrian P. Brownwell, to be exact. This morning I went 
 down town with the sheriff selling the roof over our heads. 
 This afternoon who should come to me soliciting the pleas- 
 ure of lending me money — who, I say, but Adrian P. 
 Brownwell?" 
 
 " Well, I hope you didn't keep him standing," put in 
 Buchanan. 
 
 " My son," responded the colonel, as he whetted the 
 carving knife on the steel — a form which was used more 
 for rhetorical effect than culinary necessity, as there were 
 pork chops on the platter, " my son, no true gentleman will 
 rebuke another who is trying to lend him money. Always 
 remember that." And the colonel's great body shook 
 with merriment, as he proceeded to fill up the plates. 
 But one plate went from the table untouched, and Molly 
 Culpepper went about her work with a leaden heart. For 
 the world had become a horrible phantasm to her, a place 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 149 
 
 of ionging and of heartache, a place of temptation and 
 trial, lying under the shadow of tragedy. And whose 
 world was it that night, as she sat chattering with her 
 father and tlae man she feared, whose world was it that 
 night, if this is a real world, and not the shadow of a 
 dream ? Was it the colonel's gay world, or John's golden 
 world, or Ward's harmonious world, or poor little Molly's 
 world — all askew with miserable duties and racking 
 heartaches, and grinning sneering fears, with the relent- 
 less image of the Larger Good always before her ? Surely 
 it was not all their worlds, for there is only one world. 
 Then whose was it? God who made it and set it in the 
 heavens in His great love and mercy only knows. Watts 
 McHurdie once wrote some query like this, and the whole 
 town smiled at his fancy. In that portion of his " Com- 
 plete Poetical and Philosophical Works " called " Frag- 
 ments " occur these lines: — 
 
 " The •wise men say 
 This world spins 'round the universe of -which it is a part ; 
 
 But anyway — 
 The only world I know about is spun from out my heart." 
 
 And perhaps Watts, sewing away in his harness shop, 
 had deciphered one letter in the riddle of the Sphinx. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 " If I ever get to be a Turk or anything like ttat," said 
 Watts McHurdie,in October, two months after the events 
 recorded in the last chapter had occurred, as he sat astrad- 
 dle of his bench, sewing on a bridle, " I'm going to have 
 one red-headed wife — but not much more'n one." 
 
 Colonel Culpepper dropped a " Why ? " into the reflec- 
 tions of the poet. 
 
 Watts replied, " Oh, just to complete the set I " 
 
 The colonel did not answer and Watts chuckled : " I 
 figure out that women are a study. You learn this one 
 and pat yourself on the breast-bone and say, ' Behold me, 
 I'm on to women.' But you ain't. Another comes along 
 and you have to begin at the beginning and learn 'em all 
 over, I wonder if Solomon who had a thousand — more 
 or less — got all his wisdom from them." 
 
 The colonel shook his head, and said sententiously, 
 " Watts — they hain't a blame thing in it — not a blame 
 thing." The creaking of the treadle on Watt's bench slit 
 the silence for a few moments, and the colonel went on : 
 "There can be educated fools about women. Watts Mc- 
 Hurdie, just as there are educated fools about books. 
 There's nothing in your theory of a liberal education in 
 women. On the contrary, in all matters relating to and 
 touching on affairs of the heart — beware of the man with 
 one wife." 
 
 McHurdie flashed his yeUow-toothed smile upon his 
 friend and replied, " Or less than one ? " 
 
 " No, sir, just one," answered Colonel Culpepper, " A 
 man with a raft of wives, first and last, is like a fellow 
 with good luck — the Lord never gives him anything else. 
 And I may say in point of fact, that the man with no wife 
 is like a man with bad luck — the Lord never gives him 
 anything else, either ! " The colonel slapped his right 
 
 150 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 151 
 
 hand on his knee and exclaimed : " Watts McHurdie — ■ 
 ■what's the matter with you, man ? Don't you see Nellie's 
 all ready and waitin' — just fairly honin', and longin', I 
 may say, for a home and a place to begin to live ? " 
 
 McHurdie gave his treadle a jam and swayed forward 
 over his work and answered, " Marry in haste — repent 
 at leisure." 
 
 But nevertheless that night Watts sat with Nellie 
 Logan on the front porch of the Wards' house, watching 
 the rising harvest moon, while Mrs. Ward, inside, was 
 singing to her baby. Nellie Logan roomed with the 
 Wards, and was bookkeeper in Dorman's store. It was 
 nearly ten o'clock and the man rose to go. "Well," he 
 said, and hesitated a moment, "well, Nellie, I suppose 
 you're still waiting ? " It was a question rather than an 
 assertion. 
 
 The woman put her hands gently on the man's arms and 
 sighed. " I just can't — not yet. Watts." 
 
 " Well, I thought maybe you'd changed your mind." 
 He smiled as he continued, "You know they say women 
 do change sometimes." 
 
 She looked down at him sadly. " Yes, I know they do, 
 but some way I don't." 
 
 There was a long pause while Watts screwed up his 
 courage to say, " Still kind of thinking about that 
 preacher ? " 
 
 The woman had no animation in her voice as she re- 
 plied, " You know that by now — without asking." 
 
 The man sat down on the step, and she sat on a lower 
 step. He was silent for a time. Then he said, " Funny, 
 ain't it ? " She knew she was not to reply ; for in a dozen 
 years she had learned the man's moods. In a minute, dur- 
 ing which he looked into his hat absent-mindedly, he went 
 on : " As far as I've been able to make it out, love's a 
 kind of a grand-right-and-left. I give my right hand to 
 you, and you give yours to the preacher, and he gives his 
 to some other girl, and she gives hers to some one else, like 
 as not, who gives his to some one else, and the fiddle and 
 the horn and the piano and the bass fid screech and toot 
 
152 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 and howl, and away we go and sigh under our breaths and 
 break our hearts and swing our partners, and it's every- 
 body dance." He looked up at her and smiled at his 
 fancy. For he was a poet and thought his remarks had 
 some artistic value. 
 
 She smiled back at him, and he leaned on his elbows 
 and looked up at her as he said quietly: "I'd like awful 
 well, Nellie — awful well if you'd be my partner for the 
 rest of this dance. It's lonesome down there in the 
 shop." 
 
 The woman patted his hand, and they sat quietly for a 
 while and then she said, "Maybe sometime. Watts, but 
 not to-night." 
 
 He got up, and stood for a moment beside her on the 
 walk. " Well," he said at length, " I suppose I must be 
 moving along — as the wandering Jew said." He smiled 
 and their eyes met in the moonlight. Watts dropped his 
 instantly, and exclaimed, "You're a terrible handsome 
 girl, Nellie — did you know it ? " He repeated it and 
 added, "And the Lord knows I love you, Nellie, and 
 I've said it a thousand times." He found her hand 
 again, and said as he put on his hat, " Well, good-by, 
 Nellie — good-by — if you call that gone." His hand- 
 clasp tightened and hers responded, and then he dropped 
 her hand and turned away. 
 
 The woman felt a desire to scream ; she never knew 
 how she choked her desire. But she rushed after him 
 and caught hiih tightly and sobbed, " Oh, Watts — 
 Watts — Watts McHurdie — are you never going to 
 have any more snap in you than that ? " 
 
 As he kicked away the earth from under him. Watts 
 McHurdie saw the light in a window of the Culpepper 
 home, and when he came down to earth again five min- 
 utes later, he said, " Well, I was just a-thinking how 
 nice it would be to go over to Culpeppers' and kind of 
 tell them the news ! " 
 
 "They'll have news of their own pretty soon, I ex- 
 pect," replied Nellie. And to Watts' blank look she re- 
 plied : " The way that man Brownwell keeps shining 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 153 
 
 around. He was there four nights last week, and he's 
 been there two this week already. I don't see what 
 Molly Culpepper can be thinking of." 
 
 So they deferred the visit to the Culpeppers', and in 
 due time Watts McHurdie flitted down Lincoln Avenue 
 and felt himself wafted along Main Street as far in the 
 clouds as a mortal may be. And though it was nearly 
 midnight, he brought out his accordion and sat playing 
 it, beating time with his left foot, and in his closed eyes 
 seeing visions that by all the rights of this game of life 
 should come only to youth. And the guests in the 
 Thayer House next morning asked, " Well, for heaven's 
 sake, who was that playing 'Silver Threads among the 
 Gold' along there about midnight ? — he surely must know 
 it by this time." 
 
 And Adrian Brownwell, sitting on the Culpepper ve- 
 randa the next night but one, said : " Colonel, your har- 
 ness-maker friend is a musical artist. The other night 
 when I came in I heard him twanging his lute — 'The 
 Harp that once through Tara's Hall ' ; you know. Colonel." 
 
 And John Barclay closed his letter to Bob Hendricks : 
 " Well, Bobi as I sit here with fifty letters written this 
 evening and ready to mail, and the blessed knowledge 
 that we have 18,000 acres of winter wheat all planted if 
 not paid for, I can hear old Watts wheezing away on his 
 accordion in his shop down street. Poor old Watts, it's a 
 pity that man hasn't the acquisitive faculty — he could 
 turn that talent into enough to keep him all his days. 
 Poor old Watts ! " 
 
 And Molly Culpepper, sitting in her bedroom chew- 
 ing her penholder, finally wrote this : " Watts McHurdie 
 went sailing by the house to-night, coming home from 
 the Wards', where he was making his regular call on 
 Nellie. You know what a mouse-like little walk he has, 
 scratching along the sidewalk so demurely ; but to-night, 
 after he passed our place I heard him actually break into 
 a hippety-hop, and as I was sitting on the veranda, I 
 could hear him clicking clear down to the new stone 
 walk in front of the post-office." Oho, Molly Culpepper, 
 
154 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 you said " as I was sitting on the veranda " ; that is of 
 course the truth, but not the whole truth ; what you 
 might have said was " as we were sitting on the veran- 
 da," and " as we were talking of what I like " and 
 " what you like," and of " what I think " and " what you 
 think," and as " I was listening to war tales from a South- 
 ern soldier," and as " I was finding it on the whole rather 
 a tiresome business " ; those things you might have writ- 
 ten, Molly Culpepper, but you did not. And was it a 
 twinge or a prick or a sharp reproachful stab of your con- 
 science that made you chew the tip of your penholder 
 into shreds and then madly write down this : — 
 
 " Bob, I don't know what is coming over me ; but some 
 way your letters seem so far away, and it has been such a 
 long time since I saw you, a whole lonesome year, and 
 Bob dear, I am so weak and so unworthy of you; I know 
 it, oh, I know it. But I feel to-night that I must tell you 
 something right from my heart. It is this, dear: no 
 matter what may happen, I want you to know that I must 
 always love you better than any one else in all the world. 
 I seem so young and foolish, and life is so long and the 
 world is so big — so big and you are so far away. But, 
 Bob dear, my good true boy, don't forget this that I tell 
 you to-night, that through all time and all eternity the 
 innermost part of my heart must always be yours. No 
 matter what happens to you and me in the course of life 
 in the big world — you must never forget what I have 
 written here to-night." 
 
 And these words, for some strange reason, were burned 
 on the man's soul; though she had written him fonder ones, 
 which passed from him with the years. The other words 
 of the letter fell into his eyes and were consumed there, 
 so he does not remember that she also wrote that night: 
 " I have just been standing at my bedroom window, look- 
 ing out over the town. It is quiet as the graveyard, save 
 for the murmur of the waters falling over the dam. And 
 I cannot tell whether it is fancy or whether it is real, but 
 now and then there comes to me a faint hint of music, — 
 it sounds almost like Watts' accordion, but of course it 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 155 
 
 cannot be at this unholy hour, and the tune it makes me 
 think of some way is ' Silver Threads among the Gold.' 
 Isn't it odd that I should hear that song, and yet not hear 
 it, and have it running through my mind? " 
 
 And thus the town heard Watts McHurdie's song of 
 triumph — the chortle that every male creature of the 
 human kind instinctively lets out when he has found favour 
 in some woman's eyes, that men have let out since Lemech 
 sang of victory over the young man to Adah and Zillahl 
 And in all the town no one knew what it meant. For the 
 accordion is not essentially an instrument of passion. So 
 the episode ended, and another day came in. And all that 
 is left to mark for this world that night of triumph — - and 
 that mark soon will bleach into oblivion — are the verses 
 entitled " Love at Sunset," of which Colonel Martin Cul- 
 pepper, the poet's biographer, writes in that chapter " At 
 Hymen's Altar," referred to before : " This poem was 
 written October 14, 1874, on the occasion of the poet's 
 engagement to Miss Nellie Logan, who afterward became 
 his wife. By many competent critics, including no less a 
 personage than Hon. John Barclay, president of the Na- 
 tional Provisions Company, this poem is deemed one of 
 Mr. McHurdie's noblest achievements, ranking second 
 only to the great song that gave him national fame." 
 
 And it should be set down as an integral part of this 
 narrative that John Barclay first read the verses " Love 
 at Sunset " in the Banner, two weeks after the night of 
 their composition, as he was finishing a campaign for the 
 Fifth Parallel bonds. He picked up the Banner one even- 
 ing at twilight in a house in Pleasant township, and 
 seeing Watts' initials under some verses, read them at first 
 mechanically, and then reread them with real zest, and so 
 deeply did they move the man from the mooring of the cam- 
 paign that seeing an accordion on the table of the best 
 room in which he was waiting for supper, Barclay picked 
 it up and fooled with it for half an hour. It had been 
 a dozen years since he had played an accordion, and the 
 tunes that came into his fingers were old tunes in vogue 
 before the war, and he thought of himself as an old man, 
 
156 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 though he was not yet twenty-five. But the old tunes 
 brought back his boyhood from days so remote that they 
 seemed a long time past. And that night when he ad- 
 dressed the people in the Pleasant Valley schoolhouse, he 
 was half an hour getting on to the subject of the bonds ; 
 he dwelt on the old days and spoke of the drouth of '60 
 and of the pioneers, and preached a sermon, with their 
 lives for texts, on the value of service without thought of 
 money or hope of other reward than the joy one has in 
 consecrated work. Then he launched into the bond prop- 
 osition, and when the votes were counted Pleasant town- 
 ship indorsed Barclay's plan overwhelmingly. For he 
 was a young man of force, if not of eloquence. His evident 
 sincerity made up for what he lacked in oratorical charm, 
 and he left an impression on those about him. So when 
 the bonds carried in Garrison County, the firm of Ward 
 and Barclay was made local attorneys for the road, and 
 General Ward, smarting under the defeat of his party in 
 the state, refused to accept the railroad's business, and the 
 partnership was dissolved. 
 
 " John," said Ward, as he put his hands on the young 
 man's shoulders and looked at him a kindly moment, be- 
 fore picking up his bushel basket of letters and papers, to 
 move them into another room and dissolve the partnership, 
 " John," the elder man repeated, " if I could always main- 
 tain such a faith in God as you maintain in money and 
 its power, I could raise the dead." 
 
 Barclay blinked a second and replied, " Well, now, Gen- 
 eral, look here — what I don't understand is how you ex- 
 pect to accomplish anything without money." 
 
 " 1 can't tell you, John — but some way I have faith that 
 I can — can do more real work in this world without both- 
 ering to get money, than I can by stopping to get money 
 with which to do good." 
 
 " But if you had a million, you could do more good with 
 it than you are doing now, couldn't you ? " asked Barclay. 
 
 " Yes, perhaps I could," admitted the general, as he eyed 
 his miserable little pile of worldly goods in the basket. 
 " I suppose I could," he repeated meditatively. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 157 
 
 " All right then, General," cut in Barclay. " I have no 
 million, any more than you have ; but I'm going to get one 
 
 — or two, maybe a dozen if I can, and I want to do good 
 with it just as much as you do. When I get it I'll show 
 you." Barclay rose to lend the general a hand with his 
 basket. As they went awkwardly through the door with 
 the load, the general stopping to get a hold on the basket 
 that would not twist his hand, he put the load down in 
 the hall and said : " But while you're getting that million, 
 you're wasting God's ten talents, boy. Can't you see that if 
 you would use your force, your keenness, and persistence 
 helping mankind in some way — teaching, preaching, lend- 
 ing a hand to the poor, or helping to fight organized greed, 
 you would get more of God's work done than you will by 
 squeezing the daylights out of your fellow-men, making 
 them hate money because of your avarice, and end by dol- 
 ing it out to them in charity? That's my point, boy. 
 That's why I don't want your railroad job." 
 
 They had dropped the basket in the bare room. The 
 general had not so much as a chair or a desk. He looked 
 it over, and Barclay's eyes followed his. " What are you 
 going to do for furniture ? " asked the younger man. 
 
 The general's thin face wrinkled into a smile. " Well," 
 he replied, " I suppose that if a raven can carry dry-goods, 
 groceries, boots and shoes and drugs, paints and oils, — 
 and certainly the ravens have been bringing those things 
 to the Wards for eight years now, and they're all paid for, 
 
 — the blessed bird can hump itself a little and bring some 
 furniture, stoves, and hardware." 
 
 Barclay limped into his room, while the general rubbed 
 the dust off the windows. In a minute John came stum- 
 bling in with a chair, and as he set it down he said, "Here 
 comes the first raven. General, and now if you'll kindly 
 come and give the ravens a lift, they'll bring you a table." 
 And so the two men dragged the table into the office, and as 
 they finished. Ward saw General Hendricks coming up the 
 stairs, and when the new room had been put in order, — a 
 simple operation, — General Ward hurried home to help 
 Mrs. Ward get in their dahlia roots for the winter. 
 
158 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 As they were digging in the garden, covering the ferns 
 and wrapping the magnolia tree they had lately acquired, 
 and mulching the perennials, Mrs. Mary Barclay came 
 toward them buffeting the wind. She wore the long cowl- 
 ish waterproof cloak and hood of the period — which she 
 had put on during the cloudy morning. Her tall strong 
 figure did not bend in the wind, and the schoolbooks she 
 carried in her hand broke the straight line of her figure 
 only to heighten the priestess effect that her approaching 
 presence produced. 
 
 "Well, children," she said, as she stood by the Wards 
 at their work, " preparing your miracles?" She looked at 
 the bulbs and roots, and smiled. " How wonderful that 
 all the beauty of the flowers should be in those scrawny 
 brown things; and," she added as she brushed away the 
 brown hair of her forties from her broad brow, " God prob- 
 abl3' thinks the same thing when He considers men and 
 their souls." 
 
 " And when the gardener puts us away for our winter's 
 sleep?" Ward asked. 
 
 She turned her big frank blue eyes upon him as" she 
 took the words from his mouth, "'And the last Adam 
 was made a quickening spirit.' " Then she smiled sadly 
 and said, " But it is the old Adam himself that I seem to 
 be wrestling with just now." 
 
 "In the children — at school?" asked the Wards, one 
 after the other. She sighed and looked at the little 
 troopers straggling along the highway, and replied, " Yes, 
 partly that, too," and throwing her unnecessary hood back, 
 turned her face into the wind and walked quickly away. 
 The Wards watched her as she strode down the hill, and 
 finally as he bent to his work the general asked : — 
 
 " Lucy, what does she think of John ? " 
 
 Mrs. Ward, who was busy with a geranium, did not 
 reply at once. But in a moment she rose and, putting 
 the plant with some others that were to go to the cellar, 
 replied : " Oh, Phil — you know a mother tries to hope 
 against hope. She teaches her school every day, and keeps 
 her mind busy. But sometimes, when she stops in here 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 1^ 
 
 after school or for lunch, she can't help dropping things 
 that let me know. I think her heart is breaking, Phil." 
 
 " Does she know about the wheat deal — I mean about 
 the way he has made the farmers sign that mortgage by 
 cutting them off from borrowing money at the bank ? " 
 
 "Not all of it — but I think she suspects," replied the wife. 
 
 " Did you know, dear," said the general, as he put the 
 plants in the barrow to wheel them to the cellar, " that I 
 ran across something to-day — it may be all suspicion, and 
 I don't want to wrong John — but Mart Culpepper, God 
 bless his big innocent heart, let something slip — well, it 
 was John, I think, who arranged for that loan of ten 
 thousand from BrownweU to Mart. Though why he 
 didn't get it at the bank, I don't know. But John had 
 some reason. Things look mighty crooked there at the 
 bank. I know this — Mart says that BrownweU lent him 
 the money, and Mart lent it to the bank for a month there 
 in August, while he was holding the Chicago fellow in 
 the air." 
 
 Mrs. Ward sat down on the front steps of the porch, 
 and exclaimed: — 
 
 " Well, Phil Ward — that's why the Culpeppers are so 
 nice to BrownweU. Honestly, Phil, the last time I was 
 over Mrs. Culpepper nearly talked her hefid off to me and 
 at Molly about what a fine man he is, and told all about 
 his family, and connections — he's related to the angel 
 Gabriel on his mother's side," she laughed, " and he's own 
 cousin to St. Peter through the Brownwells." 
 
 " Oh, I guesb they're innocent enough about it — they 
 aren't mercenary," interrupted the general. 
 
 " Oh, no," replied Mrs Ward, " never in the world ; but 
 he's been good to them and he's of their stock — and it's 
 only natural." 
 
 " Yes, probably,' replied the general^ and asked, " Does 
 she intend to marrj McOj do you thmk ? " Mrs. Ward 
 was sorting some dahlia roots on the wheelbarrow and did 
 not reply at once. " Do you suppose they're engaged ? " 
 repeated the general. 
 
 " I often wonder," she returned, still at her task. Then 
 
160 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 she rose, holding a bulb in her hands, and said : " It's a 
 funny kind of relation. Her father and mother egging 
 her on — and you know that kind of a man ; give him an 
 inch and he'll take an ell. I wonder how far he has got." 
 She took the bulb to a pile near the rear of the house. 
 " Those are the nice big yellow ones I'm saving for Mrs. Bar- 
 clay. But I'm sure of one thing, Molly has no notion of 
 marrying Brownwell." She continued : " Molly is still in 
 love with Bob. She was over here last week and had a 
 good cry and told me so." 
 
 " Well, why doesn't she send this man about his busi- 
 ness ? " exclaimed the general. 
 
 Mrs. Ward sighed a little and replied, "Because — 
 there is only one perfect person in all the world, and that's 
 you." She smiled at him and continued: "The rest of 
 us, dear, are just flesh and blood. So we make mistakes. 
 Molly knows she should ; she told me so the other day. 
 And she hates herself for not doing it. But, dearie — 
 don't you see she thinks if she does, her father and mother 
 will lose the big house, and Bob will be involved in some 
 kind of trouble ? They keep that before her all of the 
 time. She says that John is always insisting that she be 
 nice to Brownwell. And you know the Culpeppers think 
 Brownwell is — well, you know what they think." 
 
 They worked along for a while, and the general stopped 
 and put his foot on his spade and cried : " That boy — 
 that boy — that boy ! Isfi't he selling his soul to the 
 devil by bits ? A little chunk goes every day. And oh, 
 my dear, my dear — " he broke out, " what profiteth a man 
 if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? Poor, 
 poor John." He fell to his work again, sighing, "Poor 
 John, poor John ! " So they talked on until the afternoon 
 grew old. 
 
 And while they were talking, John and General Hen- 
 dricks were in Barclay's office going over matters, and 
 seeing where they stood. 
 
 " So he says seventy thousand is too much for the com- 
 pany and me to owe ? " said John, at the end of half an 
 hour's conference. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 161 
 
 The general was drumming his fingers on the table 
 nervously. "Yes — he says we've got to reduce that in 
 thirty days, or he'll close us up. Haven't you got any 
 political influence, somewhere in the East, John, — some of 
 those vStockholders, — that will hold this matter up till yov 
 can harvest your crop next June ? " 
 
 Barclay thought a moment, with his hand in his chin, 
 and then slowly shook his head. A bank inspector from 
 Washington was several degrees higher in the work of 
 politics than Barclay had gone. 
 
 "Let me see — " droned Barclay; "let me see. We 
 can at least try scattering it out a little ; cut off, say, fifty 
 thousand from me and the company and put it in the 
 name of Lige — " 
 
 " He's on to Lige, we've got a hat full of Lige's notes 
 in there," interrupted the general. 
 
 "AH right, then, drop Lige and put in the colonel — 
 he'll do that for me, and I'll see if I can't get the colonel 
 to get Brownwell to accommodate us. He's burning a 
 good bit of the colonel's stove wood these nights." Bar- 
 clay'smiled, and added, " And I'll just put Bob in for a 
 few thousand." 
 
 "But what'U we do about those taxes?" asked the 
 general, anxiously. "You know they've got to be paid 
 before the first of the year, and that's only six weeks off." 
 
 Barclay rose and paced the rug, and replied: "Yes, 
 that's so. I was going to make another note for them. 
 But I suppose we oughtn't to do it even under cover; for 
 if he found out you had exceeded our loan right now — 
 you know those fellows get ugly sometimes." The young 
 man screwed up his face and stood looking out of the 
 window in silence for a long minute. Then he limped 
 over to his chair and sat down as one who has a plan. 
 "Say now, General; you know Gabe Carnine's coming in 
 as county treasurer right after the first of the year, and 
 we will make him help us. You make your personal 
 check for the nine thousand, and give it to the old cuss 
 who's in the county treasurer's office now, with the descrip- 
 tions of the land, and get the tax receipts; he'll bring the 
 
162 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 check back to the bank ; you give him credit on his pass- 
 book with the other checks, and just hold your own check 
 out in the drawer as cash. If my check was in there, 
 the inspector might drop in and see it, and cause a dis- 
 turbance. When Gabe comes in, I'll make him carry 
 the matter over till next summer." 
 
 The transaction would cover only a few days, Barclay 
 explained ; and finally he had his way, So the Larger 
 Good was accomplished. 
 
 And later Adrian Brownwell came into the office to 
 
 • Mr. Barclay, our friend, Colonel Culpepper, confessed 
 to me after some transparent attempts at subterfuge that 
 my signing an accommodation note would help you, and 
 do I understand this also will help our young friend, 
 Robert Hendricks, whom I have never seen, and enable 
 him to remain at his post during the winter ? " 
 
 John Barclay took a square hard look at Brownwell, 
 and got a smile and a faint little shrug in return, where- 
 upon, for the Larger Good, he replied " Yes," and for the 
 Larger Good also, perhaps, Adrian Brownwell answered : 
 
 " Well, I shall be delighted -^ just make my note for 
 thirty days — only thirty days, you understand ; and then 
 
 — well, of course if circumstances justify it, I'll renew it." 
 Barclay laughed and asked, "Well, Mr. Brownwell, 
 
 as between friends may I ask how 'circumstances' are 
 getting on ? " 
 
 Brownwell shrugged his shoulders and smiled blandly 
 as he answered : " Just so-so ; I go twice a week. And 
 
 — " he waved his gloves airily and continued, " What is 
 '.t the immortal Burns says : ' A man's a man, for a' that 
 and a' that ! ' And I'm a man, John Barclay, and she's a 
 woman. And I go twice a week. You know women, sir, 
 you know women — they're mostly all alike. So I think 
 
 — " he smirked complacently as he concluded — "I think 
 what I need is time — only time." 
 
 " Luck to you," said Barclay. " I'll just make the note 
 thirty days, as you say, and we can renew it from time to 
 time." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 163 
 
 Then Brownwell put on Ms hat, twirled his cane effu- 
 sively, and bade Barclay an elaborate adieu. 
 
 And ten days later, Molly Culpepper, loathing herself 
 in her soul, and praying for the day of deliverance when 
 it should be all over, walked slowly from the post-office 
 up the hill to the house, the stately house, with its im- 
 pressive pillars, reading this: "My darling Girl: John 
 has sent me some more mortgages to sell, and they have 
 to be sold now. He says that father has to have the 
 money, and he and father have laid out work for me that 
 win keep me here till the middle of January. John says 
 that the government inspector has been threatening us 
 with serious trouble in the bank lately, and we must have 
 the money. He says the times have forced us to do cer- 
 tain things that were technically wrong — though I guess 
 they were criminally wrong from what he says, and we 
 must have this money to make things good. So I am 
 compelled to stay here and work. Father commands me 
 to stay in a way that makes me fear that my coming home 
 now would mean our ruin. What a brick John is to stay 
 there and shoulder it all. But, oh, darling, darling, dar- 
 ling, I love you." 
 
 There was more, of course, and it was from a man's 
 heart, and the strange and sad part of this story is that 
 when Molly Culpepper read the rest of the letter, her heart 
 burned in shame, and her shame was keener than her sorrow 
 that her lover was not coming home. 
 
 So it happened naturally that Molly Culpepper went to 
 the Christmas dance with Adrian Brownwell, and when 
 Jane Barclay, seeing the proprietary way the Alaba- 
 man hovered over Molly, and his obvious jealousy of all 
 the other men who were civil to her, asked John why he 
 did not let Bob come home for the holidays, as he had 
 promised, for the Larger Good John told her the facts 
 — that there were some mortgages that had just come in, 
 and they must be sold, so that the company could reduce 
 its indebtedness to the bank. But the facts are not always 
 the truth, and in her heart, which did not reason but only 
 felt, Molly Culpepper, knowing that Brownwell and John 
 
164 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Barclay were in some kind of an affair together, feared the 
 truth. And from her heart she wrote to her lover ques- 
 tioning John's motives and pleading with him to return, 
 and he, having merely the facts, did not see the truth, and 
 replied impatiently — so impatiently that it hurt, and there 
 was temper in her answer, and then for over a week no 
 letter came, and for over a week no reply went back to 
 that. And so the Larger Good was doing its fine work ii> 
 a wicked world. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The spring sun of 1875 that tanned John Barclay's face 
 gave it a leathery masklike appearance that the succeed- 
 ing years never entirely wore off. For he lived in the 
 open by day, riding among his fields in three townships, 
 watching the green carpet of March rise and begin to 
 dimple in April, and billow in May. And at night he 
 worked in his office until the midnight cockcrow. His 
 back was bowed under a score of burdens. But his great- 
 est burden was the bank; for it gave him worry; and 
 worry weighed upon him more than work. It was in 
 April — early April when the days were raw and cloudy, 
 and the nights blustery and dreary — that Barclay sat in 
 his office one night after a hard day afield, his top-boots 
 spattered with mud, his corduroy coat spread out on a chai^ 
 to dry, and his wet gray soft hat on his desk beside him. 
 Jane was with her parents in Minneola, and Barclay had 
 come to his office without eating, from the stable where he 
 left his team. The yellow lights in the street below were 
 reflected on the mists outside his window, and the dripping 
 eaves and cornices above him and about him seenied to 
 mark the time of some eery music too fine for his senses, 
 and the footfalls in the street below, hurrying footfalls of 
 people shivering through the mists, seemed to be the drum 
 beats of the weird symphony that he could not hear. 
 
 Barclay drew a watch from the pocket of his blue flannel 
 shirt, and looked at it and stopped writing and stood by 
 the box-stove. He was looking at the door when he heard 
 a thud on the stairs. It was followed by a rattling sound, 
 and in a moment Adrian Brownwell and his cane were in 
 the room. After the rather gorgeous cadenza of Brown- 
 well's greeting had died away and Barclay had his man in 
 a chair, Barclay opened the stove door and let the glow of 
 the flames fight the shadows in the room. 
 
 165 
 
166 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " "Well," said Barclay, turning toward his visitor 
 brusquely, " why won't you renew that accommodation 
 paper for me again ? " 
 
 The Papins and the Dulangpres shrugged their shoul- 
 ders and waved their hands through Brownwell rather 
 nastily as he answered, " Circumstances, Mr. Barclay, 
 circumstances ! " 
 
 " You're not getting along fast enough, eh ? " retorted 
 Barclay. 
 
 " Yes — and no," returned Brownwell. 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Barclay, half divining the 
 truth. 
 
 " Well — it is after all our own affair — but since you 
 are a friend I wUl say this : three times a week — some- 
 times four times a week I go out to pay my respects. 
 Until November I stayed until nine, at Christmas we put 
 on another hour ; now it is ten-thirty. I am a man, John 
 Barclay — as you see. She — she is an angel. Very 
 good. In that way, yes. But," the Papins and Du- 
 langpres came back to his face, and he shook his head. 
 "But otherwise — no. There we stand stiU. She wiU 
 not say it." 
 
 Barclay squinted at the man who sat so complacently in 
 the glow of the firelight, with his cane between his toes 
 and his gloves lightly fanning the air. " So I take it," 
 said John, " that you are like the Memorial Day parade, 
 several hours passing a given point ! " 
 
 " Exactly," smiled back Brownwell. He drew from his 
 pocket a diamond ring. " She will look at it ; she will ad- 
 mire it. She will put it on a chain, but she will not wear 
 it. And so I say, why should I put my head in a noose 
 here in your bank — what's the use ? No, sir, John Bar- 
 clay — no, sir. I'm done, sir." 
 
 Barclay knew wheedling would not move Brownwell. 
 He was of the mulish temperament. So Barclay stretched 
 out in his chair, locked his hands back of his head, and 
 looked at the ceiling through his eyelashes. After a 
 silence he addressed the cobwebs above him : " Supposing 
 the case. Would a letter from me to you, setting forth 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 167 
 
 the desperate need of this accommodation paper, not espe- 
 cially for me, but for Colonel Culpepper's fortunes and the 
 good name of the Hendricks family — would that help 
 your cause — a letter that you could show ; a letter," Bar- 
 clay said slowly, " asking for this accommodation ; a letter 
 that you could show to — to — well, to the proper parties, 
 let us say, to-night ; would — that kind of a let'ter help 
 — " Barclay rose suddenly to an upright position and 
 went on : " Say, Mr. Man, that ought to pretty nearly fix 
 it. Let's leave both matters open, say for two hours, and 
 then at ten o'clock or so — you come back here, and I'll have 
 the note for you to sign — if you care to. How's that ? " 
 he asked as he turned to his desk and reached for a pen. 
 
 " Well," replied Brownwell, " I am willing to try." 
 
 And so Barclay sat writing for five minutes, while the 
 glow of the flames died down, and the shadows ceased 
 fighting and were still. 
 
 " Read this over," said Barclay at length. " You will 
 see," he added, as he handed Brownwell the unfolded 
 sheets, " that I have made it clear that if you refuse to 
 sign our notes. General Hendricks will be compelled to 
 close the bank, and that the examination which will fol- 
 low will send him to prison and jeopardize Bob, who has 
 signed a lot of improper notes there to cover our transac- 
 tions, and that in the crash Colonel Culpepper will lose all 
 he has, including the roof over his head — if you refuse to 
 help us." (" However," snarled Barclay, at his conscience, 
 " I've only told the truth ; for if you take your money and 
 go and shut down on the colonel, it would make him a 
 pauper.") 
 
 With a flourishing crescendo finale Adrian Brownwell 
 entered the dark stairway and went down into the street. 
 Barclay turned quickly to his work as if to avoid medita- 
 tion. The scratch of his pen and the murmur of the water 
 on the roof grew louder and louder as the evening waxed 
 old. And out on the hill, out on Lincoln Avenue, the 
 rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew 
 and beat upon that house — that stately house of a father's 
 pride and — 
 
168 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 At ten o'clock John Barclay heard a light footstep and 
 a rattling cane upon the stair, and Brownwell, a human 
 whirligig of gay gestures, came tripping into the room. 
 "A pen, a pen," — he cried, "my kingdom for a pen." 
 He was tugging at his gloves as he spoke, and in the clat- 
 ter that he made, Barclay found the blank note and pushed 
 it toward the table's edge to Brownwell, who put his ornate 
 copy-book signature upon it with a flourish. 
 
 When he had gone, Barclay wrote a note to Jane telling 
 her of Molly's engagement to Brownwell, and then he sat 
 posting his books, and figuring up his accounts. It was 
 after midnight when he limped down the stairs, and the 
 rain had ceased. But a biting wind like a cruel fate came 
 out of the north, and he hurried through the deserted 
 street, under lowering clouds that scurried madly across 
 the stars. But John Barclay could not look up at the 
 stars, he broke into a limping run and head downward 
 plunged into the gale. And never in all his life could he 
 take a square look at Molly Culpepper's diamond ring. 
 
 As the spring deepened Bob Hendricks felt upon him 
 at his work the pressure of two distinct troubles. One 
 was his sweetheart's attitude toward him, and the other 
 was the increasing weakness of his father. Molly Cul- 
 pepper's letters seemed to be growing sad ; also they were 
 failing in their length and frequency — the young man 
 felt that they were perfunctory. His father's letters 
 showed a physical breakdown. His handwriting was un- 
 steady, and often he repeated himself in successive let- 
 ters. The sister wrote about her father's weakness, and 
 seemed to think he was working too hard. But the son 
 suspected that it was worry rather than work, and that 
 things were not going right in the bank. He did not know 
 that the Golden Belt Wheat Company had sapped the 
 money of the bank and had left it a husk, which at any 
 time might crumble. The father knew this, and after the 
 first of the year every morning when he opened the bank 
 he feared that day would be the last day of its career. 
 
 And so it fell out that " those that look out of the 
 windows " were darkened, and General Hendricks rose up 
 
A CERTAIN "RICH MAN 169 
 
 with the voice of the bird and was " afraid of that which 
 was high " and terrors were in the way. So on his head, 
 the white blossom of the almond tree trembled; and one 
 noon in March the stage bore to this broken, shaking old 
 man a letter from Kansas City that ran the sword of fear 
 into his heart and almost stopped it forever. 'It ran : — 
 
 "Dear General : I have just learned from talking mth a banker 
 here that an inspector is headed our way. He probably ■will arrive 
 the day after this reaches you. Something must be done about that 
 tax check of yours. The inspector should not find it in the drawer 
 again. Once was all right, but you must get it out now. Put it in 
 the form of a note. Make it Carnine's note. He is good for twice 
 that. Don't bother him with it, but make it out for ninety days, and 
 by that time we can make another turn. But that note must be in 
 there. Your check won't do any longer. The inspector has been 
 gossiping about us up here — and about that check of yours. For 
 God's sake, don't hesitate, but do this thing quick." 
 
 The letter was not signed, but it came in Barclay's enve- 
 lope, and was addressed by Barclay's hand. 
 
 The general fumbled with the pad of blank notes be- 
 fore him for a long time. He read and reread Barclay's 
 letter. Then he put away the pad and tore the letter into 
 bits and started for the front door. But a terror seized 
 him, and he walked behind the counter and put his palsied 
 hand into the box where he kept cancelled checks, and 
 picked out one of Gabriel Carnine's checks. He folded it 
 up, and started for the door again, but turned weakly at 
 the threshold, and walked to the back room of the bank. 
 
 When it was done, and had been worked through the 
 books. General Hendricks, quaking with shame and fear, 
 sat shivering before his desk with jaws agape and the 
 forged name gashed into his soul. And " the strong men " 
 bowed themselves as he shuffled home in the twilight. The 
 next day when the inspector came, " all the daughters of 
 music were brought low" and the feeble, bent, stricken 
 man piped and wheezed and stammered his confused 
 answers to the young man's questions, and stood para- 
 lyzed with unspeakable horror while the inspector glanced 
 at the Carnine note and asked some casual question about 
 it. When the bank closed that night. General Hendricks 
 
170 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 tried to write to his son and tell him the truth, but he 
 sat weeping before his desk and could not put down the 
 words he longed to write. Bob Hendricks found that 
 tear-stained letter half finished in the desk when he came 
 home, and he kept it locked up for years. And when he 
 discovered that the date on the letter and the date on the 
 forged note were the same, the son knew the meaning of 
 the tears. But it was all for the Larger Good, and so 
 John Barclay won another game with Destiny. 
 
 But the silver cord was straining, and morning after 
 morning the old pitcher went to the fountain, to be 
 battered and battered and battered. His books, which he 
 kept himself, grew spotted and dirty, and day by day in 
 the early spring the general dreaded lest some depositor 
 would come into the bank and call for a sum in cash so 
 large that it would take the cash supply below the legal 
 limit, and that an inspector would suddenly appear again 
 and discover the deficiency. Except Barclay the other 
 directors knew nothing of the situation. They signed 
 whatever reports the general or Barclay put before them; 
 there came a time in April when any three of a dozen 
 depositors could have taken every penny out of the bank. 
 When the general was unusually low in spirits, Barclay 
 sent Colonel Culpepper around to the bank with his 
 anthem about times being better when the spring really 
 opened, and for an hour the general was cheerful, but 
 when the colonel went, the general always saw the axe 
 hanging over his head. And then one morning late in 
 April — one bright Sunday morning — the wheel of the 
 cistern was broken, and they found the old man cold iu his 
 bed with his face to the wall. 
 
 John Barclay was on a horse riding to the railroad — 
 four hours away, before the town was up for late Sunday 
 morning breakfast. That afternoon he went into Topeka 
 on a special engine, and told a Topeka banker who dealt 
 with the bank of Sycamore Ridge the news of the general's 
 death, and asked for five thousand dollars in silver to 
 allay a possible run. At midnight he drove into the 
 Ridge with the money, and the bank opened in the morn- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 171 
 
 ing at seven o'clock instead of nine, so that a crowd might 
 ^not gather, and depositors who came, saw back of Barclay 
 a great heap of silver dollars, flanked by all the gold and 
 greenbacks in the vault, and when a man asked for his 
 money he got it in silver, and when Oscar Fernald pre- 
 sented a check for over three thousand dollars, Barclay 
 paid it out in silver, and in the spirit of fun, Sheriff Jake 
 Dolan, who heard of the counting and recounting of the 
 money while it was going on, brought in a wheelbarrow 
 and Oscar wheeled his money to his hotel, while every 
 loafer in town followed him. At noon Fernald came 
 back with his money, and Barclay refused to take it. 
 The town knew that also. Barclay did not step out of 
 the teller's cage during the whole day, but Lige Bemis 
 was his herald, and through him Barclay had Dolan 
 refuse to give Fernald protection for his money unless 
 Fernald would consent to be locked up in jail with it. 
 In ten minutes the town knew that story, and at three 
 o'clock Barclay posted a notice saying the bank would 
 remain open until nine o'clock that night, to accommodate 
 any depositors who desired their money, but that it would 
 be closed for three days following until after the funeral 
 of the president of the bank. 
 
 The next day he sat in the back room of the bank and 
 received privately nearly all the money that had been 
 taken out Monday, and several thousand dollars besides 
 that came through fear that Fernald's cash would attract 
 robbers from the rough country to the West who might 
 loot the town. To urge in that class of depositors, Bar- 
 clay asked Sheriff Dolan to detail a guard of fifty deputies 
 about the bank day and night, and the day following the 
 cash began coming in with mildew on it, and Adrian 
 Brownwell appeared that night with a thousand dollars of 
 old bank-notes, issued in the fifties, that smelled of the 
 earth. Thursday John limped up and down the street in- 
 viting first one business man and then another into the 
 bank to help him count cash and straighten out his 
 balance. And each of a dozen men believed for years 
 that he was the man who first found the balance in the 
 
172 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 books of the Exchange National Bank of Sycamore Ridge, 
 after John Barclay had got them tangled. And when 
 Barclay was a great and powerful man in the world, these 
 men, being interviewed by reporters about the personality 
 of Barclay, took pride in telling this story of his blunder- 
 ing. But when Bob Hendricks reached Sycamore Ridge 
 Thursday noon, confidence in the safety of the bank was 
 founded upon a rock. 
 
 So when the town closed its stores that afternoon and 
 took the body of the general, its first distinguished citizen 
 to die, out upon the Hill, and laid it to rest in the wild prairie 
 grass, John Barclay and Jane, his wife, rode in the carriage 
 with the mourners, and John stood by his friend through 
 the long service, and when the body was lowered into the 
 grave, the most remote thought in all the world from John's 
 mind was that he was responsible for the old man's death. 
 
 Bob Hendricks saw Molly Culpepper for the first time 
 in twenty months, standing by her father with those who 
 gathered about the general's grave, and as soon as he could 
 leave the friends who came home with him and his sister, 
 he hurried to the Culpeppers'. As he left his home, he 
 could see Molly sitting on the veranda behind one of the 
 pillars of great pride. She moved down the steps toward 
 the gate to meet him. It was dusk, — deep dusk, — but 
 he knew her figure and was thrilled with joy. They 
 walked silently from the gate toward the veranda, and 
 the youth's soul was moved too deeply for words. So 
 deeply indeed was his being stirred, that he did not notice 
 in his eagerness to bring their souls together how she was 
 holding him away from her heart. 
 
 The yellow roses were blooming, and the pink roses were 
 in bud. They strayed idly to the side of the house far- 
 thest from the street, and there they found the lilacs, heavy 
 with blooms ; they were higher than the girl's head, — a 
 little thicket of them, — and behind the thicket was a rustic 
 seat made of the grape-vines. He stepped toward the 
 chair, pulling her by the hand, and she followed. He tried 
 to gather her into his arms, but she slid away from him 
 and cried, " No — no. Bob — no I " 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 173 
 
 "Why — why — why I what's wrong?" gasped the 
 youth. 
 
 The girl sank on the seat and covered her face with her 
 hands. He touched her shoulder and her hair with his 
 finger-tips, and she shivered away from him. " Oh, Bob — 
 Bob, Bob ! — " she cried in agony, still looking at the 
 grass before her. 
 
 The young man looked at her in perplexity. " Why, 
 dear — why — why, darling — why, Molly," he stammered, 
 " why — why — " 
 
 She rose and faced him. She gripped herself, and he 
 could feel the unnatural firmness in her voice as she spoke. 
 
 " Bob, I am not the little girl you left." He put out his 
 arms, but she shrank back among the lilacs ; their perfume 
 was in her face, and she was impressed with that odd feel- 
 ing one sometimes has of having had some glimpse of it 
 all before. She knew that she would say, "I am not 
 worthy — not worthy any more — Bob, do you under- 
 stand?" 
 
 And when he had stepped toward her again with piteous 
 pleading face, — a face that she had never seen before, yet 
 seemed always to have known, — she felt that numb sense of 
 familiarity with it all, and it did not pain her as she feared 
 it would when he cried, "Oh — God, Molly — nothing you 
 ever could do would make you unworthy of me — Molly, 
 Molly, what is it ? " The anguish in his face flashed back 
 from some indefinite past to her, and then the illusion was 
 gone, and the drama was all new. He caught her, but she 
 fought herself away. 
 
 "Don't — don't!" she cried; "you have no right — 
 now." She dropped into the seat, while he stood over her 
 with horror on his face. She answered the question of 
 his eyes, rocking her body as she spoke, " Bob — do you 
 understand now ? " He shook his head, and she went on, 
 " We aren't engaged — not any more. Bob — not any more 
 — never I " He started to speak, but she said : " I'm 
 going to marry Mr. Brownwell. Oh, Bob — Bob, I told 
 you I was unworthy — now do you understand ? " 
 
 The man turned his face starward a second, and then 
 
174 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 dropped his head. " Oh," he groaned, and then sat down 
 beside her at the other end of the bench. He folded his 
 hands on his knees, and they sat silent for a time, and then 
 he asked in a dead voice, " You know I love you — still, 
 don't you, Molly ? " 
 
 She answered, "Yes, that's what makes it hard." 
 
 " And do you love me ? " he cried with eagerness. 
 
 She sat for a minute without replying and then an- 
 swered, " I am a woman now. Bob — a grown woman, and 
 some way things are different." 
 
 They sat without speaking; then he drew a deep breath 
 and said, "Well, I suppose I ought to go." His head 
 rested on his hand which was supported by an arm of the 
 chair. He did not offer to rise. 
 
 She rose and went to him, kneeling before him. She 
 put her hands upon his shoulders, and he put them aside, 
 and she felt him shudder. She moaned, and looked up at 
 him. Her face was close to his, but he did not come 
 closer. He stared at her dumbly, and kept shaking his 
 head as if asking some mute question too deep for words. 
 Then he put out his hand and took hers. He put it 
 against his cheek and held it in both his own. She did 
 not take her eyes from his face, but his eyes began to 
 wander. 
 
 " I will never see you again. Bob — I mean like this." 
 She paused. 
 
 There was no life in his hands, and hers slipped away 
 unrestrained. " How sweet the lilacs smell to-night," he 
 said as he drew in a deep breath. He leaned back that he 
 might breathe more freely, and added as he sighed, " I 
 shall smell them through eternity — Molly." Then he 
 rose and broke off a spray. He helped her rise and said, 
 "Well — so this is the way of it." His handsome fair 
 face was white in the moonlight, and she saw that his hair 
 was thinning at the temples, and the strange flash of 
 familiarity with it all came again as she inhaled the fra- 
 grance of the lilacs. 
 
 She trembled with some chill of inner grief, and cried 
 vehemently, "Oh, Bob — my boy — my boy — say you 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 175 
 
 hate me — for God's love, say you hate me." She came 
 so close to him that she touched him, then she crumpled 
 against the side of the seat in a storm of tears, but he 
 looked at her steadily and shook his head. 
 
 " Come on, Molly. It's too cool for you out here," he 
 said, and took her hand and walked with her to the steps. 
 She was blinded by her weeping, and he helped her to the 
 veranda, but he stopped on a lower step whe/e his face 
 was on a level with hers, and dropping her hand, he said, 
 "Well, good night, Molly — good night — " and as he 
 half turned from her, he said in the same voice, " Good- 
 by." 
 
 He went quickly down the walk — a tall stalwart figure, 
 and he carried his hat in his hand, and wiped his forehead 
 as he went. At the gate he looked back and saw her 
 standing where he had left her ; he could still hear the 
 pitiful sobs, but he made no sign to her, and she heard him 
 walking away under the elms into the night. When his 
 steps had ceased she ran on tiptoe, holding her breath to 
 silence her sobs, through the hall, up the stairs of the 
 silent home to her room, and locked the door. When she 
 could not pray, she lay sobbing and groaning through a 
 long night. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The next morning John Barclay gave Robert Hen- 
 dricks the keys to the bank. Barclay watched the town 
 until nine o'clock and satisfied himself that there would be 
 no run on the bank, for during the early part of the morn- 
 ing young Hendricks was holding a reception in his office ; 
 then Barclay saddled a horse and started for the wheat 
 fields. After the first hours of the morning had passed, 
 and the townspeople had gone from the bank, Robert 
 Hendricks began to burrow into the books. He felt in- 
 stinctively that he would find there the solution of the 
 puzzle that perplexed him. For he was sure Molly Cul- 
 pepper had not jilted him wantonly. He worked aU the 
 long spring afternoon and into the night, and when*he 
 could not sleep he went back to the bank at midnight, folr 
 lowing some clew that rose out of his under-consciousness 
 and beckoned him to an answer to his question. 
 
 The next morning found him at his counter, still worry- 
 ing his books as a ferret worries a rat. They were be- 
 ginning to mean something to him, and he saw that the 
 bank was a worm-eaten shell. When he discovered that 
 Rrownwell's notes were not made for bona fide loans, but 
 'ihat they were made to cover Barclay's overdrafts, he be- 
 gan to find the truth, and then when he found that Colo- 
 nel Culpepper had lent the money back to the bank that 
 he borrowed from Brown well, — also to save John's over- 
 drafts, — Bob Hendricks' soul burned pale with rage. He 
 found that John had borrowed far beyond the limit of his 
 credit at the bank to buy the company's stock, and that he 
 had used Culpepper and Brownwell to protect his account 
 when it needed protection. Hendricks went about his 
 work silently, serving the bank's customers, and greeting 
 
 176 
 
V 
 
 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 177 
 
 his neighbours pleasantly, but his heart was full of a lust 
 to do some bodily hurt to John Barclay. When John 
 came back, he sauntered into the bank so airily that Hen- 
 dricks could not put the hate into his hands that was in 
 his breast. John was full of a plan to organize a commis- 
 sion company, buy all of the wheat grown by the Golden 
 Belt Wheat Company and make a profit off the wheat com- 
 pany for the commission company. He had bargained with 
 the traffic officers of the railroad company to accept stock 
 in the commission company in return for rate concessions 
 on the Corn Belt Railroad, which was within a few months' 
 building distance of Sycamore Ridge. 
 
 As John unfolded his scheme, Bob eyed his partner al- 
 most without a word. A devil back in some recess of his 
 soul was thirsting for a quarrel. But Bob's sane con- 
 sciousness would not unleash the devil, so he replied : — 
 
 "No — you go ahead with your commission company, 
 and I'll stick to the wheat proposition. That and the 
 bank will keep me going." 
 
 The afternoon was late, and a great heap of papers of 
 the bank and the company lay before them that needed 
 their time. Bob brushed his devil back and went to 
 work. But he kept looking at Barclay's neck and imagin- 
 ing his fingers closing upon it. When the twilight was 
 falling, Barclay brought the portmanteau containing the 
 notes into the back room and turning to the " C's " pulled 
 out a note for nine thousand dollars signed by Gabriel 
 Carnine, who was then county treasurer. Barclay put it 
 on the table before Hendricks and looked steadily at him 
 a minute before saying, "Bob — see that note?" And 
 when the young man answered, the other returned : " We 
 had to do that, and several other things, this spring to 
 tide us over. I didn't bother you with it — but we just 
 had to do it — or close up, and go to pieces with the 
 wheat scheme." 
 
 Hendricks picked up the note, and after examining it a 
 moment, asked quickly, " John, is that Gabe's signature? " 
 
 "No — I couldn't get Gabe to sign it — and we had to 
 have it to make his account balance." 
 
178 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " And you forged his note, — and are carrying it ?" cried 
 Hendricks, rising. 
 
 " Oh, sit down, Bob — we did it here amongst hands. 
 It wasn't exactly my affair, the way it got squared 
 around." 
 
 Hendricks took the note to the window. He was 
 flushed, and the devil got into his eyes when he came back, 
 and he cried, " And you made father do it ! " 
 
 Barclay smiled pacifically, and limped oyer to Hen- 
 dricks and took the note from him and put it back into 
 the portmanteau. Then Barclay replied: "No, Bob, I 
 didn't make your father — the times made your father. 
 It was that or confess to Gabe Carnine, who swelled up 
 on taking his job, that we hadn't paid the taxes on the 
 company's land, though our check had been passed for it. 
 When it came in, we gave the county treasurer credit on 
 his daily bankbook for the nine thousand, but we held 
 out the check. Do you see ? " 
 
 " Yes, that far," replied Hendricks. 
 
 " Well, it's a long story after that, but when I found 
 Gabe wouldn't accommodate us for six months by giving 
 us his note to carry as cash until we could pay it, — the 
 inspectors wouldn't take mine or your father's, — and pur 
 books had to show the amount of gross cash that the treas- 
 urer deposited before Gabe canie in, your father thought 
 it unwise to keep holding checks that had already 
 been paid in the drawer as cash for that nine thousand, 
 so we — well, one day he just put this note in, and worked 
 it through the books." 
 
 Hendricks had his devil well in hand as he stared at 
 Barclay, and then said: " John — this is mighty dangerous 
 business. Are we carrying his account nine thousand 
 short on our books, and making his pass-book balance '^ " 
 
 "That'sit, only— " 
 
 " But suppose some one finds it out ? " asked Hendricks. 
 
 " Oh, now. Bob, keep your shirt on. I fixed that. You 
 know they keep two separate accounts, — a general main- 
 tenance account and a bond account, and Gabe has been 
 letting us keep the paid-off bonds in the vault and look 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 179 
 
 after tlieir cancelling, and while he was sick, I was in 
 charge of the treasurer's office and had the run of the 
 bank, and I squared our account at the Eastern fiscal 
 agency and in the bond account in the treasurer's office, 
 and fixed up the short maintenance account all with nine 
 thousand dollars' worth of old bonds that were kicking 
 around the vault uncancelled, and now the job is hermeti- 
 cally sealed so far as the treasurer and the bank are con- 
 cerned." 
 
 " So we can't pay it back if we want to ? Is that the way, 
 John?" asked Hendricks, his fingers twitching as he 
 leaned forward in his chair. 
 
 "Ah, don't get so tragic about it. Some day when 
 Gabe has calmed down, and wants a renomination, I'll 
 take him in the back room and show him the error that 
 we've both made, and we'll just quietly put back the 
 money and give him the laugh." There was a pause, and 
 Barclay tilted his chair back and grinned. " It's all right. 
 Bob — we were where we had to do it ; the books balance 
 to a ' T ' now — and we'll square it with Gabe sometime." 
 
 "But if we can't — if Gabe won't be — be — well, be 
 reasonable ? What then ? " asked Hendricks. 
 
 " Oh, well," returned John, " I've thought of that too. 
 And you'll find that when the county treasury changes 
 hands in '79, you'll have to look after the bond account 
 and the treasurer's books and make a little entry to sat- 
 isfy the bonds when they really fall due ; then — I'll 
 show you about it when we're over at the court-house. 
 But if we can't get the money back with Gabe or the 
 next man, the time will come when we can." 
 
 And Bob Hendricks looked at the natty little man be- 
 fore him and sighed, and began working for the Larger 
 Good also. And afterwards as the months flew by the 
 Golden Belt Wheat Company paid the interest on the 
 forged note, and the bank paid the Golden Belt Wheat 
 Company interest on a daily ledger balance of nine thou- 
 sand, and all went happily. The Larger Good accepted 
 the sacrifices of truth, and went on its felicitous way. 
 
 After Barclay left the bank that night, Hendricks 
 
180 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 found still more of the truth. And the devil in the 
 background of his soul came out and glared through the 
 young man's sleepless eyes as he appeared in Barclay's 
 office in the morning and said, before he had found a 
 chair, "John, what's your idea about those farmers' 
 mortgages? Are you going to let them pay them, or are 
 you going to make them sell under that option that you've 
 got in them? " 
 
 "Why," asked Barclay, "what's it to us? Haven't 
 the courts decided that that kind of an option is a sale — 
 clear through to the United States Supreme Court ? " 
 
 " Well, what are you going to do about it ?" persisted 
 Hendricks. 
 
 Barclay squinted sidewise at his partner for a few sec- 
 onds and said, " Well, it's no affair of ours ; we've sold all 
 the mortgages anyway." 
 
 Hendricks wagged his head impatiently and exclaimed, 
 " Quit your dodging and give me a square answer — what 
 have you got up your sleeve about those options ? " 
 
 Barclay rose, limped to the window, and looked out as 
 he answered : " Well, I've always supposed we'd fix it 
 up some way to buy back those mortgages and then take 
 the land we want for ourselves — for you and me person- 
 ally — and give the poor land back to the farmers if they 
 pay the money we lent them." 
 
 " Well," returned Hendricks, " just count me out on 
 that. Whatever I make in this deal, and you seem to 
 think our share will be plenty, goes to getting those farm- 
 ers back their land. So far as I'm concerned that money 
 we paid them was rent, not a loan ! " 
 
 Barclay dropped his hands in astonishment and gaped 
 at Hendricks. 
 
 " Well, my dear Miss Nancy," he exclaimed, " when 
 did you get religion ? " 
 
 The two men glared at each other a moment, and Hen- 
 dricks grappled his devil and drew a long breath and 
 replied : " Well, you heard what I said." And then he 
 added: "I'm pretty keen for money, John, but when it 
 comes to skinning a lot of neighbours out of land that you 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 181 
 
 and every one says is going to raise thirty dollars' worth 
 of wheat to the acre this year alone, and only paying them 
 ten dollars an acre for the title to the land itself — " He 
 did not finish. After a pause he added : " Why, they'll 
 mob you, man. I've got to live with those farmers." 
 Barclay sneered at Hendricks without speaking and Hen- 
 dricks stepped over to him and drew back his open hand 
 as he said angrily, "Stop it — stop it, I say." Then he 
 exclaimed : " I'm not what you'd call nasty nice, John — 
 but I'm no robber. I can't take the rent of that land for 
 nothing, raise a thirty-dollar crop on every acre of it, and 
 make them pay me ten dollars an acre to get back the poor 
 land and steal the good land on a hocus-pocus option." 
 
 " ' I do not use the nasty weed, said little Robert Reed,' " 
 replied Barclay, with a leer on his face. Then he added : 
 " I've held your miserable little note-shaving shop up by 
 main strength for a year, by main strength and awkward- 
 ness, and now you come home with your mouth all fixed 
 for prisms and prunes, and want to get on a higher plane. 
 You try that," continued Barclay, and his eyes blazed at 
 Hendricks, " and you'U come down town some morning 
 minus a bank." 
 
 Then the devil in Bob Hendricks was freed for an exult- 
 ant moment, as his hands came out of his pockets and 
 clamped down on Barclay's shoulders, and shook him till his 
 teeth rattled. 
 
 "Not with me, John, not with me," he cried, and he 
 felt his fingers clutching for the thin neck so near them, 
 and then suddenly his hands went back to his pockets. 
 " Now, another thing — you got Brownwell to lend the 
 colonel that money ? " Hendricks was himself. 
 
 Barclay nodded. 
 
 " And you got Brownwell to sign a lot of accommodation 
 paper there at the bank ? " 
 
 " Yes — to cover our own overdrafts," retorted Barclay. 
 "It was either that or bust — and I preferred not to bust. 
 What's more, if we had gone under there at one stage of 
 the game when Brownwell helped us, we could have been 
 indicted for obtaining money under false pretences — you 
 
182 A CERTAIN RICH MAlSi 
 
 and I, I mean. I'm perfectly willing to stick my head 
 inside the jail and look around," Barclay grinned, " but 
 I'll be damned if I'm going clear inside for any man — not 
 when I can find a way to back out." Barclay tried to 
 laugh, but Hendricks would not let him. 
 
 "And so you put up ^oUy to bail you out." Barclay 
 did not answer and Hendricks went on bitterly : " Oh, 
 you're a friend, John Barclay, you're a loyal friend. 
 You've sold me out like a dog, John — like a dog!" 
 
 Barclay, sitting at his desk, playing with a paper-weight, 
 snarled back : " Why don't you get in the market yourself, 
 if you think I've sold you out ? Why don't you lend the old 
 man some money? " 
 
 " And take it from the bank you've just got done robbing 
 of everything but the wall-paper ? " Hendricks retorted. 
 
 " No," cried Barclay, in a loud voice. " Come off your 
 high horse and take the profits we'll make on our wheat, 
 pay off old Brownwell and marry her." 
 
 "And let the bank bust and the farmers slide? " asked 
 Hendricks, " and buy back Molly with stolen money ? Is 
 that your idea?" 
 
 " Well," Barclay snapped, " you have your choice, so if 
 you think more of the bank and your old hayseeds than 
 you do of Molly, don't come blubbering around me about 
 selling her." 
 
 " John," sighed Hendricks, after a long wrestle — a final 
 contest with his demon, " I've gone all over that. And I 
 have decided that if I've got to swindle seventy-five or a 
 hundred farmers — most of them old soldiers on their 
 homesteads — out of their little all, and cheat five hundred 
 depositors out of their money to get Molly, she and I 
 wouldn't be very happy when we thought of the price, 
 and we'd always think of the price." His demon was 
 limp in the background of his soul as he added : " Here 
 are some papers I brought over. Let's get back to the 
 settlement — fix them up and bring them over to the bank 
 this morning, will you ? " And laying a package care- 
 fully on the table, Hendricks turned and went quickly out 
 of the room. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 183 
 
 After Hendricks left the office that May morning, Bar- 
 clay sat whistling the air of the song of the " Evening 
 Star," looking blankly at a picture of Wagner hanging 
 beside a picture of Jay Gould. The tune seemed to re- 
 store his soul. When he had been whistling softly for 
 nve minutes or so, the idea flashed across his mind that 
 flour was the one thing used in America more than any 
 other food product and that if a man had his money in- 
 vested in the manufacture and sale of flour, he would have 
 an investment that would weather any panic. The idea 
 overcame him, and he shut his eyes and his ears and gripped 
 his chair and whistled and saw visions. Molly Culpepper 
 came into the room, and paused a moment on the threshold 
 as one afraid to interrupt a sleeper. She saw the dapper 
 little man kicking the chair rounds with his dangling 
 heels, his flushed face reflecting a brain full of blood, his 
 eyes shut, his head thrown far back, so that his Adam's 
 apple stuck up irrelevantly, and she knew only by the per- 
 sistence of the soft low whistle that he was awake, clutch- 
 ing at some day-dream. When she cleared her throat, he 
 was startled and stared at her foolishly for a moment, with 
 the vision still upon him. His wits came to him, and he 
 rose to greet her. 
 
 " Well — well — why — hello, Molly — I was just figur- 
 ing on a matter," he said as he put her in a chair, and then 
 he added, " Well — I wasn't expecting you." 
 
 Even before she could speak his lips were puckering to 
 pick up the tune he had dropped. She answered, " No, 
 John, I wanted to see you — so I just came up." 
 
 " Oh, that's all right, Molly — what is it? " he returned. 
 
 " Well — " answered the young woman, listlessly, " it's 
 about father. You know he's badly in debt, and some 
 way — of course he sells lots of land and all, but you know 
 father, John, and he just doesn't — oh, he just keeps in 
 debt." 
 
 Barclay had been lapsing back into his revery as she 
 spoke, but he pulled himself out and replied : " Oh, yes, 
 Molly — I know about father all right. Can't you make 
 him straighten things out ? " 
 
184 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " Well, no. John, that's just it. His money comes in 
 so irregularly, this month a lot and next month nothing, 
 that it just spoils him. When he gets a lot he spends itlike a 
 prince," she smiled sadly and interjected : " You know he 
 is forever giving away — and then while he's waiting he 
 gets in debt again. Then we are as poor as the people for 
 whom he passes subscription papers, and that's just what 
 I wanted to see you about." 
 
 Barclay took his eyes off Jay Gould's picture long 
 enough to look at the brown-eyed girl with an oval face 
 and a tip of a chin that just fitted the hollow of a man's 
 hand; there were the smallest brown freckles in the world 
 across the bridge of her nose, and under her eyes there 
 was the faintest suggestion of dark shading. Youth was 
 in her lips and cheeks, and when she smiled there were 
 dimples. But John's eyes went back to Jay Gould's 
 solemn black whiskers and he said from his abstraction, 
 " Well, Molly, I wish I could help you." 
 
 " Well, I knew you would, John, some way; and oh, John, 
 I do need help so badly." She paused a moment and 
 gazed at him piteously and repeated, " So badly." But 
 his eyes did not move from the sacred whiskers of his joss. 
 The vision was flaming in his brain, and with his lips 
 parted, he whistled " The Evening Star " to conjure it back 
 and keep it with him. The girl went on : — 
 
 "About that money Mr. Br own well loaned father, John." 
 She flushed and cried, "Can't you find some way for 
 father to borrow the money and pay Mr. Brownwell — 
 now that your wheat is turning out so well ? " 
 
 The young man pulled himself out of his day-dream and 
 said, " Well — why — you see, Molly — I — Well now, to 
 be entirely frank with you, Molly, I'm going into a busi- 
 ness that will take all of my credit — and every cent of 
 my money." 
 
 He paused a moment, and the girl asked, " Tell me, 
 John, will the wheat straighten things up at the bank ? " 
 
 " Well, it might if Bob had any sense — but he's got a 
 fool notion of considering a straight mortgage that those 
 farmers gave on their land as rent, and isn't going to make 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 185 
 
 them redeem their land, — his share of it, I mean, — and 
 if he doesn't do that, he'll not have a cent, and he couldn't 
 lend your father any money." Barclay was anxious to get 
 back to his " Evening Star " and his dream of power, so he 
 asked, " Why, Molly, what's wrong ? " 
 
 " John," she began, " this is a miserable business to talk 
 about ; but it is business, I guess." She stopped and 
 looked at him piteously. " Well, John, father's debt to Mr. 
 Brownwell — the ten-thousand-dollar loan on the house 
 — will be due in August." The young man assented. 
 And after a moment she sighed, " That is why I'm to be 
 married in August." She stood a moment looking out of 
 the window and cried, " Oh, John, John, isn't there some 
 way out — isn't there, John ? " 
 
 Barclay rose and limped to her and answered harshly : 
 " Not so long as Bob is a fool — no, Molly. If he wants to 
 go mooning around releasing those farmers from their 
 mortgages — there's no way out. But I wouldn't care 
 for a man who didn't think more of me than he did of a 
 lot of old clodhoppers." 
 
 The girl looked at the hard-faced youth a moment in 
 silence, and turned without a word and left the room. 
 Barclay floated away on his " Evening Star " and spun 
 out his dream as a spider spins his web, and when Hen- 
 dricks came into the office for a mislaid paper half an hour 
 later, Barclay still was figuring up profits, and making his 
 web stronger. As Hendricks, having finished his errand, 
 was about to go, Barclay stopped him. 
 
 " Bob, Molly's been up here. As nearly as I can get at 
 it, Brownwell has promised to renew the colonel's mort- 
 gage in August. If he and Molly aren't married by then 
 — no more renewals from him. Doh'tbeafool, Bob; let your 
 sod-busters go hang. If you don't get their farms, some 
 one else will ! " 
 
 Hendricks looked at his partner a minute steadily, 
 grunted, and strode out of the room. And the incident 
 slipped from John Barclay's mind, and the web of the spider 
 grew stronger and stronger in his brain, but it cast a 
 shadow that was to reach across his life. 
 
186 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 After Hendricks went from his office that morning, 
 Barclay bounded back, like a boy at play, to the vision of 
 controlling the flour market. He saw the waving wheat 
 of Garrison County coming to the railroad, and he knew 
 that his railroad rates were so low that the miller on the 
 Sycamore could not ship a pound of flour profitably, and 
 Barclay's mind gradually comprehended that through rail- 
 road rates he controlled the mill, and could buy it at his leis- 
 ure, upon his own terms. Then the whole scheme unfolded 
 itself before his closed eyes as he sat with his head tilted 
 back and pillowed in his hands. If his railroad concession 
 made it possible for him to underbid the miller at the 
 Ridge, why could he not get other railroad concessions 
 and underbid every miller along the line of the Corn Belt 
 road, by dividing profits with the railroad officials ? As he 
 spun out his vision, he could hear the droning voices of 
 General Ward and Colonel Culpepper in the next room; 
 but he did not heed them. 
 
 They were discussing the things of the day, — indeed, the 
 things of a fortnight before, to be precise, — the reception 
 given by the Culpeppers to celebrate their silver wedding 
 anniversary. The windows were open, and Barclay could 
 hear the men's voices, and he knew vaguely that they were 
 talking of Lige Bemis. For Barclay had tactfully asked 
 the colonel as a favour to invite Mr. and Mrs. Bemis to the 
 silver wedding reception. So the Bemises came. Mrs. 
 Bemis, who was rather stout, even for a woman in her 
 early forties, wore black satin and jet ornaments, including 
 black jet ear bobs of tremendous size. And Watts Mc- 
 Hurdie was so touched by the way ten years under a roof 
 had tamed the woman whom he had known of old as " Happy 
 Hallie," that he wrote a poem for the Banner about the 
 return of the " Prodigal Daughter," which may be found 
 in Garrison County scrap-books of that period. As for 
 Mr. Bemis, he went slinking about the outskirts of the 
 crowd, showing his teeth considerably, and making it ob- 
 vious that he was there. 
 
 So as John Barclay rode his " Evening Star " to glory, in 
 the next room General Ward turned to the colonel, who 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 187 
 
 stood puiEng in the doorway of the general's law-office, 
 " Martin, did John Barclay make you invite that woman 
 to your house — that Bemis woman ? " 
 
 The colonel got his breath slowly after climbing the 
 stair, and he did not reply at once. But he smiled, and 
 stood with his arms akimbo a few seconds before he spoke. 
 " Well now. General — since you ask it, I may as well con- 
 fess it pointedly — I am ashamed to say he did ! " 
 
 Ward motioned the colonel to a seat and asked impa- 
 tiently, « Ashamed ? " 
 
 " Well," responded Culpepper, as he put his feet in the 
 window ledge, " she's as good as I am — if you come down 
 to that 1 Why shouldn't I, who pretend to be a gentleman, 
 — a; Virginia gentleman, I may say, sir, — why shouldn't 
 I be ashamed, disgraced, sir, disgraced in point of fact, that 
 I had to be forced to invite any person in all God's beauti- 
 ful world to my home ? " 
 
 Ward looked at the colonel coldly a moment and then 
 blurted out : " Ah, shucks, sir — stuff and nonsense I You 
 know what she was before the war — Happy Hally I My 
 gracious, Martin, how could you? " 
 
 Martin Culpepper brought his chair down with a bang 
 and turned squarely to Ward. "General, the war's over 
 now. I knew Happy Hally — and I knew the Red Legs she 
 trained with. And we're making senators and governors 
 and state officers and indeed, I may say, prominent citizens 
 out of them. Why not give Hally her show? You damn 
 cold-nosed Yankee Brahmins — you have Faith and you 
 have Hope, but you have no more Charity than a sausage- 
 grinder." The colonel rose, and cried with some asperity, 
 " General, if you'd preach about the poor less, and pray 
 with 'em more, you'd know more about your fellow-men, 
 
 sir 
 
 Perhaps this conversation should not have been set down 
 here ; for it has no direct relation to the movement of this 
 narrative. The narrative at this point should be hurrying 
 along to tell how John Barclay and Bob Hendricks cleared 
 up a small fortune on their wheat deal, and how that 
 autumn Barclay bought the mill at Sycamore Ridge by 
 
188 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 squeezing its owner out, and then set about to establish 
 four branches of the Golden Belt Wheat Company's 
 elevator service along the line of the new railroad, and 
 how he controlled the wheat output of three counties the 
 next year through his enterprise. These facts carry 
 John Barclay forward toward his life's goal. And while 
 these two middle-aged gentlemen — the general and the 
 colonel — were in the next room wrangling over the youth- 
 ful love affairs of a middle-aged lady, a great dream was 
 shaping in Barclay's head, and he did not heed them. He 
 was dreaming of controlling the wheat market of the 
 Golden Belt Railroad, through railroad-rate privileges, and 
 his fancy was feeling its way into flour, and comprehend- 
 ing what might be done with wheat products. 
 
 It was a crude dream, but he was aflame with it, and 
 yet — John Barclay, aged twenty-five, was a young man 
 with curly hair and flattered himself that he could sing. 
 And there was always in him that side of his nature, so 
 the reader must know that when Nellie Logan came to 
 his oflBce that bright summer morning and found him 
 wrapped in his day-dream of power, she addressed herself 
 not to the Thane of Wheat who shoul^d be King hereafter, 
 but to the baritone singer in the Congregational choir, and 
 the wheat king scampered back to the dream world when 
 John replied to Nellie's question. 
 
 " So it's your wedding, is it, Nellie — your wedding," he 
 repeated. " Well, where does Watts come in ? " And then, 
 before she answered, he went on, "You bet I'll sing at 
 your wedding, and what's more, I'll bring along my limp- 
 ing Congregational foot, and I'll dance at your wedding." 
 
 " Well, I just knew you would," said the young woman. 
 
 "So old Watts thought I wouldn't, did he?" asked 
 Barclay. " The old skeezicks — Well, well I Nellie, you 
 tell him that the fellow who was with Watts when he was 
 shot ten miles from Springfield isn't going to desert him 
 when he gets a mortal wound in the heart." Then Bar- 
 clay added : " You get the music and take it down to 
 Jane, and tell her to' teach me, and I'll be there. Jane 
 says you're going to put old Watts through all the gaits." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 189 
 
 He leaned back in his swivel chair and smiled at his 
 visitor. He had a slow drawl that he used in teasing, and 
 one who heard that voice and afterward heard the harsh 
 bark of the man in driving a bargain or browbeating an 
 adversary would have to look twice to realize that the 
 same man was talking. A little over an hour before in 
 that very room he had looked at Bob Hendricks from 
 under wrinkled brows with the vertical line creased 
 between his eyes and snarled, " Well, then, if you think 
 she's going to marry that fellow because I got him to 
 lend the colonel some money, why don't you go and lend 
 the colonel some more money and get her back ? " 
 
 But there was not a muscle twitching in his face as he 
 talked to Nellie Logan, not a break in his voice, not a 
 ruffle of a hair, to tell her that John Barclay had broken 
 with the friend of his boyhood and the partner of his 
 youth, and that he had closed and bolted the Door of Hope 
 on Molly Culpepper. He drawled on : " Jane was saying 
 that you were going to have Bob and Molly for best man 
 and bridesmaid. Ought you to do that? You know 
 they—" 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, but she replied: " Oh, 
 yes, I know about that. I told Watts he ought to have 
 Mr. Brownwell; but he's as stubborn as a mule about 
 just that one thing. Everything else — the flower girls 
 and the procession and the ring service and all — he's so 
 nice about. And you know I just had to have Molly." 
 
 John slapped the arms of his chair and lailghed. " As 
 old Daddy Mason says, 'Now hain't that just like a 
 woman I ' Well, Nellie, it's your wedding, and a woman 
 is generally not married more than once, so it's all right. 
 Go it while you're young." 
 
 And so he teased her out of the room, and when Syca- 
 more Ridge packed itself into the Congregational Church 
 one June night, to witness the most gorgeous church wed- 
 ding the town ever had seen, John opened the ceremonies 
 by singing the " Voice that breathed o'er Eden" most 
 effectively, and Sycamore Ridge in its best clothes, rather 
 stuffed and uncomfortable thereby, was in that unnatural 
 
190 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 attitude toward the world where it thought John Bar. 
 clay's voice, a throaty baritone, with much affectation in 
 the middle register, a tendency to flat in the upper register, 
 and thick fuzz below " C," was beautiful, though John 
 often remembered that night with unalloyed shame. He 
 saw himself as he stood there, primped to kill, like a prize 
 bull at a fair, bellowing out a mawkish sentiment in a 
 stilted voice, and he wondered how the Ridge ever managed 
 to endure him afterwards. 
 
 But this is a charitable world, and his temperament was 
 such that he did not realize that no one paid much atten- 
 tion to him, after the real ceremony started. When the 
 bride and the bridesmaid came down the aisle, Nellie 
 Logan radiant in the gown which every woman in the 
 church knew had come from Chicago and had been bought 
 of the drummer at wholesale cost, saving the bride over 
 fifteen dollars on the regular price — what did the guests 
 care for a dapper little man singing a hymn tune through 
 his nose, even if he was the richest young man in town? 
 And when Molly Culpepper — dear little Molly Culpepper 
 — came after the bride, blushing through her powder, and 
 looking straight at the floor for fear her eyes would wander 
 after her heart and wondering if the people knew — it was 
 of no consequence that John Barclay's voice frazzled ou 
 " F " ; for if the town wished to notice a man at that wed- 
 ding, there was Watts McHurdie in a paper collar, with a 
 white embroidered bow tie and the first, starched shirt the 
 town had ever seen him wear, badly out of step with the 
 procession, while the best man dragged him like an un- 
 willing victim to the altar ; and of course there was the 
 best man, — and a handsome best man as men go, — fair- 
 skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed, with a good glow on his 
 immobile face and rather sad eyes that, being in a man's 
 head, went boldly where they chose and where all the 
 women in the town could see them go. So there were 
 other things to remember that night besides John Barclay's 
 singing and the festive figure he cut at that wedding: 
 there was the wedding supper at the Wards', and the wedding 
 reception at the Culpeppers', and after it all the dance in 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 191 
 
 Culpepper Hall. And all the town remembers these 
 things, but only two people remember a moment after the 
 reception when every one was hurrying away to the dance 
 and when the bridesmaid — such a sweet, pretty little 
 bridesmaid — was standing alone in a deserted room with 
 a tall groomsman — just for a moment — just for a moment 
 before Adrian BrownweU came up bustling and bristling, 
 but long enough to say, " Bob — did you take my gloves 
 there in the carriage as we were coming home from the 
 church?" and long enough for him to answer, "Why, 
 did you lose them ? " and then to get a good square look 
 into her eyes. It was only a few seconds in the long 
 evening — 'less than a second that their eyes met; but it was 
 enough to be remembered forever ; though why — you 
 say 1 It was all so commonplace; there was nothing in it 
 that you would have thought worth remembering for a 
 moment. " Bob, did you take my gloves ? " " Why, did 
 you lose them ? " and then a glance of the eyes. Surely 
 there are more romantic words than these. But when a 
 man and a woman go in for collecting antiques in their 
 dialogues. Heaven only knows what old rubbish you will 
 find in their attics, scoured off and rebuilt and polished 
 with secret tears until the old stuff glows like embers. 
 
 And that is why, when the music was silent in Cul- 
 pepper Hall, and the tall young man walked slowly home 
 alone, as he clicked his own gate behind him, he brought 
 from his pocket two little white gloves, — just two ordinary 
 white gloves, — and held them to his lips and lifted his arms 
 in despair once and let them drop as he stood before his 
 doorstep. And that is why a girl, a little girl with the 
 weariest face in the town, looked out of her bedroom 
 window that night and whispered over and over to herself 
 the name she dared not speak. And all this was going 
 on while the town was turning over in its bed, listening to 
 the most tumultuous charivari that Sycamore Ridge has 
 ever known. 
 
 Night after night that summer faithful Jake Dolan 
 walked the streets of Sycamore Ridge with Bob Hendricks. 
 By day they lived apart, but at night the young man 
 
192 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 often would look up the elder, and they would walk and 
 walk together, but never once did Hendricks mention 
 Molly's name nor refer to her in any way ; yet Jake Dolan 
 knew why they walked abroad. How did he know ? 
 How do we know so many things in this world that are 
 neither seen nor heard? And the Irish — they have the 
 drop of blood that defies mathematics ; the Irish are the 
 only people in the world whom kind Providence permits 
 to add two and two together to make six. " You say 
 'tis four," said Dolan, one night, as he and Hendricks stood 
 on the bridge listening" to the roar from the dam. "I say 
 'tis six. There is this and there is that and you say they 
 make the other. Not at all ; they make something else 
 entirely different. You take your two and your two and 
 make your four and try your four on the world, and it 
 works — yes, it works up to a point ; but there is some- 
 thing left over, something unexplained ; you don't know 
 what. I do. It's the other two. Therefore I say to 
 you, Mr. Robert Hendricks, that two and two make six, 
 because God loves the Irish, and for no other reason on 
 earth." 
 
 So much for the dreams of Molly, the memories of Bob, 
 and the vagaries of Mr. Dolan. They were as light as 
 air. But in John Barclay's life a vision was rising — a 
 vision that was real, palpable, and vital; a vision of wealth 
 and power, — and as the days and the months passed, the 
 shadow of that vision grew big and black and real in a 
 score of lives. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 As June burned itself gloriously into July, Robert 
 Hendricks no longer counted the weeks until Molly Cul- 
 pepper should be married, but counted the days. So three 
 weeks and two days, from the first of July, became three 
 weeks, then two weeks and six days, and then one week 
 and six days, and then six days, five days, four days, three 
 days; and then it became seventy-two hours. And the 
 three threshing machines of the Golden Belt Wheat Com- 
 pany were pouring their ceaseless stream into the com- 
 pany's great bins. The railroad was only five miles away, 
 and Hendricks was sitting in his office in the bank going 
 over and over his estimates of the year's crop which was 
 still lying in the field, — save the crop from less than two 
 thousand acres that was harvested and threshed. From 
 that he judged that there would be enough to redeem his 
 share of the farmers' mortgages, which in Hendricks' mind 
 could be nothing but rent for the land, and to pay his 
 share of the bank's fraudulent loans to the company — 
 and leave nothing more. 
 
 The fact that John expected to buy back the mortgages 
 from Eastern investors who had bought them, and then 
 squeeze the farmers out of their land by the option to buy 
 hidden in the contract, did not move Hendricks. He saw 
 his duty in the matter, but as the golden flood rose higher 
 in the bins, and as hour after hour rolled by bringing him 
 nearer and nearer to the time when Molly Culpepper 
 should marry Adrian Brownwell, a temptation came to 
 him, and he dallied with it as he sat figuring at his desk. 
 The bank was a husk. Its real resources had been sold, 
 and a lot of bogus notes — accommodation paper, they called 
 it — had taken the place of real assets. For Hendricks 
 o . 193 
 
194 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 to borrow money of any other institution as the oflScer of 
 the Exchange National Bank of Sycamore Ridge would 
 be a crime. And yet he knew that ten thousand dollars 
 would save her, and his brain was wrought with a mad- 
 ness. And so he sat figuring while the hours slipped by, 
 trying to discount his future income from the wheat to 
 justify himself in taking the money from the bank's vaults. 
 His figures did not encourage him. They showed him 
 that to be honest with the farmers he might hope for no 
 profit from that year's crop, and with two years of failure 
 behind him, he knew that to discount the next year's crop 
 would be nothing less than stealing. Then, strong and 
 compelling, came the temptation to let the farmers fight it 
 out with the Eastern investors. The temptation rocked the 
 foundations of his soul. He knew it was wrong ; he knew 
 he would be a thief, if he did it, no matter what the law 
 might say, no matter what the courts might adjudge. To 
 Barclay what was legal was right, and what the courts 
 had passed upon — that was legal. But Hendricks sat 
 with his pencil in his hand, going over and over his 
 figures, trying to silence his conscience. 
 
 It was a hot afternoon that he sat there, and idly 
 through his mind went the computation that he had but 
 sixty-six more hours of hope, and as he looked at the 
 clock he added, " and thirty-eight minutes and twenty- 
 seven seconds," when Martin Culpepper came ambling 
 into the back room of the bank. 
 
 " Robert," began the colonel, with his eyes on the floor 
 and his hands deep in his trousers pockets, " I've just 
 been talking to John." The colonel rubbed his neck 
 absent-mindedly and went on, " John's a Yankee, Robert 
 — the blue stripe on his belly is fast blue, sir; it won't 
 fade, change colour, or crock, in point of fact, not a damned 
 bit, sir, not till the devil cavers it with a griddle stripe, 
 sir, I may say." The colonel slouched into a chair and 
 looked into Hendricks' face with a troubled expression 
 and continued, " That John certainly is Yankee, Robert, 
 and he's too many for me. Yes, sir, certainly he's got me 
 up in the air, sir — up in the air, and as I may say a mile 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 195 
 
 west, on that wheat deal." Hendricks leaned forward 
 unconsciously, and the colonel dropped both hands to his 
 knees and leaned toward Hendricks. " Robert Hendricks," 
 asked the colonel, as he bored his deep black eyes into the 
 younger man, "did you know about that option in the 
 wheat land mortgage ? Answer me, sir ! " 
 
 "Not at the time. Colonel," returned Hendricks, and 
 began, " but I — " 
 
 " Well, neither did I. And I got half of those mort- 
 gages myself. Lige and I did it all, sir. And Lige 
 knew — Lige, he says it's legal, but I say it's just common 
 stealing." Hendricks moistened his lips and sat with 
 mute face gazing at the colonel. The colonel went on, 
 " And now the farmers have found it out, and the devil's 
 to pay, sir, with no pitch hot ! " 
 
 Hendricks cleared his throat and began, " Well, Colonel 
 — I don't know ; of course I — " 
 
 The elder man rose to his full height and glared, at the 
 younger, and cried, " Ah, Robert, Robert, fire in the moun- 
 tain, snakes in the grass — you do know — you do know, 
 sir. You know that to hold up the farmers of this county 
 in the midst of what amounted to a famine, not to let 
 them borrow a dollar in the county except on a gouging 
 mortgage, and then to slip into that mortgage a blind 
 option to sell for ten dollars an acre land that is worth 
 three times that, is stealing, and so does John Barclay 
 know that, and, worst of all, so does Martin Culpepper 
 know that, and the farmers are finding it out — my neigh- 
 bours and comrades that I helped to swindle, sir — to rob, 
 I may say — they know what it is." 
 
 The colonel's voice was rising, and he stood glaring and 
 puffing before the young man, shaking his head furiously. 
 Young Hendricks was engaged in swallowing his Adam's 
 apple and blinking unsteadily, and just as he started to 
 reply, the colonel, who had caught his temper by the horn 
 and was shaking it into submission, cried : " Yes, sir, 
 Robert, that's what I said, sir ; those were my very 
 words in point of fact. And," he began as he sat down 
 and sighed, " what galls me most of all, Robert, is that 
 
196 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 John laughs at me. Here you've been gagging and gulp- 
 ing and sputtering, boy, to keep down your conscience, 
 and so I know — yes, Robert, I'm dead sure, I may say, 
 that you're all right; but John giggles — giggles, sir, 
 snickers in point of fact, as though he had done some- 
 thing smart in getting me to go out among my old soldier 
 friends and rob 'em of their homesteads. He doesn't care 
 for my good name any more than for his own." 
 
 Hendricks drummed with his fingers on the desk before 
 him. His blue eyes looked into nothing, and his mind's 
 eye saw the house of cards he had been dallying with 
 totter and fall. He drew a deep breath before he looked 
 up at the colonel, and said rather sadly : " Well, Colonel, 
 you're right. I told John the day after I came home that 
 I wouldn't stand it." He drummed with his fingers for a 
 moment before continuing, " I suppose you got about 
 half of those contracts, didn't you ? " 
 
 The colonel pulled from his pocket a crumpled paper 
 and handed it to Hendricks, " Here they are, sir — and 
 every one from a soldier or a soldier's widow, every one a 
 homestead, sir." 
 
 Hendricks walked to the window, and stood looking out 
 with his eyes cast down. He fumbled his Masonic watch- 
 charm a moment, and then glancing at it, caught the colo- 
 nel's eye and smiled as he said : " I'm on the square. Colo- 
 nel, in this matter. I'll protect you." He went to the 
 elder man and put his hands on his shoulder as he said : 
 " You go to your comrades and tell them this, Colonel, 
 that between now and snowfall every man will have his 
 land clear. But," he added, picking up the list of the 
 colonel's contracts, " don't mention me in the matter." 
 He paused and continued, " It might hurt the bank. 
 Just tell them you'll see that it's taken care of." 
 
 The colonel put out his hand as he rose. When their 
 hands met he was saying: " Blood tells, Robert Hendricks, 
 blood tells. Wasn't your sainted father a Democrat, 
 boy, a Democrat like me, sir, — a Union Democrat in 
 point of fact ? " The colonel squeezed the younger man's 
 hand as he cried : " A Union Democrat, sir, who could shoot 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 197 
 
 at his party, sir, but never could bring Mmself to vote 
 against it — not once, sir — not once. And Robert Hen- 
 dricks, when I see you acting as you've acted just now, sir, 
 this very minute in point of fact, I may say, sir, that you're 
 almost honest enough to be a Democrat, sir — like your 
 sainted father." The colonel held the young man's hand 
 affectionately for a time and then dropped it, sighing, 
 " Ah, sir — if it wasn't for your damned Yankee free schools 
 and your damned Yankee surroundings, what a Democrat 
 you would have made, Robert — what a grand Democrat! " 
 The colonel waved his silver tobacco box proudly and 
 made for the door and left Hendricks sitting at his desk, 
 drumming on the board with one hand, and resting his 
 head in the other, looking longingly into the abyss from 
 which he had escaped; for the lure of the danger still 
 fluttered his soul. 
 
 Strength had come to him in that hour to resist the 
 temptation. But the temptation still was there. For he 
 was a young man, giving up for an intangible thing called 
 justice the dearest thing in his life. He had opened the 
 door of his life's despair and had walked in, as much like 
 a man as he could, but he kept looking back with a heavy 
 heart, hungering with his whole body and most of his soul 
 for all that he had renounced. And so, staring at the 
 light of other days, and across the shadow of what might 
 have been, he let ten long minutes tick past toward the 
 inevitable hour, and then he rose and put his hand to the 
 plough for the long furrow. 
 
 They are all off the stage now, as Bob Hendricks is 
 standing in the front door of the bank that August night 
 with his watch in his hand reckoning the minutes — some 
 four thousand three hundred of them — until Molly Cul- 
 pepper will pass from him forever, and as the stage is al- 
 most deserted, we may peep under the rear curtain for a 
 minute. Observe Sycamore Ridge in the eighties, with 
 Hendricks its moving spirit, controlling its politics, domi- 
 nating its business, — for John Barclay's business has moved 
 to the City and Bob Hendricks has become the material 
 embodiment of the town. And the town there on the 
 
198 ,- CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 canvas is a busy town of twenty thousand people. Just 
 back of that scene we find a convention spread on the can- 
 vas, a political convention wherein Robert Hendricks is 
 struggling for good government and clean politics. Ob- 
 serve him a taciturn, forceful man, with his hands on the 
 machinery of his party in the state, shaping its destinies, 
 directing its politics, seeking no office, keeping himself in 
 the background, desiring only to serve, and not to adver- 
 tise his power. So more and more power comes to him, 
 greater and wider opportunities to serve his state. His 
 business grows and multiplies, and he becomes a strong 
 man among men; always reserved, always cautious, a man 
 whose self -poise makes people take him for a cynic, though 
 his heart is full of hope and of the joy of life to the very 
 last. Let 'us lift up one more rag — one more painted rag 
 in the scenery of his life — and see him a reformer of na- 
 tional fame ; see him with an unflinching hand pull the 
 wires that control a great national policy of his party, and 
 watch in that scene wherein he names a president — even 
 against the power and the money and the organization of 
 rich men, brutally rich men like John Barclay. Hendricks' 
 thin hair is growing gray in this scene, and his skin is no 
 longer fresh and white ; but his eyes have a twinkle in them, 
 and the ardour of his soul glows in a glad countenance. 
 And as he sits alone in his room long after midnight while 
 the bands are roaring and the processions cheering and the 
 great city is ablaze with excitement, Robert Hendricks, 
 turning fifty, winds his watch — the same watch that he 
 holds in his hand here while we pause to peek under the 
 canvas behind the scenes — and wonders if Molly will 
 be glad that his side won. He has not seen her for months, 
 nor talked with her for years, and yet as he sits there wind- 
 ing his watch after his great strategic victory in national 
 politics, he hopes fondly that perhaps Molly wiU know 
 that he played a clean hand and won a fair game. 
 
 Now let us crawl out from under this rubbish of the 
 coming years, back into Sycamore Ridge. And while the 
 street is deserted, let us turn the film of events forward, 
 letting them flit by unnoticed past the wedding of Molly 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 199 
 
 Culpepper and Adrian Brownwell until we come to the 
 August day when the railroad came to Sycamore Ridge. 
 
 Jacob Dolan, sheriff in and for Garrison County for four 
 years, beginning with 1873, remembered the summer of 
 1875 to his dying day, as the year when he tore his blue 
 soldier coat, and for twenty-five years, after the fight in 
 which the coat was toi:n, Dolan never put it on for a 
 funeral or a state occasion, that he did not smooth out the 
 seam that Nellie Logan McHurdie made in mending the 
 rent place, and recall the exigencies of the public service 
 which made it necessary to tear one's clothes to keep the 
 peace. 
 
 " You may state to the court in your own way," said 
 the judge at the trial of the sheriff for assault, " just how 
 the difficulty began." 
 
 " Well, sir," answered Dolan, " there was a bit of a cele- 
 bration in town, on August 30, it being the day the rail- 
 road came in, and in honour of the occasion I put on my 
 regimentals, and along about — say eleven o'clock — as the 
 crowd began to thicken up around the bank corner, and in 
 front of the hardware store, I was walking along, kind of 
 shoving the way clear for the ladies to pass, when some 
 one behind me says, ' General Hendricks was an old thief, 
 and his son is no better,' and I turned around and clapt 
 my eye on this gentleman here. I'd never seen him before 
 in my whole life, but I knew by the bold free gay way he 
 had with his tongue that he was from Minneola and bent 
 on trouble. ' Keep still,' says I, calm and dignified like, 
 bent on preserving the peace, as was my duty. ' I'll not,' 
 says he. 'You will,' says I. ''Tis a free country,' says 
 he, coming toward me with one shoulder wiggling. ' But 
 not for cowards who malign the dead,' says I. 'Well, 
 they were thieves,' says he, shaking his fist and getting 
 more and more into contempt of court every minute, 
 'You're a liar,' says I, maintaining the dignity of my 
 office. ' And you're a thief too,' says he. 'A what? ' says 
 I. ' A thief,' says he. ' Whack,' says I, with my stick 
 across his head, upholding the dignity of the court. 
 ' Biff,' says he, with a brick that was handy, more and more 
 
200 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 contemptuous. ' You dirty, mangy cur,' says I, grabbing 
 him by the ears and pounding his head against the wall as 
 I spoke, hoping to get some idea of the dignity of the court 
 into his rebellious head. ' Whoop,' says he, and, as he 
 tore my coat, ' Yip yip,' says I, and may it please the court 
 it was shortly thereafter that the I'eal trouble started, 
 though I misremember just how at this time." And as 
 there were three " E " Company men on the jury, they 
 acquitted Dolan and advised the court to assess a fine on 
 the prosecuting witness for contributory negligence in re- 
 sisting an officer. 
 
 But the coat — the blue coat with brass buttons, with 
 the straps of a lieutenant on the shoulders, was mended 
 and even in that same summer did active service many 
 times. For that was a busy summer for Sycamore Ridge, 
 and holidays came faster than the months. When the 
 supreme court decided the Minneola suit to enjoin the 
 building of the court-house, in favour of Sycamore Ridge, 
 there was another holiday, and men drew John Barclay 
 around in the new hack with the top down, and there were 
 fireworks in the evening. For it was John Barclay's law- 
 su-'t. Lige Bemis, who was county attorney, did not try 
 to claim credit for the work, and when the last acre of the 
 great wheat crop of the Golden Belt Wheat Company was 
 cut, and threshed, there was a big celebration and the 
 elevator of the Golden Belt Wheat Company was formally 
 turned over to the company, and John Barclay was the 
 hero of another happy occasion. For the elevator, stand- 
 ing on a switch by the railroad track, was his " proposition." 
 And every one in town knew that the railroad company 
 had made a rate of wheat to Barclay and his associates, so 
 low that Minneola could not compete, even if she hauled 
 her wheat to another station on the road, so Minneola 
 teams lined up at Barclay's elevator. That autumn Min- 
 neola, without a railroad, without a chance for the county- 
 seat, and without a grain market, began to fag, and during 
 the last o£ September, the Mason House came moving out 
 ever the hill road, from Minneola to Sycamore Ridge, sur- 
 rounded by a great crowd of enthusiastic men from tha 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 201 
 
 Ridge. Every evening, of the two weeks in which the 
 house was moving, people drove out from Sycamore Ridge 
 to see it, and Lycurgus Mason, sitting on the back step 
 smoking, — he could not get into the habit of using the 
 front steps even in his day of triumph, — was a person of 
 considerable importance. 
 
 Money was plentiful, and the Exchange National Bank 
 grew with the country. The procession of covered wag- 
 ons, that had straggled and failed the year before, began 
 to close ranks in the spring ; and in place of " Buck " 
 and " Ball " and " Star," and « Bright " and " Tom " and 
 " Jerry," who used to groan under the yoke, horses were 
 hitched to the wagons, and stock followed after them, and 
 thus Garrison County was settled, and Sycamore Ridge 
 grew from three to five thousand people in three years. 
 In the spring of '75 the Banner began to publish a daily 
 edition, and Editor Brownwell went up and down the 
 railroad on his pass, attending conventions and making 
 himself a familiar figure in the state. Times were so 
 prosperous that the people lost interest in the crime of '73, 
 and General Ward had to stay in his law-office, but he 
 joined the teetotalers and helped to organize the Good 
 Templars and the state temperance society. Colonel Cul- 
 pepper in his prosperity took to fancy vests, cut extremely 
 low, and the Culpepper women became the nucleus of 
 organized polite society in the Ridge. 
 
 The money that John Barclay made in that first wheat 
 transaction was the foundation of his fortune. For that 
 money gave him two important things needed in mak- 
 ing money -— confidence in himself, and prestige. He 
 was twenty-five years old then, and he had demonstrated 
 to his community thoroughly that he had courage, that 
 he was crafty, and that he went to his end and got 
 results, without stopping for overnice scruples of honour. 
 Sycamore Ridge and Garrison County, excepting a few 
 men like General Ward, who were known as cranks, re- 
 garded John as the smartest man in the county — smarter 
 even than Lige Bemis. And the whole community, in- 
 cluding some of the injured farmers themselves, considered 
 
202 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Hendricks a sissy for his scruples, and thought Barclay a 
 shrewd financier for claiming all that he could get. Bar- 
 clay got hold of eight thousand acres of wheat land, in 
 adjacent tracts, and went ahead with his business. In 
 August he ploughed the ground for another crop. Also he 
 persuaded his mother to let him build a new home on the 
 site of the Barclay home by the Sycamore tree under the 
 ridge, and when it was done that winter Mr. and Mrs. John 
 Barclay moved out of their rooms at the Thayer House and 
 lived with John's mother. The house they built cost ten 
 thousand dollars when it was finished, and it may still be 
 seen as part of the great rambling structure that he built in 
 the nineties. John put five hundred dollars' worth of books 
 into the new house — sets of books, which strangely enough 
 he forced himself to wade through laboriously, and thus he 
 cultivated a habit of reading that always remained with 
 him. In those days the books with cracked backs in his 
 library were Emerson, Browning, and Tennyson. And 
 after a hard day's work he would come home to his poets 
 and his piano. He thought out the whole plan of the 
 Barclay Economy Car Door Strip about midnight, sitting 
 in his night clothes at the piano after reading "Abt Vog- 
 ler," and the central idea for the address on the " Practi- 
 cal Transcendentalist," which he delivered at the opening 
 of the state university the next year, came to him one 
 winter night after he had tried to compose a clanging 
 march as an air to fit Emerson's " The Sphinx." After 
 almost a quarter of a century that address became the 
 first chapter of Barclay's famous book, which created such 
 ribaldry in the newspapers, entitled " The Obligations of 
 Wealth." 
 
 It was in 1879 that Barclay patented his Economy Door 
 Strip, and put it in his grain cars. It saved loss of grain 
 in shipping, and Barclay, being on terms of business inti- 
 macy with the railroad men, sold the Economy Strip to 
 the railroads to use on every car of grain or flour he 
 shipped. And Lycurgus Mason, taken from the kitchen 
 of the Mason House, hired a room over McHurdie's har- 
 ness shop, and made the strips there. His first day in 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 203 
 
 his new shop is impressed upon his memory by an incident 
 that is the seed of a considerable part of this story. 
 
 He always remembers that day, because, when he got to 
 the Thayer House, he found John there in the buggy 
 waiting for him, and a crowd of men sitting around smok- 
 ing cigars. In the seat by Barclay was a cigar-box, and 
 Lycurgus cut in, before John could speak, with, "Well, 
 which is it?" 
 
 And John returned, " A girl — get in ; Mother Mason 
 needs you." 
 
 Lycurgus fumbled under the box lid for a cigar as he 
 got into the buggy, and repeated : " Mother needs me, eh? 
 Well, now, ain't that just like a woman, taking a man from 
 his work in the middle of the day ? What are you going 
 to name her ? " 
 
 " How do you like Jeanette ? " asked Barclay, as he 
 turned the horse. " You know we can't have two Janes," 
 he explained. 
 
 " Well," asked the elder man, tentatively, " how does 
 mother stand on Jeanette ? " 
 
 "Mother Mason," answered Barclay, "is against it." 
 
 "All right," replied Lycurgus, "I vote aye. What 
 does she want ? " he asked. 
 
 "Susan B.," returned Barclay. 
 
 "Susan B. Anthony?" queried the new grandfather. 
 
 " Exactly," replied the new father. 
 
 The two rode down the street in silence ; as they turned 
 into the Barclay driveway Lycurgus chuckled, "Well — 
 well — Susan B. Wants to put breeches on that child 
 before she gets her eyes open." Then he turned on Bar- 
 clay with a broad grin of fellowship, as he pinched the 
 young man's leg and laughed, "Say — John — honest, 
 ain't that just like a woman?" 
 
 And so Jeanette Thatcher Barclay came into this world, 
 and what with her Grandmother Barclay uncovering her 
 to look at the Thatcher nose, and her Grandmother Mason 
 taking her to the attic so that she could go upstairs be- 
 fore she went down, that she might never come down in 
 the world, and what with her Grandfather Mason rubbing 
 
204 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 her almost raw with his fuzzy beard before the women 
 could scream at him, and what with her father trying to 
 jostle her on his knee, and what with all the different 
 things Mrs. Ward, the mother of six, would have done to 
 her, and all the things Mrs. Culpepper, mother of three, 
 would have done to her, and Mrs. McHurdie, mother of 
 none, prevented the others from doing, Jeanette had rather 
 an exciting birthday. And Jeanette Barclay as a young 
 woman often looks at the scrap-book with its crinkly 
 leaves and reads this item from the Daily Banner : " The 
 angels visited our prosperous city again last Thursday, 
 June 12, and left a little one named Jeanette at the home of 
 our honoured townsman, John Barclay. Mother and child 
 progressing nicely." But under this item is a long poem 
 clipped from a paper printed a week later, — Jeanette has 
 counted the stanzas many times and knows there are sev- 
 enteen, and each one ends with " when the angels brought 
 Jeanette." Her father used to read the verses to her to 
 tease her when she was in her teens, and once when she 
 was in her twenties, and Jeanette had the lonely poet out 
 to dinner one Sunday, she sat with him on the sofa in the 
 library, looking at the old scrap-book. Their eyes fell 
 upon the verses about the angels bringing Jeanette, and 
 the girl noticed the old man mumming it over and smiling. 
 
 " Tell me, Uncle Watts," she asked, " why did you 
 make such a long poem about such a short girl ? " 
 
 The poet ran his fingers through his rough gray beard, 
 and went on droning off the lines, and grinning as he read. 
 When he had finished, he took her pretty hand in his gnarly, 
 bony one and patted the white firm flesh tenderly as he 
 peered back through the years. " U-h-m, that was years 
 and years ago, Jeanette — years and years ago, and Nellie 
 had just bought me my rhyming dictionary. It was the 
 first time I had a chance to use it." The lyrical artist 
 drummed with his fingers on the mahogany arm of the 
 sofa. " My goodness, child — what a long column there 
 was of words rhyming with 'ette. ' " He laughed to him- 
 self as he mused : "You know, my dear, I had to let ' brevet ' 
 and ' fret ' and ' roulette ' go, because I couldn't think of 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 205 
 
 anything to say about them. You don't know how that 
 worries a poet." He looked- at the verses in the book be- 
 fore him and then shook his head sadly: "I was young 
 then — it seems strange to think I could write that. 
 Youth, youth,'' he sighed as he patted the fresh young 
 hand beside him, "it is not by chance you rhyme with 
 truth." 
 
 His eyes glistened, and the girl put her cheek against 
 his and squeezed the thin, trembling hand as she cried, 
 " Oh, Uncle Watts, Uncle Watts, you're a dear — a regu- 
 lar dear! " 
 
 " In his latter days," writes Colonel Culpepper, in the 
 second edition of the Biography, " those subterranean 
 fires of life that flowed so fervently in his youth and man- 
 hood smouldered, and he did not write often. But on oc- 
 casion the flames would rise and burn for a moment with 
 their old-time ardour. The poem 'After Glow' was 
 penned one night just following a visit with a young 
 woman, Jeanette, only daughter of Honourable and Mrs. 
 John Barclay, whose birth is celebrated elsewhere in this 
 volume under the title ' When the Angels brought 
 Jeanette.' The day after the poem 'After Glow' was 
 composed I was sitting in the harness shop with the poet 
 when the conversation turned upon the compensations of 
 age. I said : ' Sir, do you not think that one of our com- 
 pensations is that found in the freedom and the rare in- 
 timacy with which we are treated' by the ^oung women? 
 They no longer seem to fear us. Is it not sweet ? ' I 
 asked. Our hero turned from his bench with a smile and 
 a deprecating gesture as he replied softly, ' Ah, Colonel — 
 that's just it; that's just the trouble.' And then he took 
 from a box near by this poem, ' The After Glow,' and read 
 it to me. And I knew the meaning of the line — 
 
 " ' Oh, drowsy blood that tosses in its sleep.' 
 
 " And so we fell to talking of other days. And until the 
 twilight came we sat together, dreaming of faded moons." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Colonel Martin Culpepper was standing with one 
 foot on the window ledge in the office of Philemon R. 
 Ward one bright spring morning watching the procession 
 of humanity file into the post-office and out into the street 
 upon the regular business of life. Mrs. Watts McHurdie, 
 a bride of five years and obviously proud of it, hurried by, 
 and Mrs. John Barclay drove down the street in her 
 phaeton; Oscar Fernald, with a pencil behind his ear, 
 came out of his office licking an envelope and loped into 
 the post-office and out like a dog looking for his bone; and 
 then a lank figure sauntered down the street, stopping here 
 and there to talk with a passerby, stepping into a stairway 
 to light a cigar, and betimes leaning languidly against 
 an awning post in the sun and overhauling farmers passing 
 down Main Street in their wagons. 
 
 " He's certainly a gallus-looking slink," ejaculated the 
 colonel. 
 
 The general, writing at his desk, asked, " Who ? " 
 
 " Our old friend and comrade in arms, Lige Bemis." 
 At the blank look on the general's face the colonel shook 
 his head wearily. " Don't know what a gallus-looking 
 slink is, do you ? General, the more I live with you damn 
 Yankees and fight for your flag and die for your country, 
 sir, the more astonished I am at your limited and provincial 
 knowledge of the United States language. Here you are, 
 a Harvard graduate, with the Harvard pickle dripping off 
 your ears, confessing such ignorance of your mother-tongue. 
 General, a gallus-looking slink is four hoss thieves, three 
 revenue officers, a tin pedler, and a sheep-killing dog, all 
 rolled into one man. And as I before remarked, our be- 
 loved comrade, Lige Bemis, is certainly a gallus-looking 
 slink." 
 
 206 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 207 
 
 " Far be it from me," continued the colonel, " residing 
 as I may say in a rather open and somewhat exposed domi- 
 cile — a glass house in fact — to throw stones at Elijah 
 Westlake Bemis, — far be it." The colonel patted himself 
 heroically on the stomach and laughed. " Doubtless, while 
 I haven't been a professional horse thief, nor a cattle rustler, 
 still, probably, if the truth was known, I've done a number 
 of things equally distasteful — I was going to say obnox- 
 ious — in the sight of Mr. Bemis, so we'll let that pass." 
 The colonel stretched his suspenders out and let them flap 
 against the plaits of his immaculate shirt. " But I will 
 say, General, that as I see it, it wiU. be a heap handier for 
 me to explain to St. Peter at the gate the things I've done 
 than if he'd ask me about Lige's record." 
 
 The general scratched along, without answering, and 
 the colonel looked meditatively into the street ; then he 
 began to smile, and the smile glowed into a beam that be- 
 spread his countenance and sank into a mood that set his 
 vest to shaking " like a bowl full of jelly." " I was just 
 thinking," he said to nobody in particular, " that if Lige 
 was jumped out of his grave right quick by Gabriel and 
 hauled up before St. Peter and asked to justify my record, 
 he'd have some trouble too — considerable difficulty, I may 
 say. I reckon it's all a matter of having to live with your 
 sins till you get a good excuse thought up." 
 
 The general pushed aside his work impatiently and tilted 
 back in his chair. " Come, Martin Culpepper, come, come 1 
 That won't do. You know better than that. What's the 
 use of your pretending to be as bad as Lige Bemis? You 
 know better and I know better and the whole town knows 
 better. He's little, and he's mean, and snooping, and 
 crooked as a dog's hind leg. Why, he was in here yester- 
 day — actually in here to see me. Yes, sir — what do you 
 think of that ? Wants to be state senator." 
 
 " So I hear," smiled the colonel. 
 
 " Well," continued the general, " he came in here yes- 
 terday as pious as a deacon, and he said that his friends 
 were insisting on his running because his enemies were 
 bringing up that ' old trouble ' on him. He calls his horse 
 
208 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 stealing and cattle rustling ' that old trouble.' Honestly; 
 Martin, you'd think he was being persecuted. It was all 
 I could do to keep from sympathizing with him. He said 
 he couldn't afford to retreat under fire, and then he told 
 me how he had been trying to be a better man, and win 
 the respect of the people — and I couldn't stand it any 
 longer, and I rose up and shook my fist in his face and 
 said : ' Lige Bemis, you disreputable, horse-stealing cow 
 thief, what right have you to ask my help ? What right 
 have you got to run for state senator, anyway? ' And, 
 Martin, the brazen whelp reared back and looked me 
 squarely in the eye and answered without blinking, ' Be- 
 cause, Phil Ward, I want the job.' What do you think of 
 that for brass ? " 
 
 The colonel slapped his campaign hat on his leg and 
 laughed. There was always, even to the last, something 
 feminine in Martin Culpepper's face when he laughed — a. 
 kind of alternating personality of the other sex seemed to- 
 tiptoe up to his consciousness and peek out of his kind eyes. 
 As he laughed with Ward the colonel spoke : " Criminy,, 
 but that's like him. He's over there talking to Gabe Car- 
 nine on the corner now. I know what he's saying. He 
 has only one speech, and he gets it off to all of us. He's 
 got his cigar chawed down to a rag, stuck in one corner of 
 his mouth, and he's saying, ' Gabe — this is the fight of my 
 life. This is the last time I'm going to ask my friends for 
 help.' General, I've heard that now, off and on,firstand last, 
 from old Lige at every city, state, county, and lodge elec- 
 tion since the war closed, and I can see how Gabe is twist- 
 ing and wiggling trying to get away from it. He's heard. 
 it too. Now Lige is saying: 'Gabe, I ain't going to lie 
 to you ; you know me, and you know I've made mistakes 
 — but they were errors of judgment, and I want to get 
 a chance to live 'em down. I want to show the young 
 men of this state that Lige Bemis of the Red Legs is a. 
 man — even if he was wild as a young fellow; it'll prove 
 that a man can rise.' Poor old Gabe — Lige has got him 
 by the coat front, now. That's the third degree. When 
 he gets him by the neck and begins to whisper^ he's giving"; 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 209 
 
 him the work in the uniform rank. He's saying: ' Gabe, 
 I've got to have you with me. I can't win without you, 
 and I would rather lose than win with you against me. 
 You stand for all that's upright in this county, and if 
 you'll come to my aid, I can win.' Here, General — look 
 — Lige's got him by the neck and the hand. Now for 
 the password right from the grand lodge, ' Gabe, you'd 
 make a fine state treasurer — I can land it for you. 
 Make me state senator, and with my state acquaintance, 
 added to the prestige of this office, I can make a deal that 
 will land you.' Oh, I know his whole speech," laughed 
 the colonel. " Bob Hendricks is to be secretary of state, 
 John Barclay is to be governor, Oscar Fernald is to be state 
 auditor, and the boys say that Lycurgus Mason has the re- 
 fusal of warden of the Penitentiary." The colonel chuckled 
 as he added : " So far as the boys have been able to learn, 
 X Lige still has United States senator, president, and five 
 places in the cabinet to go on, but Minneola township 
 returns ain't all in yet, and they may change the result. 
 By the way. General, what did you get ? " 
 
 The general flushed and replied, " Well, to be perfectly 
 honest with you. Mart — he did promise me to vote for 
 the dram-shop law." 
 
 And in the convention that summer Lige Bemis strode 
 with his ragged cigar sticking from the corner of his 
 mouth, with his black eyes blazing, and his shock of black 
 hair on end, begging, bulldozing, and buying delegates 
 to vote for him. He had the river wards behind him 
 to a man, and he had the upland townships where the 
 farmers needed a second name on their notes at the bank ; 
 and in the gentleman's ward — the silk-stocking ward — 
 he had Gabriel Carnine, chairman of the first ward dele- 
 gation, casting the solid vote of that ward for Bemis 
 ballot after ballot. And when Bemis got Minneola town- 
 ship for fifty dollars, — and everybody in the convention 
 knew it, — he was declared the nominee of the party with a 
 whoop. 
 
 But behind Bemis was the sinister figure of young John 
 Barclay working for his Elevator Company. He needed 
 
210 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Bemis in politics, and Bemis needed Barclay in business. 
 And there the alliance between Barclay and Bemis was 
 cemented, to last for a quarter of a century. Barclay and 
 Bemis went into the campaign together and asked the 
 people to rally to the support of the party that had put 
 down the rebellion, that had freed four million slaves, and 
 had put the names of Lincoln and of Grant and Garfield 
 as stars in the world's firmament of heroes. And the peo- 
 ple of Garrison County responded, and State Senator 
 Elijah Westlake Bemis did for Barclay in the legislature 
 the things that Barclay would have preferred not to do for 
 himself, and the Golden Belt Elevator Company throve and 
 waxed fat. And Lige Bemis, its attorney, put himself in 
 the way of becoming a " general counsel," with his name 
 on an opaque glass door. For as Barclay rose in the 
 world, he found the need of Bemis more and more pressing 
 every year. In politics the favours a man does for others 
 are his capital, and Barclay's deposit grew large. He was 
 forever helping some one. His standing with the powers 
 in the state was good. He was a local railroad attorney, 
 and knew the men who had passes to give, and who were 
 responsible for the direction which legislation took during 
 the session. Barclay saw that they put Bemis on the ju- 
 diciary committee, and by manipulating the judiciary com- 
 mittee he controlled a dozen votes through Bemis. He 
 changed a railroad assessment law, secured the passage 
 of a law permitting his Elevator Company to cheat the 
 farmers by falsely grading their wheat, and prevented the 
 passage of half a dozen laws restricting the powers of rail- 
 roads. So at the close of the legislative session his name 
 appeared under a wood-cut picture in the Commonwealth 
 newspaper, and in the article thereunto appended Barclay 
 was referred to as one of the " money kings of our young 
 state." That summer he turned his wheat into his eleva- 
 tor early and at a low price, and borrowed money on it, 
 and bought five new elevators and strained his credit to 
 the limit, and before the fall closed he had ten more, and 
 controlled the wheat in twenty counties. Strangers riding 
 through the state on the Corn Belt Railroad saw the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 211 
 
 words, " The Golden Belt Elevator Company " on eleva- 
 tors all along the line. But few people knew then that 
 the " Company " had become a partnership between John 
 Barclay of Sycamore Ridge and less than half a dozen 
 railroad men, with Barclay owning seventy-five per cent 
 of the partnership and with State Senator Bemis the attor- 
 ney for the company. 
 
 That year the railroad officials who were making money 
 out of the Golden Belt Elevator Company were obliging, 
 and Barclay made a contract with them to ship all grain 
 from the Golden Belt Company's elevators in cars equipped 
 with the Barclay Economy Rubber Strip, and he sold 
 these strips to the railroads for four dollars apiece and put 
 them on at the elevatcrs. He shipped ten thousand cars 
 that year, and Lycurgus Mason hired two men to help him 
 in the strip factory. And John Barclay, in addition to the 
 regular rebate, made forty thousand dollars that he did 
 not have to divide. The next year he leased three large 
 mills and took over a score of elevators and paid Lycurgus 
 twenty dollars a week, and Lycurgus deposited money in 
 the bank in his own name for the first time in his life. 
 
 As the century clanged noisily into its busy eighties, 
 Adrian P. Brown well creaked stiffly into his forties. 
 And while aU the world about him was growing rich, — or 
 thought it was, which is the same thing, — Brownwell 
 seemed to be struggling to keep barely even with the 
 score of life. The Banner of course ran as a daily, but it 
 was a miserable, half-starved little sheet, badly printed, 
 and edited, as the printers used to say, with a pitchfork. 
 It looked shiftless and dirty-faced long before Brownwell 
 began to look seedy. Editor Brownwell was forever 
 going on excursions — editorial excursions, land-buyers' 
 excursions, corn trains, fruit trains, trade trains, political 
 junkets, tours of inspection of new towns and new fields, 
 and for consideration he was forever writing grandiloquent 
 accounts of his adventures home to the Banner. But from 
 the very first he ostentatiously left Molly, his wife, at 
 home. " The place for a woman," said Brownwell to the 
 assembled company on the Barclay veranda one evening, 
 
212 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 when Jane had asked him why he did not take Molly to 
 the opening of the new hotel at Garden City, " the place 
 for woman is in the sacred precincts of home, ' far from 
 the madding crowd's ignoble throng.' The madame and 
 I," with a flourish of his cane, "came to that agreement 
 early, eh, my dear, eh ? " he asked, poking her master- 
 fully with his cane. And Molly Brownwell, wistful-eyed 
 and fading, smiled and assented, and the incident passed 
 as dozens of other incidents passed in the Ridge, which 
 made the women wish they had Adrian Brownwell, to 
 handle for just one day. But the angels in that department 
 of heaven where the marriages are made are exceedingly 
 careful not to give to that particular kind of women the 
 Adrian Brownwell kind of men, so the experiment which 
 every one on earth for thousands of years has longed to wit- 
 ness, still remains a theory, and Adrian Brownwell traipsed 
 up and down the earth, in his lavender gloves, his long coat 
 and mouse-coloured trousers, his high hat, with his twirling 
 cane, and the everlasting red carnation in his buttonhole. 
 His absence made it necessary for Molly Brownwell to 
 leave the sacred precincts of the home many and many 
 a Saturday afternoon, to go over the books at the Banner 
 office, make out bills, take them out, and collect the money 
 due upon them and pay off the printers who got out the 
 paper. But Adrian Brownwell ostentatiously ignored 
 such services and kept up the fiction about the sacred 
 precincts, and often wrote scorching editorials about the 
 " encroachment of women " and grew indignant editorially 
 at the growth of sentiment for woman's suffrage. On one 
 occasion he left on the copy-hook a fervid appeal for 
 women to repulse the commercialism which " was sullying 
 the fair rose of womanhood," and taking "from woman 
 the rare perfume of her chiefest charm," and then he 
 went away on a ten days' journey, and the foreman of the 
 Banner had to ask Mrs. Brownwell to collect enough 
 money from the sheriff and a delinquent livery-stable 
 keeper to pay the freight charges on the paper stock 
 needed for that week's issue of the paper. 
 
 The town came to know these things, and so when 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 213 
 
 Brownwell, who, since his marriage, had taken up his abode 
 at the Culpeppers', hinted at his " extravagant family," the 
 town refused to take him seriously. And the strutting, 
 pompous little man, who referred grandly to " my wife," 
 and then to " the madame," and finally to " my landlady," 
 in a rather elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone 
 at his merriment along this line, and never knew that no 
 one cared for his humour. 
 
 So in his early forties Editor Brownwell dried up and 
 grew yellow and began to dye his mustaches and his eye- 
 brows, and to devote much time to considering his own 
 importance. "Throw it out," said Brownwell to the 
 foreman, " not a line of it shall go ! " He had just come 
 home from a trip and had happened to glance over the 
 proof of the article describing the laying of the corner- 
 stone of Ward University. 
 
 " But that's the only thing that happened in town this 
 week, and Mrs. Brownwell wrote it herself." 
 
 "Cut it out, I say," insisted Brownwell, and then 
 threw back his shoulders and marched to his desk, snap- 
 ping his eyes, and demonstrating to the printers that he 
 was a man of consequence. " I'll teach 'em," he roared. 
 "I'll teach 'em to make up their committees and leave 
 me out." 
 
 He raged about the office, and finally wrote the name 
 of Philemon R. Ward in large letters on the office black- 
 list hanging above his desk. This list contained the 
 names which under no circumstances were to appear in 
 the paper. But it was a flexible list. The next day 
 John Barclay, who desired to have his speech on the lay- 
 ing of the corner-stone printed in full, gave Brownwell 
 twenty dollars, and a most glowing account of the event 
 in question appeared in the Banner, and eloquence stag- 
 gered under the burden of praise which Brownwell's lan- 
 guage loaded upon the shoulders of General Ward. 
 
 It is now nearly a generation since that corner-stone 
 was laid. Boys and girls who then were children have 
 children in the university, and its alumni include a briga- 
 dier in the army, a poet, a preacher of national renown. 
 
214 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 two college presidents, an authority upon the dynamics 
 of living matter, and two men who died in the Ameri- 
 can mission at Foo Chow during the uprising in 1900. 
 When General Ward was running for President of the 
 United States on one of the various seceding branches of 
 the prohibition party, while Jeanette Barclay was a little 
 girl, he found the money for it; two maiden great-aunts 
 on his mother's side of the family had half a million dol- 
 lars to leave to something, and the general got it. They 
 willed it to him to hold in trust during his lifetime, but 
 the day after the check came for it, he had transferred 
 the money to a university fund, and had borrowed fifty 
 dollars of Bob Hendricks to clean up his grocery bills 
 and tide him over until his pension came. But he was a 
 practical old fox. He announced that he would give the 
 money to a college only if the town would give a similar 
 sum, and what with John Barclay's hundred-thousand-dol- 
 lar donation, and Bob Hendricks' ten thousand, and what 
 with the subscription paper carried around by Colonel 
 Culpepper, who proudly headed it with five thousand dol- 
 lars, and after the figure wrote in red ink " in real estate," 
 much to the town's merriment, and what with public meet- 
 ings and exhortations in the churches, and what with vot- 
 ing one hundred thousand dollars in bonds by Garrison 
 County for the privilege of sending students to the college 
 without tuition, the amount was raised; and as the proces- 
 sion wheeled out of Main Street to attend the ceremonies 
 incident to laying the corner-stone that beautiful October 
 day, it is doubtful which was the prouder man — Martin 
 Culpepper, the master of ceremonies, in his plumed hat, 
 flashing sword, and red sash, or General Philemon 
 Ward, who for the first time in a dozen years heard the 
 crowd cheer his name when the governor in his speech 
 pointed at the general's picture — his campaign picture 
 that had been hooted with derision and spattered with 
 filth on so many different occasions in the town. The 
 governor's remarks were of course perfunctory; he de- 
 voted five or ten minutes to the praise of General Ward, 
 of Sycamore Ridge, of John Barclay, and of education in 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 215 
 
 general, and then made his regular speech that he used 
 for college commencements, for addresses of welcome to 
 church conferences, synods, and assemblies, and for con- 
 claves of the grand lodge. General Ward spoke poorly, 
 which was to his credit, considering the occasion, and 
 Watts McHurdie's poem got entangled with Juno and 
 Hermes and Minerva and a number of scandalous heathen 
 gods, — who were no friends of Watts, — and the 
 crowd tired before he finished the second can to. But 
 many discriminating persons think that John Barclay's 
 address, "The Time of True Romance," was the best 
 thing he ever wrote. It may be found in his book as 
 Chapter XI. "The Goths," he said, "came out of the 
 woods, pulled the beards of the senators, destroyed the 
 Roman state, murdered and pillaged the Roman people, 
 and left the world the Gothic arch; the Vikings came 
 Stver the sea, roaring their sagas of rapine and slaughter ; 
 the conquerors came to Europe with spear and sword and 
 torch and left the outlines of the map, the boundaries of 
 states. Luther married his nun, and set Christendom to 
 fighting over it for a hundred years, but he left a free 
 conscience. Cromwell thrust his pikes into the noble 
 heads of England, snapped his fingers at law, and left 
 civil liberty. Organized murder reached its sublimity 
 in the war that Lincoln waged, and in that murdering 
 and pillage true romance came to mankind in its flower. 
 Murder for the moment in these piping times has become 
 impolite. But true romance is here. Our heroes rob 
 and plunder, and build cities, and swing gayly around 
 the curves of the railroads they have stolen, and swagger 
 through the cities they have levied upon the people to 
 build. Do we care to-day whether Charlemagne murdered 
 his enemies with a sword or an axe ; do we ask if King 
 Arthur used painless assassination or burned his foes at 
 the stake ? Who cares to know that Csesar was a rake, 
 and that William the Conqueror was a robber ? They 
 did their work and did it well, and are snugly sitting on 
 their monuments where no moralist can reach them. So 
 those searching for true romance to-day, who regard the 
 
216 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 decalogue as mere persiflage, and the moral code as a 
 thing of archaic interest, will get their day's work done 
 and strut into posterity in bronze and marble. They will 
 cheat and rob and oppress and grind the faces off the 
 poor, and do their work and follow their visions, and live 
 the romance in their hearts. To-morrow we will take their 
 work, disinfect it, and dedicate it to God's uses." 
 
 There was more of it — four thousand words more, to be 
 exact, and when General Ward went home that night he 
 prayed his Unitarian God to forgive John Barclay for his 
 blasphemy. And for years the general shuddered when 
 his memory brought back the picture of the little man, 
 with his hard tanned face, his glaring green eyes, his 
 brazen voice trumpeting the doctrine of materialism to the 
 people. 
 
 " John," said the general, the next day, as he sat in the 
 mill, going over the plans of the college buildings with 
 Barclay, who was chairman of the board of directors, 
 " John, why are you so crass, so gross a materialist ? You 
 have enough money — why don't you stop getting it and 
 do something with it worth while? " 
 
 " Because, General, I'm not making money — that's only 
 an incident of my day's work. I'm organizing the grain 
 industry of this country as it is organized in no other 
 country on this planet." Barclay rose as he spoke and 
 began limping the length of the room. It was his habit 
 to walk when he talked, and he knew the general had 
 come to catechize him. 
 
 " Yes, but then, John — what then ? " 
 
 " What then ? " repeated Barclay, with his hands in his 
 pockets and his eyes on the floor. " Coffee, maybe — 
 perhaps sugar, or tobacco. Or why not the whole food 
 supply of the people — let me have meat and sugar where 
 I will have flour and grain, and in ten years no man in 
 America can open his grocery store in the morning until 
 he has asked John Barclay for the key." He snapped his 
 eyes good-naturedly at the general, challenging the man's 
 approval. 
 
 The general smiled and replied : "No, John, you'll get 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 217 
 
 the social bug and go around in knee-breeches, riding a 
 horse after a scared fox, or keeping a lot of hussies on a 
 yacht. They all get that way sooner or later." 
 
 Barclay leaned over Ward, stuck out his hard jaw and 
 growled : " Well, I won't. I'm going to be a tourist- 
 sleeper millionnaire. I stick to Sycamore Ridge ; Jeanette 
 goes to the public schools ; Jane buys her clothes at Bob 
 Hendricks' or Dorman's, or at the most of Marshall Field 
 in Chicago ; I go fishing down at Minneola when I want 
 rest." Ward started to protest, but Barclay headed him 
 off. " I made a million last year. What did I do with 
 it? See any yachts on the Sycamore ? Observe any 
 understudies for Jane around the place ? Have you heard 
 of any villas for the Barclays in Newport ? No — no, you 
 haven't, but you may like to know that I have control of 
 a railroad that handles more wheat than any other hundred 
 miles in the world, and it is the key to the lake situa- 
 tion. And I've put the price of my Economy Door 
 Strip up to ten dollars, and they don't dare refuse it. 
 What's more, I'm going to hire a high-priced New York 
 sculptor to make a monument for old Henry Schnitzler, 
 who fell at Wilson's Creek, and put it in the cemetery. 
 But I am giving none of my hard-earned cash to cooks 
 and florists and chorus ladies. So if I want to steal a mill 
 or so every season, and gut a railroad, I'm going to do it, 
 but no one can rise up and say I am squandering my sub- 
 stance on riotous living." 
 
 Barclay shook his head as he spoke and gesticulated with 
 his hands, and the general, seeing that he could not get 
 the younger man to talk of serious things, brought out the 
 plans for the college buildings, and the men fell to the work 
 in hand with a will. 
 
 Barclay's spirit was the spirit of his times — growing 
 out of a condition which, as Barclay said in his speech, was 
 like Emersonian optimism set to Wagnerian music. In 
 Sycamore Ridge factories rose in the bottoms near the 
 creek, and shop hands appeared on the streets at night ; 
 new people invaded Lincoln Avenue, and the Culpeppers, 
 to maintain their social supremacy, had to hire a coloured 
 
218 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 man to open the door for an afternoon party, and for an 
 evening reception it took two, one for the door and one to 
 stand at the top of the stairs. 
 
 Those were the palmy, days of the colonel's life. 
 Money came easily, and went easily. The Culpepper 
 Mortgage Company employed fifty men, who handled 
 money all over the West, and one of the coloured men who 
 opened the door at the annual social affair at the Culpepper 
 home also took care of the horses, and drove the colonel 
 down to his office in the Barclay block every morning, and 
 drove him home in the evening. 
 
 "Well," said Watts McHurdie to Gabriel Carnine as 
 the two walked down the hill into the business section of 
 the town, a few days after the corner-stone of Ward Col- 
 lege was laid, " old Phil has got his college started and 
 Mart,^ got his fhurch a-going." 
 
 " You met, * y,3 East End Mission ? Yes, and I don't 
 know which ol 'em is happier over his work," replied 
 Carnine. 
 
 " Well, Mart certainly is proud ; he's been too busy 
 to loaf in the shop for six months," said McHurdie. 
 
 Carnine smiled, and stroked his chestnut beard reflec- 
 tively before he added : " Probably that's why he hasn't 
 been in to renew his last two notes. But I guess he does 
 a lot of good to the poor people over there along the river. 
 Though I shouldn't wonder if he \^as^encouraging them to 
 be paupers." Carnine paused a i.;„Lient and then added, 
 " Good old Mart — he's got a heart just like a woman's." 
 
 They were passing the court-house square, and Bailiff 
 Jacob Dolan, with a fist full of legal papers, caught step 
 with Carnine and McHurdie. " We were talking about 
 Mart,,Culpepper and his Mission Church," said Carnine. 
 " Don't you suppose, Jake, that Mart, by circulating down 
 there with his basket so much, encourages the people to be 
 shiftless ? We were just wondering." 
 
 " Oh, you were, were you ? " snapped Dolan. « There 
 you go, Gabe Carnine; since you've moved to town and 
 got to be president of a bank, you're mighty damn scared 
 about making paupers. When Christ told the young 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 219 
 
 man to sell his goods and give them to the poor, He 
 didn't tell him to be careful about making them paupers. 
 And Mr. Gabriel Oarnine, Esquire, having the aroma of 
 one large morning's drink on my breath emboldens me to 
 say, that if you rich men will do your part in giving, the 
 Lord will manage to keep His side of the traces from 
 scraping On the wheel. And if I had one more good nip, 
 I'd say, which Heaven forbid, that you fellows are ask- 
 ing more of the Lord by expecting Him to save your 
 shrivelled selfish little souls from hell-fire because of your 
 squeeze-penny charities, than you would be asking by ex- 
 pecting Him to keep the poor from becoming paupers by 
 the dribs you give them. And if Mart Culpepper can 
 give his time and his money every day helping them poor 
 devils down by the track, niggers and whites, good and bad, 
 male and female, I guess the Lord will p"''^. '^ 'li^k for lick 
 with Mart and see that his helping do' u hurt them." 
 Dolan shook his head at the banker, and then smiled at 
 him good-naturedly as he finished, " Put that in your 
 knapsack, you son of a gun, and chew on it till I see you 
 again." Whereupon he turned a corner and went his 
 way. 
 
 Carnine laughed rather unnaturally and said to Mc- 
 Hurdie, "That's why he's never got on like the other 
 boys. Whiskey's a bad partner." 
 
 McHurdie agree'^ md went chuckling to his work, 
 when Carnine turnea into the bank. Later in the fore- 
 noon Bailiff Dolan came in grinning, and took a seat by 
 the stove in McHurdie's shop and said as he reached into 
 the waste-basket for a scrap of harness leather, and began 
 whittling it, " What did Gabe say when I left you this 
 morning ? " and without waiting for a reply, we^^t on, 
 " I've thought for some time Gabe needed a little 'some- 
 thing for what ails him, and I gave it to him, out of the 
 goodness of my heart." 
 
 McHurdie looked at Dolan over his glasses and replied, 
 " Speech is silver, but silence is golden." 
 
 " The same," answered Dolan, " the same it is, and by 
 the same authority apples of gold in pictures of silver is a 
 
220 A CERTAIN RICH MAiN 
 
 word fitly spoken to a man like Gabe Carnine." Ha 
 whittled for a few minutes while the harness maker 
 worked, and then sticking his pocket-knife into the chair 
 between his legs, said: "But what I came in to tell you 
 was about Lige Bemis; did you know he's in town ? 
 Well, he is. Johnnie Barclay wired him to leave the 
 dump up in the City and come down here, and what for, do 
 you think ? 'Tis this. The council was going to change 
 the name of Ellen Avenue out by the college to Garfield, 
 and because it was named for that little girl of Mart's 
 that died right after the war, don't you think Johnnie's 
 out raising hell about it, and brought Lige down here to 
 beat the game. He'll be spending a lot of money if he 
 has to. Now you wouldn't think he'd do that for old 
 Mart, would you ? He's too many for me — that Johnny 
 boy is. I can't make him out." The Irishman played 
 with his knife, sticking it in the chair and pulling it out 
 for a while, and then continued : " Oh, yes, what I was 
 going to tell you was the little spat me and Lige had over 
 Johnnie. Lige was in my room in the court-house wait- 
 ing to see a man in the court, and was bragging to me 
 about how smart John was, and says Lige, 'He's found 
 some earth over in Missouri — yellow clay,' he says, 
 ' that's just as good as oatmeal, and he ships it all over 
 the country to his oatmeal mills and mixes it with the 
 real stuff and sells it.' I says: ' He does, does he ? Sells 
 mud mixed with oatmeal ? ' and Lige says, ' Yes, sir, he's 
 got a whole mountain of it, and he's getting ten dollars a 
 ton net for it, which is better than a gold mine.' ' And 
 you call that smart?' says I. 'Yes,' says he, 'yes, sir, 
 that's commercial instinct; it's perfectly clean mud, and 
 our chemist says it won't harm any one,' says he. ' And 
 him president of the Golden Belt Elevator Co. ? ' says I. 
 ' He is,' says Lige. ' And don't need the money at all ? ' 
 says I, 'Not a penny of it,' says he. 'Well,' says I, 
 'Lige Bemis,' says I, 'when Johnnie gets to heU, — and 
 he'U get there as sure as it doesn't freeze over,' says I, 
 'may the devil put him under that mountain of mud and 
 keep his railroad running night and day dumping more 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 221 
 
 mud on while he eats his way out as a penance,' says I. 
 And you orto heard 'em laugh." Dolan went on cutting 
 curly-cues from the leather, and McHurdie kept on sew- 
 ing at his bench. " It is a queer world — a queer world; 
 and that Johnnie Barclay is a queer duck. Bringing 
 Lige Bemis clear down here to help old Mart out of a 
 little trouble there ain't a dollar in; and then turning 
 around and feeding the American people a mountain of 
 mud. Giving the town a park with his mother's name 
 on it, and selling little tin strips for ten dollars apiece to 
 pay for it. He's a queer duck. I'll bet it will keep the 
 recording angel busy keeping books on Johnnie Barclay." 
 
 "Oh, well, Jake," replied McHurdie, after a silence, 
 " maybe the angels will just drop a tear and wipe much of 
 the evil off." ^ 
 
 "Maybe so. Watts McHurdie, maybe so," returned 
 Dolan, " but there won't be a dry eye in the house, as the 
 papers say, if they keep up with him." And after de- 
 livering himself of this, Dolan rose and yawned, and went 
 out of the shop singing an old tune which recited the fact 
 that he had "a job to do down in the boulevard." 
 
 Looking over the years that have passed since John Bar- 
 clay and Sycamore Ridge were coming out of raw adoles- 
 cence into maturity, one sees that there was a miracle of 
 change in them both, but where it was and just how it 
 came, one may not say. The town had no special advan- 
 tages. It might have been one of a thousand dreary brown 
 unpainted villages that dot the wind-swept plain to-day, 
 instead of the bright, prosperous, elm-shaded town that it 
 is. John Barclay in those days of his early thirties might 
 have become a penny-pinching dull-witted "prominent 
 citizen " of the Ridge, with no wider sphere of influence 
 than the Sycamore Valley, or at most the Corn Belt Rail- 
 road. But he and the town grew, and whether it was des- 
 tiny that guided them, or whether they made their own 
 destiny, one cannot say. The town seemed to be strug- 
 gling and fighting its way to supremacy in the Sycamore 
 Valley ; and the colonel and the general and Watts McHur- 
 die, sitting in the harness shop a score of years after those 
 
222 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 days of the seventies, used to try to remember some epi- 
 sode or event that would tell them how John fought his 
 way up. But they could not do so. It was a fight in his 
 soul. Every time his hand reached out to steal a mill or 
 crush an opponent with the weapon of his secret railroad 
 rebates, something caught his hand and held it for a mo- 
 ment, and he had to fight his way free. At first he had 
 to learn to hate the man he was about to ruin, and to pre- 
 tend that he thought the man was about to ruin him. 
 Then he could justify himself in his greedy game. But 
 at last he worked almost merrily. He came to enjoy the 
 combat for its own sake. And sometimes he would play 
 with a victim cat-wise, and after a victory in which the 
 mouse fought well, John would lick his chops with some 
 satisfaction at his business prowess. Mill after mill along 
 the valley and through the West came under his control. 
 And his skin grew leathery, and the brass lustre in his 
 eyes grew hard and metallic. When he knew that he was 
 the richest man in Garrison County, he saw that there 
 were richer men in the state, and in after years when he 
 was the richest man in the state, and in the Missouri Val- 
 ley, the rich men in other states moved him by their 
 wealth to work harder. But before he was thirty, his 
 laugh had become a cackle, and Colonel Martin Culpep- 
 per, who would saunter along when Barclay would limp by 
 on Main Street, would call out after him, " Slow down, John- 
 nie, slow down, boy, or you'll bust a biler." And then 
 the colonel would pause and gaze benignly after the limp- 
 ing figure bobbing along in the next block, and if there 
 was a bystander to address, the colonel would say, " For 
 a fiat-wheel he does certainly make good time." And 
 then if the bystander looked worth the while, the colonel, 
 in saven cases out of ten, would pull out a subscription 
 paper for some new church building, or for some charitable 
 purpose, and proceed to solicit the needed funds. 
 
BOOK n 
 
Being No Chapter at All, but an Interlude fob 
 THE Orchestra 
 
 And so the years slipped by — monotonous years they 
 seem now, so far as this story goes. Because little hap- 
 pened worth the telling ; for growth is so still and so dull 
 and so undramatio that ii escapes interest and climax ; 
 yet it is all there is in life. For the roots of events in 
 the ground of the past are like the crowded moments of 
 our passing lives that are recorded only in our under-con- 
 sciousnesses, to rise in other years in character formed, in 
 traits established, in events fructified. And in the years 
 when the evil days came not, John Barclay's tragedy was 
 stirring in the soil of his soul. 
 
 And now, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the man- 
 agement, let us thank you for your kind attention, during 
 the tedious set which has closed. We have done our 
 best to pleast you with the puppets and have cracked 
 their heads together in fine fashion, and they have danced 
 and cried and crackled, while we pulled the strings as our 
 mummers mumbleoi.. But now they must have new clothes 
 on. Time, the great costumer, must change their make-up. 
 So we will fold down the curtain. John Barclay, a 
 Gentleman, must be painted yellow with gold. Philemon 
 Ward, a Patriot, must be sprinkled with gray. Martin 
 Culpepper's Large White Plumes must be towsled. Watts 
 McHurdie, a Poet, must be bent a little at the hips and 
 shoulders. Adrian Brownwell, a Gallant, must creak as 
 he struts. Neal Dow Ward, an Infant, must put on long 
 trousers. E. W. Bemis, a Lawyer, must be dignified; 
 Jacob Dolan, an Irishman and a Soldier, must grow un- 
 kempt and frowsy. Robert Hendricks, Fellow Fine, 
 must have his blond hair rubbed off at the temples, and 
 <j 225 
 
226 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 his face marked with maturity. Lycurgus Mason, a 
 Woman Tamer, must get used to wearing white shirts. 
 Gabriel Carnine, a Money Changer, must feel his impor- 
 tance; and Oscar Fernald, a Tavern Keeper, must be 
 hobbled by the years. All but the shades must be refur- 
 bished. General Hendricks and Elmer, his son, must fade 
 farther into the mists of the past, while Henry Schnitzler 
 settles comfortably down in storied urn and animated 
 bust. 
 
 There they hang together on the line, these basswood 
 folk, and beside them wave their womankind. These 
 also must be repaired and refitted throughout, as Oscar 
 Fernald's letter-heads used to say of the Thayer House. 
 Jane Barclay, Wife of John, must have the "star light, 
 star bright" wiped out of her eyes. Mary Barclay, 
 Mother of the Same, must have her limbs trimmed gaunt, 
 and her face chiselled strong and indomitable. Jeanette 
 Barclay, a Toddler, must grow into dresses. Molly Cul- 
 pepper, a Dear, must have her heart taken out, and her 
 face show the shock of the operation. Nellie Logan, a 
 poet's Wife, must join all the lodges in the Ridge to help 
 her husband in politics. Trixie Lee, little Beatrix Lee, 
 "^daughter of J. Lord and Lady Lee, must have her child- 
 ish face scarred and her eyes glazed. Mrs. Hally Bemis, 
 a Prodigal, must be swathed in silk. Elizabeth Cady 
 Stanton Ward and all her sisters must be put in the 
 simple garb of school-teachers. Miss Hendricks, a Mouse, 
 must hide in the dusky places ; and Ellen Culpepper, a 
 Memory, must come to life. 
 
 And so, ladies and gentlemen, while we have been 
 diverting you. Time has been at work on the little people 
 of the passing show, and now before we draw back the 
 curtain to let them caper across your hearts, let us again 
 thank you one and all for your courtesy in staying, and 
 hope that what you see and hear may make you wiser and 
 kinder and braver ; for this is a moral entertainment, good 
 people, planned to show you that yesterday makes to-day 
 and they both make to-morrow, and so the world spins 
 round the sun. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The rumble of the wheels in the great stone mill across 
 the Sycamore and the roar of the waters over the dam seem 
 to have been in Jeanette Barclay's ears from the day of 
 her birth; for she was but a baby when the stone mill rose 
 where the little red mill had stood, and beside the stone 
 mill there had grown up the long stone factory wherein 
 Lycurgus Mason was a man of consequence. As the trains 
 whirled by strangers could see the signs in mammoth 
 letters, " The Golden Belt Mills " on the larger building 
 and on the smaller, " The Barclay Economy Door Strip 
 Factory." Standing on the stone steps of her father's 
 house the child could read these signs clear across the mill- 
 pond, and from these signs she learned her letters. For 
 her father had more pride in that one mill on the Sycamore 
 than in the scores of other mills that he controlled. And 
 even in after years, when he controlled mills all over the 
 West, and owned railroads upon which to take his flour to 
 the sea, and ships in which to carry his flour all over the 
 world, the Golden Belt Mill at Sycamore Ridge was his 
 chief pride. The rumble of the wheels and the hoarse 
 voice of the dam that seemed to Jeanette like the call of 
 the sea, were so sweet to her father's ears that when he 
 wearied of the work of the National Provisions Company, 
 with its two floors of busy offices in the Corn Exchange 
 Building in the great city, he would come home to Syca- 
 more Ridge, and go to his private office in the mill. The 
 child remembers what seemed like endless days, but what 
 in truth were only a few hours in a few days in a few 
 years, when Daddy Barclay carried her on his shoulders 
 across the bridge and sat her down barefooted and bare- 
 headed to play upon the dam, while he in his old clothes 
 prodded among the great wheels near by or sat beside her 
 
 227 
 
228 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 telling her where he caught this fish or that fish or a turtle 
 or a water moccasin when he was a little boy. At low 
 water, she remembers that he sometimes let her wade in 
 the clear stream, while he sat in his office near by watching 
 her from the window. That was when she was only four 
 years old, and she always had the strangest memory of a 
 playfellow on the dam, a big girl, who fluttered in and out 
 of the shadows on the stones. Jeanette talked with her, 
 but no one else could see her, and once the big girl, who 
 could not talk herself, stamped her feet and beckoned 
 Jeanette to come away from a rock on which she was 
 playing, and her father, looking out of a window, turned 
 white when he saw a snake coiled beside the rock. But 
 Jeanette saw the snake and was frightened, and told her 
 father that Ellen saw it too, and she could not make him 
 understand who Ellen was. So he only trembled and 
 hugged his little girl to him tightly, and mother would 
 not let the child play on the dam again all that summer. 
 
 She made songs to fit the rhythmic murmur of the 
 wheels. And always she remembered the days she had 
 spent with Daddy Mason in the factory where the machines 
 thumped and creaked, and where the long rubber sheets 
 were cut and sewed, and the clanking rolls of tin and zinc 
 curled into strips, and Daddy Mason made her a little set 
 of dishes and all the things she needed in her playhouse 
 from the scraps of tin and rubber, and she learned to twist 
 the little tin strips on a stick and make the prettiest bright 
 shiny tin curls for her dolls that a little girl ever saw in all 
 the world. And once Ellen came from among the moving 
 shadows of the wheels and drew Jeanette from beneath a 
 great knife that fell at her feet, and when Daddy Mason 
 saw what had happened he fainted, poor man, and made 
 her promise never, never, so long as she lived, to tell 
 Grandma Mason. And then he drove her up town, and 
 they had some ice-cream, and she was sent to bed without 
 her lunch because she would not tell Grandma Mason why 
 grandpa bought ice-cream for her. 
 
 It was such a beautiful life, so natural and so exactly 
 what a little girl should have, that even though she went 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 229 
 
 to the ocean and crossed it as a child with her mother and 
 grandmother, and even though she went to the mountains 
 many times, her childish heart always was homesick for 
 the mill, and at night in her dreams her ears were filled 
 with the murmur of waters and the wordless song of cease- 
 less wheels. And once when she came back a big girl, — 
 an exceedingly big girl with braids down her back, a girl 
 in the third reader in fact, who could read everything in 
 the fourth reader, because she had already done so, and 
 who could read Eugene Aram in the back of the sixth, 
 only she never did find out what " gyves upon his wrists " 
 meant, — once when she came back to the dam and was 
 sitting there looking at the sunset reflected in the bubbling, 
 froth-flecked water at her feet, Ellen came suddenly, under 
 the noise of the roaring water, and frightened Jeanette so 
 that she screamed and jumped; and Ellen, who was much 
 older than Jeanette — four or five and maybe six years 
 older — ran right over the slippery, moss-covered ridge of 
 the dam, and was gone before Jeanette could call her back. 
 The child never saw her playmate again, though often 
 Jeanette would wonder where Ellen lived and who she 
 was. As the years went by, Jeanette came to remember 
 her playmate as her dream child, and once when she was 
 a young miss of eighteen, and something in her hurt to be 
 said, she tried to make a little poem about her dream-child 
 playmate, but all she ever got was: — 
 
 " O eyes, so brown and clear like water sparkling over 
 mossy stones." 
 
 So she gave it up and wrote a poem about a prince who 
 carried away a maiden, and then she tore up the prince 
 and the maiden, and if it were not for that line about the 
 eyes in the back of her trigonometry, with a long list of 
 words under it rhyming with "stones," she would have 
 forgotten about her playfellow, and much of the memory 
 of the dam and the pride she took as a child in the great 
 letters upon the high stone walls of the mills, and of the 
 word " Barclay " on the long low walls of the factory, 
 might have passed from her consciousness altogether. By 
 such frail links does memory bind us to our past ; and yet. 
 
230 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 once formed, how like steel they hold us I What we will 
 be, grows from what we are, and what we are has grown 
 from what we were. If Jeanette Barclay, the only child 
 of a man who, when she was in her twenties, was to be one 
 of the hundred richest men in his country, — so far as mere 
 money goes, — had been brought up with a governess and 
 a maid, and with frills and furbelows and tucks and 
 Heaven knows what of silly kinks and fluffy stuff in her 
 childish head, instead of being brought up in the Syca- 
 more Ridge public schools, with Grandmother Barclay 
 to teach her the things that a little girl in the fourth 
 reader should know, and with a whole community of 
 honest, hard-working men and women about her to teach 
 her what life really is, indeed she would have lived a dif- 
 ferent life, and when she was ready to marry — But there 
 we go looking in the back of the book again, and that 
 will not do at all; and besides, a little blue-eyed girl in 
 gingham aprons, sitting on a cool stone with moss on its 
 north side, watching the bass play among the rocks in a 
 clear, deep, sun-mottled pool under a great elm tree, has 
 a right to the illusions of her childhood and should not 
 be hustled into long dresses and love affairs until her 
 time has come. 
 
 But the recollection of those days, so vivid and so 
 sweet, is one of her choicest treasures. Of course things 
 were not as she saw them. Jake Dolan was only in his 
 forties then, and considered himself a young man. But 
 the child remembers him as a tall, brown-eyed man whom 
 she saw on state occasions in his faded blue army clothes, 
 and to her he has always been the picture of a veteran. 
 Some one must have told her — though she cannot remem- 
 ber who it was — that as Jake Dolan gently descended 
 the social and political scale, he sloughed off his worldly 
 goods, and as he moved about in the court-house from the 
 sheriff's office to the deputy's office, and from the deputy's 
 to the bailiff's, and from the bailiff's to the constable's, and 
 from the constable's to the janitor's room in the basement, 
 he carried with him the little bundle that contained all 
 his worldly goods, the thin blue uniform, spotless and trim, 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 231 
 
 and his lieutenant's commission, and mustering-out papers 
 from the army. It is odd, is it not, that this prosaic old 
 chap, who smoked a clay pipe, and whose only accomplish- 
 ment was the ability to sing " The Hat me Father Wore," 
 nnder three drinks, and the " Sword of Bunker Hill," 
 under ten, should have epitomized all that was heroic in 
 this child's memory. As for General Philemon Ward, — 
 a dear old crank who, when Jeanette was born, was vot- 
 ing with the Republican party for the first time since the 
 war, and who ran twice for President on some strange 
 issue before she was in long dresses, — General Ward, 
 whose children's ages could be guessed by the disturbers 
 of the public peace, whose names they bore, — Eli Thayer, 
 Mary Livermore, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Wil- 
 lard, Neal Dow, Belva Lockwood, and Helen Gougar, 
 — General Ward, who scorned her father's offer of ten 
 thousand dollars a year as state counsel for the National 
 Provisions Company, and went out preaching fiat money 
 and a subtreasury for the farmers' crops, trusting to 
 God and the flower garden about his little white house, 
 to keep the family alive — it is odd that Jeanette's 
 childish impression was that General Ward was a man of 
 consequence in the world. Perhaps his white necktie, his 
 long black coat, and his keen lean face, or his prematurely 
 gray hair, gave her some sort of a notion of his dignity, 
 but whatever gave her that notion she kept it, and though 
 in her later life there came a passing time when she hated 
 him, she did not despise him. And what with the song 
 that she heard the bands playing all over the country, the 
 song that the bands sometimes played for Americans in 
 Europe, very badly, as though it was being translated from 
 English into broken French or Italian, what with Watta 
 McHurdie's fame and with his verses that appeared in the 
 Banner on formal occasions, the girl built a fancy of him 
 as one of the world's great poets — some one like Shake- 
 speare or Milton ; and she was well into her teens before 
 she realized the truth, that he was an excellent harness 
 maker who often brought out of his quaint little dream 
 world odd-shaped fancies in rhyme, — some grotesque, 
 
232 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 some ridiculous, and some that seemed pretty for a 
 moment, — and wlio under the stress of a universal emo- 
 tion had rhymed one phase of our common nature and set 
 it to a simple tune that moved men deeply without regard 
 to race or station. So she lived in her child world—' 
 a world quite different from the real world — a world 
 gilded by the sunrise of consciousness ; and because the 
 angels loved her and kept her heart clean, the gilding 
 never quite wore off her heroes. And nothing that Heaven 
 gives us in this world is so blessed as to have the gilding 
 stick to the images of our youth. In Jeanette's case even 
 Lige Bemis — Judge Bemis, she had been taught to call 
 him — never showed the tar under the gilding to her eyes. 
 Her first memory of him was in her father's office in the 
 big City. He was a tall man, with gray hair that became 
 him well, with sharp black eyes, and enough flesh on his 
 bones to carry the frock-coats he always wore and give 
 him a corporosity just escaping the portly. She remem- 
 bers seeing the name " E. W. Bemis " in gold letters on the 
 door of his room, and not being able to figure out how a 
 man whose name began with " E " or " W " could be called 
 Lige. He was General Counsel of the Corn Belt Railroad 
 in those days, when her father was president of the road, 
 and she knew that he was a man always to be considered. 
 And when, as a woman grown, she learned the truth about 
 Lige Bemis, it was hard to believe, for all she could find 
 against him was his everlasting smile. 
 
 It is a curious and withal a beautiful thing to see a 
 child come into the worn and weary world that we grown- 
 ups have made, and make it over into another world alto- 
 gether. Perhaps the child's eye and the child's heart, 
 fresh from God, see and feel more clearly and more justly 
 than we do. For this much is sure — Jeanette was right 
 in keeping to the end the image of Colonel Martin Cul- 
 pepper as a knight-errant, who needed only a bespangled 
 steed, a little less avoirdupois, and a foolish cause to set 
 him battling in the tourney. As it was, in this humdrum 
 world, the colonel could do nothing more heroic than come 
 rattling down Main Street into the child's heart, sitting 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 233 
 
 with some dignity in his weather-beaten buggy, while in 
 stead of shining armour and a glistening helmet he wore 
 nankeen trousers, a linen coat, and a dignified panama hat. 
 Moreover, it is stencilled into her memory indelibly that 
 the colonel was the first man in this wide world to raise 
 his hat to her. 
 
 Now it should not be strange that this world was a sad 
 jumble of fiction and of facts to a child's eyes ; for to 
 many an older pair of eyes it has all seemed a puzzle. 
 Even the shrewd, kind brown eyes of Jacob Dolan often 
 failed to see things as they were, and what his eyes did 
 see sometimes bewildered him. By day Dolan saw Rob- 
 ert Hendricks, president of the Exchange National Bank, 
 president and manager of the Sycamore Ridge Light, 
 Heat, and Power Company, proprietor of the Hendricks 
 Mercantile Company, treasurer and first vice-president of 
 the new Western Wholesale Grocery, and chairman of 
 his party's congressional central committee, and Dolan's 
 eyes saw a hard, busy man — a young man, it is true; a 
 talli straight, rather lean, rope-haired young man in his 
 thirties, with frank blue eyes, that turned rather suddenly 
 upon one as if to frighten out a secret. The man seemed 
 real enough to Dolan, from the wide crown of his slightly 
 bald, V-shaped head, to his feet with the hard click in 
 the heels ; and yet that man paid no particular attention 
 to Dolan. It was "Hello, Jake," with a nod, as they 
 passed, maybe only an abstracted stare and a grunt. But 
 at night, as they walked together over the town under the 
 stars or moon, a lonely soul rose out of the tall body and 
 spread over the face. 
 
 Dolan kept to his pipe and Hendricks to his cigar. 
 But these were the only marks of caste between them. 
 One night Hendricks led the way across the bridge down 
 the river road and into the fields. They walked far up 
 the stream and their conversation had consisted largely of 
 "Watch out," "All right," "I see," "This is the best 
 way." They loitered down a dark lane shaded by hedge- 
 rows until they came to a little wooden bridge and sat 
 down. Dolan looked at the stars, while a pipe and a cigar 
 
234 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 had burned out before Hendricks spoke, "Well, chatteii- 
 box?" 
 
 " I was bothered with a question of mistaken identity," 
 replied Dolan. To the silence he answered : " Me myself. 
 I'm the man. Do you happen to know who I am?" 
 Hendricks broke a splinter from the wood under him, and 
 Dolan continued: "Of course you don't, and neither do I. 
 For example, I go down into Union township before elec- 
 tion and visit with the boys. I bring a box of cigars and 
 maybe a nip under the buggy seat, and maybe a few stray 
 five-dollar bills for the lads that drive the wagons that 
 haul the voters to the polls. I go home, and I says to 
 myself : ' I have that bailiwick to a man. No votes there 
 against Jake.' But the morning after election I see Jake 
 didn't get but two votes in the township. Very well. Now 
 who did they vote against ? Surely not against the genial 
 obliging rollicking Irish lad whose face I shave every 
 other morning. What could they possibly have against 
 him? No — they voted against that man Dolan, who got 
 drunk at the Fair and throwed the gate receipts into the 
 well, and tried to shoo the horses off the track into the 
 crowd at the home-stretch of the trotting race. He's 
 the man they plugged. And there's another one — him 
 that confesses to Father Van Sandt." Dolan shook his 
 head sadly and sighed. "He's a black-hearted wretch. 
 If you want to see how a soul will look in its underwear, 
 get an Irishman to confess to a Dutchman." The chirp 
 of crickets arose in the silence, and after a time Dolan con- 
 cluded, " And now there abideth these three, me that I 
 shave, me that they vote against, and me that the Father 
 knows; and the greatest of these is charity — I dunno." 
 
 The soul beside him on the bridge came back from a 
 lilac bower of other years, with a girl's lips glowing upon 
 his and the beat of a girl's heart throbbing against his 
 own. The soul was seared with images that must ntver 
 find spoken words, and it moved the lips to say after 
 exhaling a deep breath from its body, "Well, let's go 
 home." There, too, was a question of identity. Who was 
 Robert Hendricks? Was he the man chosen to lead his 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 235 
 
 party organization because he was clean above reproacb 
 and a man of ideals ; was he the man who was trusted 
 with the money of the people of his town and county im- 
 plicitly 5 or was he the man who knew that on page 234 
 of the cash ledger for 1879 in the county treasurer's office 
 in the Garrison County court-house there was a forgery 
 in his own handwriting to cover nine thousand dollars 
 of his father's debt? Or was he the man who for seven 
 years had crept into a neighbour's garden on a certain 
 night in April to smell the lilac blossoms and always had 
 found them gone, and had stood there rigid, with upturned 
 face and clenched fists, cursing a fellow-man ? Or was he 
 the man who in the county convention of his party had 
 risen pale with anger, and had walked across the floor 
 and roared his denunciation of Elijah W. Bemis as a 
 boodler and a scoundrel squarely to the man's gray, smirk- 
 ing face and chattering teeth, and then had reached down, 
 and grabbed the trapped bribe-giver by the scruff of the 
 neck and literally thrown him out of the convention, while 
 the crowd went mad with applause? As he went home 
 that night following the convention, walking by the side 
 of Dolan in silence, he wondered which of all his aliases 
 he really was. At the gate of the Hendricks home the 
 two men stopped. Hendricks smiled quizzically as he 
 asked : " WeU, I give it up, Jake. By the way, did you 
 ever meet me? " 
 
 The brown eyes of the Irishman beamed an instant 
 through the night, before he hurried lightly down the 
 street. 
 
 And so with all of this hide-and-seek of souls, now peer- 
 ing from behind eyes and now far away patting one — two 
 — three upon some distant base, with all these queer goings- 
 on inside of people here in this strange world, it is no 
 wonder that when the angels brought Jeanette to "Lhe Bar- 
 clays, they left her much to learn and many things to study 
 about. So she had to ask questions. But questions often 
 reveal more than answers. At least once they revealed 
 much, when she sat on the veranda of the Barclay home 
 a fine spring evening with all the company there. Aunt 
 
236 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Molly was there; and Uncle Bob Hendricks was there, 
 the special guest of Grandma Barclay. Uncle Adrian 
 was away on a trip somewhere ; but Uncle Colonel and 
 Grandma Culpepper and all the others were there listen- 
 ing to father's new German music-box, and no one should 
 blame a little girl, sitting shyly on the stone steps, trying 
 to make something out of the absurd world around her, if 
 she piped out when the talk stopped : — 
 
 " Mother, why does Aunt Molly cut off her lilac buds 
 before they bloom ? " 
 
 And when her mother assured her that Aunt Molly did 
 nothing of the kind, and when Uncle Bob Hendricks 
 looked up and saw Aimt Molly go pale under her powder, 
 and when Aunt Molly said, " Why, Jane — the child must 
 have dreamed that," no one in this wide world must blame 
 a little girl for opening her eyes as wide as she could, and 
 lifting her little voice as strongly as she could, and saying : 
 »v"W"hy, Aunt Molly, you know I saw you last night — 
 when I stayed with you. You know I did, 'cause I looked 
 out of the window and spokened to you. You know I 
 did — don't you remember?" And no one must blame 
 the mother for shaking her finger at Jeanette, and no one 
 must blame Jeanette for sitting there shaking a protesting 
 head, and screwing up her little face, trying to make the 
 puzzle out. 
 
 And when, later in the evening. Daddy Barclay went 
 over to the mill with his work, and Uncle Bob left in the 
 twilight, and Aunt Molly and mother were alone in 
 mother's room, how should a little girl know what the 
 crying was all about, and how should a little girl under- 
 stand when a small woman, looking in a mirror, and dab- 
 bing her face with a powder rag, said to mother, who 
 knows everything in the world, and all about the angels 
 that brought you here : " Oh, Jane, Jane, you don't know 
 — you don't understand. There are things that I couldn't 
 make you understand — and I mustn't even think of them." 
 
 Surely it is a curious world for little girls — a passing 
 curious world, when there are things in it that even 
 mothers cannot understand. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 23? 
 
 So Jeanette turned her face to the wall and went to 
 sleep, leaving Aunt Molly powdering her nose and ask- 
 ing mother, "Does it look all right now — " and adding, 
 " Oh, I'm such a fool." In so illogical a world, the reader 
 must not be allowed to think that Molly Brownwell 
 lamented the folly of mourning for a handsome young 
 gentleman in blue serge with white spats on his shoes and 
 a Byronic collar and a fluffy necktie of the period. Far 
 be it from her to lament that sentiment as folly ; however, 
 when she looked at her eyes in the mirror and saw her 
 nose, she felt that tears were expensive and reproached 
 herself for them. But so long as these souls of ours, 
 whatever they may be, are caged in our bodies, our poor 
 bodies wUl have to bear witness to their prisoners. If 
 the soul smiles the body shines, and if the soul frets the 
 body withers. And Molly Brownwell saw in the looking- 
 glass that night more surely than ever before that her face 
 was beginning to slump. Her cheeks were no longer firm, 
 and at her eyes were the stains of tears that would not 
 wipe off, but crinkled the skin at the temples and deepened 
 the shadows into wide salmon-coloured lines that fell away 
 from each side of the nose so that no trick could hide 
 them. Moreover, the bright eyes that used to flash into 
 Bob Hendricks' steady blue eyes had grown tired, and 
 women who did not know, wondered why such a pretty 
 girl had broken so. 
 
 The Culpeppers had remained with the Barclays for 
 dinner, and the hour was late for the Ridge — after nine 
 o'clock, and as the departing guests went down the long 
 curved walk of Barclay pride to the Barclay gate, they 
 saw a late April moon rising over the trees by the mill. 
 They clanged the tall iron gate behind them, and stood a 
 moment watching the moon. For the colonel never grew 
 too old to notice it. He put his arms about his wife and 
 his daughter tenderly, and said before they started up the 
 street, "It never grows old — does it?" And he pressed 
 his wife to him gently and repeated, "Does it, my dear— ■ 
 it's the same old moon ; the one we used to have in Vir« 
 ginia before the war, isn't it ? " 
 
238 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 His wife smiled at him placidly and said, " Now, pa — *■ 
 
 Whereupon the colonel squeezed his daughter lustily, 
 and exclaimed, " Well, Molly still loves me, anyway. 
 Don't you, Molly?" And the younger woman patted 
 his cheek, and then they started far home. 
 
 " Papa, how much money has John ? " asked the daughtec, 
 as they walked along. 
 
 A man always likes to be regarded as an authority in 
 financial matters, and the colonel stroked his goatee wisely 
 before replying : " U-h-m-m, let me see — I don't exactly 
 know. Bob and I were talking about it the other day — 
 after I bought John's share in College Heights — last 
 year, to be exact. Of course he's got the mill and it's all 
 paid for — say a hundred thousand dollars — and that old 
 wheat land he got back in the seventies — he's cleaned all 
 of that up. I should say that and the mill were easUy 
 worth half a million, and they're both clear. That's all 
 in sight." The colonel ruminated a moment and then 
 continued : " About the rest — it's a guess. Some say a 
 million, some say ten. All I know in point of fact, my 
 dear, to get right down to bed-rock, is that Lycurgus says 
 they are turning out two or three car-loads of the strips a 
 year. I wouldn't believe Lycurgus on a stack of Bibles 
 as high as his head, but little Thayer Ward, who works 
 down there in the shipping department, told the general 
 the same thing, and Bob says he knows John gets ten 
 dollars apiece for them now, so that's a million dollars a 
 year income he's got. He handles grain and flour way up 
 in Minnesota, and back as far as Ohio, and west to Cali- 
 fornia. But what he actually owns, — that is, whether he 
 rents the mills or, to be exact, steals them, — I haven't 
 any idea — not the slightest notion in the world, in point 
 of fact — not the slightest notion." 
 
 As they passed through Main Street it was deserted, 
 save in the billiard halls, and as no one seemed inclined to 
 talk, the colonel took up the subject of Barclay : " Say we 
 call it five million — five million in round numbers ; that's 
 a good deal of money for a man to have and haggle a 
 month over seventy-five dollars the way he did with me 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 239 
 
 when he sold me his share of College Heights. But," 
 added the colonel, " I suppose if I had that much I'd value 
 it more." The women were thinking of other things, and 
 the colonel addressed the night : " Man gets an appetite 
 for money just as he does for liquor — just like the love 
 for whiskey, I may say." He shook his sides as he medi- 
 tated aloud : " But as for me — I guess I've got so I can 
 take it or let it alone. Eh, ma ? " 
 
 " I didn't catch what you were saying, pa," answered 
 his wife. " I was just thinking whether we had potatoes 
 enough to make hash for breakfast ; have we, Molly ? " 
 
 As the women were discussing the breakfast, two men 
 came out of a cross street, and the colonel, who was slightly 
 in advance of his women, hailed the men with, " Hello 
 there. Bob — you and Jake out here carrying on your 
 illicit friendship in the dark ? " 
 
 The men and the Culpeppers stopped for a moment at 
 the corner. Molly Brownwell's heart throbbed as they 
 met, and she thought of the rising moon, and in an instant 
 her brain was afire with a hope that shamed her. Three 
 could not walk abreast on the narrow sidewalk up the 
 hill, and when she heard Hendricks say after the group 
 had parleyed a moment, " Well, Jake, good night ; I'll go 
 on home with the colonel," she managed the pairing off 
 so that the young man fell to her, and the colonel and 
 Mrs. Culpepper walked before the younger people, and 
 they all talked together. But at Lincoln Avenue, the 
 younger people disconnected themselves from the talk of 
 the elders, and finally lagged a few feet behind. When 
 they reached the gate the colonel called back, "Better 
 come in and visit a minute, Bob," and Molly added, " Yes, 
 Bob, it's early yet." 
 
 But what she said with her voice did not decide the 
 matter for him. It was her eyes. And what he said 
 with his voice is immaterial — it was what his eyes re- 
 plied that the woman caught. What he said was, '* Well, 
 just for a minute. Colonel," and the party walked up the 
 steps of the veranda, and Bob and Molly and the colonel 
 Bat down. 
 
240 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Mrs. Culpepper stood for a moment and then said, 
 " Well, Bob, you must excuse me — I forgot to set my 
 sponge, and there isn't a bit of bread in the house for 
 Sunday." Whereupon she left them, and when the colo- 
 nel had talked himself out he left them, and when the two 
 were alone there came an awkward silence. In the years 
 they had been apart a thousand things had stirred in their 
 hearts to say at this time, yet all their voices spoke was, 
 "Well, Molly?" and "Well, Bob?" The moon was in 
 their faces as it shone through the elm at the gate. The 
 man turned his chair so that he could look at her, and after 
 satisfying his eyes he broke the silence with, "Seven 
 years." 
 
 And she returned, "Seven years the thirteenth of 
 April." 
 
 The man played a tune with his fingers and a foot and 
 said nothing more. The woman finally spoke. " Did you 
 know it was the thirteenth ? " 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " father died the ninth. I have often 
 counted it up." He added shortly after: "It's a long 
 time — seven years I My I but it has been a long time I " 
 
 "I have wondered if you have thought so," a pause, 
 "tool" 
 
 Their hearts were beating too fast for thoughts to come 
 coherently. The fever of madness was upon them, and 
 numbed their wills so that they could not reach beneath 
 the surface of their consciousnesses to find words for their 
 emotions. Then also there was in each a deadening, flam- 
 ing sense of guilt. Shame is a dumb passion, and these 
 two, who in the fastnesses of a thousand nights had told 
 themselves that what they sought was good and holy, now 
 found in each other's actual presence a gripping at the 
 tongue's root that held them dumb. 
 
 "Yes, I — " the man mumbled, "yes, I — I fancied 
 you understood that well enough." 
 
 "But you have been busy? "she asked; "very busy. 
 Bob, and oh, I've been so proud of all that you've done." 
 It was the woman's tongue that first found a sincere word. 
 
 The man replied, " Well — I — I am glad you have." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 24x 
 
 It seemed to the woman a long time since her father 
 had gone. Her conscience was making minutes out of 
 seconds. She said, " Don't you think it's getting late ? " 
 but did not rise. 
 
 The man looked at his watch and answered, "Only 
 10.34." He started to rise, but she checked him breath- 
 lessly. 
 
 "Oh, Bob, Bob, sit down. This isn't enough for these 
 long years. I had so many things to say to you." She 
 hesitated and cried, " Why are we so stupid now - — now 
 when every second counts ? " 
 
 He bent slightly toward her and said in a low voice, 
 " So that's why your lilacs have never bloomed again." 
 
 She looked at her chair arm and asked, "Did you 
 know they hadn't bloomed ? " 
 
 " Oh, Molly, of course I knew," he answered, and then 
 went on : " Every thirteenth of April I have slipped 
 through the fence and come over here, rain or shine, at 
 night, to see if they were blooming. But I didn't know 
 why they never bloomed I " 
 
 The woman rose and walked a step toward the door, and 
 turned her head away. When she spoke it was after a sob, 
 " Bob, I couldn't bear it — I just couldn't bear it. Bob I " 
 
 He groaned and put his hands to his forehead and 
 rested his elbow on the chair arm. " Oh, Molly, Molly, 
 Molly," he sighed, "poor, poor little MoUy." After a 
 pause he said: "I won't ever bother you again. It 
 doesn't do any good." A silence followed in which the 
 woman turned her face to him, tear-stained and wretched, 
 with the seams of her heart all torn open and showing 
 through it. "It only hurts," the man continued, and 
 then he groaned aloud, " Oh, God, how it hurts ! " 
 
 She sank back into her chair and buried her face in the 
 arm farthest from him and her body shook, but she did 
 not speak. He stared at her dry-eyed for a minute, that 
 toUed by so slowly that he rose at the end of it, fearful 
 that his stay was indecorously long. 
 
 " I think I should go now," he said, as he passed her. 
 
 "Oh, no !" she cried. "Not yet, not just yet." She 
 
242 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 caught his arm and he stopped, as she stood beside him, 
 trembling, haggard, staring at him out of dead, mad eyes. 
 There was no colour in her blotched face, and in the moon- 
 light the red rims of her eyes looked leaden, and her voice 
 was unsteady. At times it broke in sobbing croaks, and 
 she spoke with loose jaws, as one in great terror. "I 
 want you to know — " she paused at the end of each little 
 hiccoughed phrase — "that I have not forgotten — " 
 she caught her breath — "that I think of you every 
 day — " she wiped her eyes with a limp handkerchief — 
 " every daj' and every night, and pray for you, though I 
 don't believe — " she whimpered as she shuddered — 
 " that God cares much about me." 
 
 He tried to stop her, and would have gone, but she put 
 a hand upon his shoulder and pleaded : " Just another 
 minute. Oh, Bob," she cried, and her voice broke again, 
 "don't forget me. Don't forget me. When I was so 
 sick last year — you remember," she pleaded, "I raved 
 in delirium a week." She stopped as if afraid to go on, 
 then began to shake as with a palsy. " I raved of every- 
 thing under God's sun, and through it all. Bob — not one 
 word of you. Oh, I knew that wouldn't do." She 
 swayed upon his arm. " I kept a little corner of my soul 
 safe to guard you." She sank back into her chair and 
 chattered, " Oh, I guarded you." 
 
 She was crying like a child. He stood over her and 
 touched her dishevelled hair with the tips of his fingers and 
 said : " I oughtn't to stay, Molly." 
 
 And she motioned him away with her face hidden and 
 sobbed, "No — I know it." 
 
 He paused a moment on the step before her and then 
 said, " Good-by, Molly — I'm going now." And she 
 heard him walking down the yard on the grass, so that his 
 footsteps would not arouse the house. It seemed to them 
 both that it was midnight, but time had moved slowly, 
 and when the spent, broken woman crept into the house, 
 and groped her way to her room, she did not make a light, 
 but slipped into bed without looking at her scarred, 
 shameful face. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 In the sunshine of that era of world-wide prosperity in 
 the eighties, John Barclay made much hay. He spent 
 little time in Sycamore Ridge, and his private car might 
 be found in Minnesota to-day and at the end of the week 
 in California. As president of the Corn Belt Road and as 
 controlling director in the North Lake Line, he got 
 rates on other railroads for his grain products that no com- 
 petitor could duplicate. And when a competitor began to 
 grow beyond the small fry class, Barclay either bought 
 him out or built a mill beside the offender and crushed 
 him out. Experts taught him the value of the chaff from 
 the grain. He had a dozen mills to which he shipped the 
 refuse from his flour and heaven only knows what else, 
 and turned the stuff into various pancake flours and break- 
 fast foods. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in 
 advertising — in a day when large appropriations for ad- 
 vertising were unusual. And the words " Barclay's Best" 
 glared at the traveller from Qrags in the Rocky Mountains 
 and from the piers of all the great harbour bridges. He 
 used Niagara to glorify the name of Barclay, and " Use 
 Barclay's Best" had to be washed off the statue of the 
 Goddess of Liberty in New York Harbour. The greenish 
 brown eyes of the little man were forever looking into, 
 space, and when he caught a dream, instead of letting 
 it go, he called a stenographer and made it come true. 
 In those days he was beginning to realize that an idea 
 plus a million dollars will become a fact if a man but 
 says the word, whereas the same idea minus a million 
 remains a dream. The great power of money was slowly 
 becoming part of the man's consciousness. During the 
 years that were to come, he came to think that there 
 was nothing impossible. Any wish he had might be 
 gratifi ?d. Such a consciousness drives men mad. 
 
 243 
 
244 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 But in those prosperous days, while the millions were 
 piling up, Barclay kept his head. All the world was buy- 
 ing then, but wherever he could Barclay sold. He bought 
 only where he had to, and paid cash for what he bought. 
 He did not owe a dollar for anything. He had no equi- 
 ties ; his titles were all good. And as he neared his forties 
 he believed that he could sell what he had at forced sale 
 for many millions. He was supposed to be much richer 
 than he was, but the one thing that he knew about it was 
 that scores of other men had more than he. So he kept star- 
 ing into space and pressing the button for his stenographer, 
 and at night wherever his work found him, whether in 
 Boston or in Chicago or in San Francisco, he hunted up 
 the place where he could hear the best music, and sat lis- 
 tening with his eyes closed. He always kept his note-book 
 in his hand, when Jane was not with him, and when an 
 idea came to him inspired by the music, he jotted it down, 
 and the next day, if it stood the test of a night's sleep, 
 he turned the idea into an event. 
 
 In planning his work he was ruthless. He learned 
 that by bribing men in the operating department of any 
 railroad he could find out what his competitors were doing. 
 And in the main offices of the National Provisions Com- 
 pany two rooms full of clerks were devoted to considering 
 the duplicate way-bills of every car of flour or grain or 
 grain product not shipped by the Barclay companies. 
 Thus he was able to delay the cars of his competitors, 
 and get his own cars through on time. Thus he was able 
 to bribe buyers in wholesale establishments to push his 
 products. And with Lige Bemis manipulating the rail- 
 road and judiciary committees in the legislatures of ten 
 states, no laws were enacted which might hamper Barclay's 
 activities. 
 
 " Do you know, Lucy," said General Ward to his wife 
 one night when they were discussing Barclay and his ways 
 and works, " sometimes I think that what that boy saw 
 at Wilson's Creek, — the horrible bloodshed, the deadly 
 spectacle of human suffering at the hospital wagon, some 
 way blinded his soul's eye to right and wrong. It was all 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 245 
 
 B man could stand ; the picture must have seared the boy's 
 heart like a fire." 
 
 Mrs. Ward, who was mending little clothes in the light 
 of the dining-room lamp, put down her work a moment 
 and said: "I have always thought the colonel had some 
 such idea. For once when he was speaking of the way 
 John stole that wheat land, he said, ' Well, poor John, he 
 got a wound at Wilson's Creek that never will heal,' and 
 when I asked if he meant his foot, the colonel smiled like 
 a woman and said gently, 'No, Miss Lucy, not there — 
 not there at all ; in his heart, my dear, in his heart 1 ' " 
 
 And the general's eyes met the eyes of a mother wan- 
 dering toward a boy of nine sleeping, tired out, on a couch 
 near by; he was a little boy with dark hair, and red 
 tanned cheeks, and his mouth — such a soft innocent 
 mouth — curved prettily, like the lips of children in old 
 pictures, and as he slept he smiled, and the general, meeting 
 the mother's eyes coming back from the little face, wiped 
 his glasses and nodded his head in understanding; in a 
 moment they both rose and stood hand in hand over their 
 child, and the mother said in a trembling voice, " And his 
 mother prayed for him, too — she has told me so — so many 
 times." 
 
 But the people of Sycamore Ridge and of the Missis- 
 sippi Valley did not indulge in any fine speculations upon 
 the meaning of life when they thought of John Barclay. 
 He had become considerable of a figure in the world, and 
 the Middle West was proud of him. For those were the 
 days of tin cornices, false fronts, vain pretences, and bor- 
 rowed plumes bought with borrowed money. Other 
 people's capital was easy to get, and every one was rich. 
 Debt was regarded as an evidence of prosperity, and the 
 town ran mad with the rest of the country. It is not 
 strange then that Mrs. Watts McHurdie, she who for four 
 years during the war dispensed "beefsteak — ham and 
 eggs — breakfast bacon — tea — coffee — iced tea — or — ■ 
 milk" at the Thayer House, and for ten years there- 
 after sold dry-goods and kept books at Dorman's store, 
 should have become tainted with the infection of the 
 
246 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 times. But it is strange that she could have inoculated 
 so sane a little man as Watts. Still, there were Delilah 
 and Samson, and of course Samson was a much larger man 
 than Watts, and Nellie McHurdie was considerably larger 
 than Delilah ; and you never can tell about those things, 
 anyway. Also it must not be forgotten that Nellie Mc- 
 Hurdie since her marriage had become Grand Preceptress 
 in one lodge, Worthy Matron in another. Senior Vice 
 Commander in a third, and Worshipful Benefactress in 
 a fourth, to say nothing of positions as corresponding 
 secretary, delegate to the state convention. Keeper of 
 the Records and Seals, Scribe, — and perhaps Pharisee, 
 — in half a dozen others, all in the interests of her hus- 
 band's political future; and with such obvious devotion 
 before him, it is small wonder after all that he succumbed. 
 But he would not run for office. He had trouble every 
 spring persuading her, but he always did persuade her, 
 that this wasn't his year, that conditions were wrong, and 
 that next year probably would be better. But he allowed 
 her to call their home " The Bivouac," and have the name 
 cut in stone letters on the horse-block; and he sat by 
 meekly for many long years at lodges, at church entertain- 
 ments, at high school commencement exercises, at public 
 gatherings of every sort, and heard her sing a medley of 
 American patriotic songs which wound up with the song 
 that made him famous. It was five drinks in Jake Dolan 
 that stopped the medley, when the drinks aforesaid in- 
 spired him to rise grandly from his chair at the front of 
 the hall at an installation of officers of Henry Schnitzler 
 Post of the Grand Army, and stalk majestically out of the 
 room, while the singing was in ^ progress, saying as he 
 turned back at the door, before thumping heavily down 
 the stairs, " Well, I'm getting pretty damn tired of that 1 " 
 Mrs. McHurdie insisted that Watts should whip Dolan, 
 and it is possible that at home that night Watts did smite ' 
 his breast and shake his head fiercely, for in the morning 
 the neighbours saw Mrs. McHurdie walk to the gate with 
 him, talking earnestly and holding his arm as if to restrain 
 him ; moreover, when Watts had turned the corner of 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 247 
 
 Lincoln Avenue and had disappeared into Main Street, 
 she hurried over to the Culpeppers' to have the colonel 
 warn Dolan that Watts was a dangerous man. But when 
 Dolan, sober, walked into the harness shop that afternoon 
 to apologize, the little harness maker came down the aisle 
 of saddles in his shop blinking over his spectacles and with 
 his hand to his mouth to strangle a smUe, and before 
 Dolan could speak, Watts said, " So am I — Jake Dolan 
 — so am I ; but if you ever do that again, I'll have to kill 
 you." 
 
 It happened in the middle eighties — maybe a year 
 before the college was opened — maybe a year after, 
 though Gabriel Gamine, talking of it some twenty years 
 later, insists that it happened two years after the opening 
 of the college. But no one ever has mentioned the matter 
 to Watts, so the exact date may not be recorded, though 
 it is an important date in the uses of this narrative, as will 
 be seen later. All agree — the colonel, the general, Dolan, 
 Fernald, and perhaps two dozen old soldiers who were at 
 the railroad station waiting for the train to take them to 
 the National Encampment of the Grand Army of the 
 Republic, — that it was a fine morning in September. Of 
 course John Barclay contributed the band. He afterwards 
 confessed to that, explaining that Nellie had told him 
 that Watts never had received the attention he should 
 receive either in the town or the state or the nation, and 
 so long as Watts was a National Delegate for the first time 
 in his life, and so long as she had twice been voted for as 
 National President of the Ladies' Aid, and might get it 
 this time, the band would be, as she put it, " so nice to take 
 along"; and as John never forgot the fact that Nellie asked 
 him to sing at her wedding, he hired the band. Thus are 
 we bound to our past. But the band was not what caused 
 the comrades to gasp, though its going was a surprise. 
 And when they heard it turn into Main Street far up by 
 Lincoln Avenue, playing the good old tune that the town 
 loved for Watts' sake and for the sake of the time and the 
 
 Elace and the heroic deeds it celebrated, — when they 
 eard the band, the colonel asked the general, " Where's 
 
248 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Watts?" and they suspected that the band might be 
 bringing him to the depot. 
 
 Heaven knows the town had bought uniforms and 
 new horns for the band often enough for it to do some- 
 thing public-spirited once in a while without being paid 
 for it. So the band did not come to the town as a shock 
 in and of itself. Neither for that matter did the hack — 
 the new glistening silver-mounted hack, with the bright 
 spick-and-span hearse harness on the horses; in those 
 bustling days a quarter was nothing, and you can ride all 
 over the Ridge for a quarter ; so when the comrades at 
 the depot, in their blue soldiers' clothes, their campaign 
 hats, and their delegates' badges, saw the band followed 
 by the hack, they were of course interested, but that was 
 all. And when some of the far-sighted ones observed that 
 the top of the hack was spread back royally, they com- 
 mented upon the display of pomp, but the comment was 
 not extraordinary. But when from the street, as the 
 band stopped, there came cheers from the people, the boys 
 at the station felt that something unusual was about to 
 come to them. So they watched the band march down 
 the long sheet-iron-covered station walk, and the hack 
 move along beside the band boys ; and the poet's com- 
 rades-in-arms saw him sitting beside the poet's wife, — 
 the two in solemn state. And then the old boys beheld 
 Watts McHurdie, — little Watts McHurdie, with his 
 grizzled beard combed, with his gold-rimmed Sunday 
 glasses far down on his nose so that he could see over 
 them, and — wonder of wonders, they saw a high shiny 
 new silk hat wobbling over, his modest head. 
 
 He stumbled out of the open hack with his hand on the 
 great stiff awkward thing, obviously afraid it would fall 
 off, and she that was Nellie Logan, late of the Thayer 
 House and still later of Dorman's store, and later still most 
 worshipful, most potent, most gorgeous and most radiant 
 archangel of seven secret and mysterious covenants, con- 
 claves, and inner temples, stood beaming at the pitiful 
 sight, clearly proud of her shameless achievement. Watts, 
 putting his hand to his mouth to cover his smUe, grabbed 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 249 
 
 the shiny thing again as he nodded cautiously at the crowd. 
 Then he followed her meekly to the women's waiting room, 
 where the wives and sisters of the comrades were assembled 
 — and they, less punctilious than the men, burst forth 
 with a scream of joy, and the agony was over. 
 
 And thus Watts McHurdie went to his greatest earthly 
 glory. The delegation from the Ridge, with the band, had 
 John Barclay's private car ; that was another surprise 
 which Mrs. McHurdie arranged, and when they got 
 to Washington, where the National Encampment was, 
 opinions differ as to when Watts McHurdie had his 
 high tide of happiness. The colonel says that it was in 
 the great convention, where the Sycamore Ridge band sat 
 in front of the stage, and where Watts stood in front of 
 the band and led the great throng, — beginning with his 
 cracked little heady tenor, and in an instant losing it in 
 the awful diapason of ten thousand voices singing his old 
 song with him ; and where, when it was over, General 
 Grant came down the platform, making his way rather 
 clumsily among the chairs, and at last in front of the 
 whole world grasped Watts McHurdie's hands, and the 
 two little men, embarrassed by the formality of it all, 
 stood for a few seconds looking at each other with tears 
 glistening in their speaking eyes. 
 
 But Jake Dolan, who knows something of human nature, 
 does not hold to the colonel's view about the moment of 
 McHurdie's greatest joy. "We were filing down the 
 Avenue again, thousands and ten thousands of us, as we 
 filed past the White House nearly twenty years before. 
 And the Sycamore Ridge band was cramming its luugs into 
 the old tune, when up on the reviewing stand, beside all 
 the big bugs and with the President there himself, stood 
 little Watts, plug hat in hand, bowing to the boys. 'Twas 
 a lovely sight, and he had been there for two mortal hours 
 before we boys got down — there was the Kansas boys and 
 the Iowa boys and some from Missouri, carrying the old 
 flag we fought under at Wilson's Creek. Watts saw us 
 down the street and heard the old band play ; a dozen 
 other bands had played that tune that day ; but BiUy 
 
250 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Dorman's tuba had its own kind of a rag in it, and Watts 
 knew it. I seen him arwaving his hat at the boys, almost 
 as soon as they saw him, and as the band came nearer and 
 nearer I saw the little man's face begin to crack, and as he 
 looked down the line and saw them Kansas and Iowa 
 soldiers, I seen him give one whoop, and throw that plug 
 hat hellwards over the crowd and jump down from that 
 band stand like a wild man and make for the gang. He 
 was blubbering like a calf when he caught step with me, 
 and he yelled so as to reach my ears above the roar of the 
 crowds and the blatting of the bands — yelled with his 
 voice ripped to shreds that fluttered out ragged from the 
 torn bosom of him, 'Jake — Jake — how I would like 
 to get drunk — just this once I ' And we went on down the 
 avenue together — him bareheaded, hay-footing and straw- 
 footing it the same as in the old days." 
 
 Jake always paused at this point and shook his head 
 sorrowfully, and then continued dolefully : "But 'twas no 
 use ; he was caught and took away ; some says it was to 
 see the pictures in the White House, and some says it was 
 to a reception given by the Relief Corps to the officers 
 elect of the Ladies' Aid, where he was pawed over by a 
 lot of old girls who says, ' Yes, I'm so glad — what name 
 please — oh, — McHurdie, surely not the McHurdie ; O dear 
 me — Sister Mclntire, come right here, this is the McHur- 
 die — you know I sang your song when I was a little girl ' 
 — which was a lie, unless Watts wrote it for the Mexican 
 War, and he didn't. And then some one else comes wad- 
 dling up and says, 'O dear me, Mr. McHurdie — you 
 don't know how glad I am to see the author of " Home, 
 Sweet Home," ' and Watts blinks his eyes and pleads not 
 guilty ; and she says, ' O dear, excuse the mistake ; well, 
 I'm sure you wrote something ? ' And Watts, being sick 
 of love, as Solomon says in his justly celebrated and popu- 
 lar song. Watts looks through his Sunday glasses and 
 doesn't see a blame thing, and smiles and says calmly, 
 'No, madam, you mistake — I am a simple harness maker.' 
 And she sidles off looking puzzled, to make room for the 
 one from Massachusetts, who stares at him through her 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 251 
 
 glasses and says, ' So you're Watts McHurdie — who wrote 
 the — ' ' The same, madam,' says Watts, courting favour. 
 ' Well,' says the high-browed one, ' well — you are not at 
 all what I imagined.' And 'Neither are you, madam,' 
 returns Watts, as sweet as a dill pickle; and she goes 
 away to think it over and wonder if he meant it that way. 
 No — that's where Nellie made her mistake. It wouldn't 
 have, hurt him — just once. But what's done's done, and 
 can't be undone, as the man said when he fished his wife 
 out of the lard vat." 
 
 Now this all seems a long way from John Barclay — 
 the hero of this romance. Yet the departure of Watts 
 McHurdie for his scene of glory was on the same day that 
 a most important thing happened in the lives of Bob 
 Hendricks and Molly Brownwell. That day Bob Hen- 
 dricks walked one end of the station platform alone. The 
 east-bound train was half an hour late, and while the 
 veterans were teasing Watts and the women railing at 
 Mrs. McHurdie, Hendricks discovered that it was one 
 hundred and seventy-eight steps from one end of the walk 
 to the other, and that to go entirely around the building 
 made the distance fifty-four steps more. It was almost 
 train time before Adrian Brownwell arrived. When the 
 dapper little chap came with his bright crimson carnation, 
 and his flashing red necktie, and his inveterate gloves and 
 cane, Hendricks came only close enough to him to smell 
 the perfume on the man's clothes, and to nod to him. 
 But when Hendricks found that the man was going with 
 the Culpeppers as far as Cleveland, as he told the entire 
 depot platform, " to report the trip," Hendricks sat on a 
 baggage truck beside the depot, and considered many 
 things. As he was sitting there Dolan came up, out of 
 breath, and fearful he should be late. 
 
 " How long will you be gone, Jake ? " asked Hendricks. 
 
 "The matter of a week or ten days, maybe," answered 
 Dolan. 
 
 " Well, Jake," said Hendricks, looking at Dolan with 
 serious eyes, yet rather abstractedly, " I am thinking of 
 taking a long trip — to be gone a long time — I don't 
 
252 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 know exactly how long. I may not go at all — I haven't 
 said anything to the boys in the store or the bank or out 
 at the shop about it; it isn't altogether settled — as yet.'' 
 He paused while a switch engine clanged by and the crowd 
 surged out of the depot, and ebbed back again into their 
 seats. " Did you deliver my note this morning ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied Dolan, " just as you said. That's what 
 made me a little late." 
 
 "To the lady herself?" 
 
 " To the lady herself," repeated Dolan. 
 
 "All right," acquiesced Hendricks. "Now, Jake, if I 
 give it out that I'm going away on a trip, there'll be a lot 
 of pulling and hauling and fussing around in the bank 
 and in the store and at the shop and — every place, and 
 then I may not go. So I've gone over every concern care- 
 fully during the past week, and have set down what ought 
 to be done in case I'm gone. I didn't tell my sister even 
 — she's so nervous. And, Jake, I won't tell any one. 
 But if, when you get back from "Washington, I'm not here, 
 I'm going to leave this key with you. Tell the boys at 
 the bank that it will open my tin box, and in the tin box 
 they'll find some instructions about things." He smiled, 
 and Dolan assented. Hendricks uncoiled his legs from 
 the truck, and began to get down. " I won't mix up with 
 the old folks, I guess, Jake.' They have their own affairs, 
 and I'm tired. I worked all last night," he added. He 
 held out his hand to Dolan and said, " Well, good-by, 
 Jake — have a good time." 
 
 The elder man had walked away a few steps when Hen- 
 dricks called him back, and fumbling in his pockets, said : 
 " Well, Jake, I certainly am a fool ; here — " he pulled 
 an envelope marked " Dolan " from his inside pocket — 
 "Jake, I was in the bank this morning, and I found a 
 picture for you. Take it and have a good time. It's a 
 long time till pension day — so long." 
 
 The Irishman peeped at the bill and grinned as he said, 
 " Them holy pictures from the bank, my boy, have power- 
 ful healing qualities." And he marched off with joy in 
 his carriage. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 253 
 
 Hendricks then resumed his tramp ; up and down th© 
 long platform he went, stepping on cracks one way, and 
 avoiding cracks the next, thinking it all out. He tried 
 to remember if he had been unfair to any one ; if he had 
 left any ragged edges ; if he had taken a penny more than 
 his honest due. The letter to the county treasurer, return- 
 ing the money his father had taken, was on top of the pile 
 of papers in his tin box at the bank. He had finally con- 
 cluded, that when everything else was known, that would 
 not add much to his disgrace. And then it would be paid, 
 and that page with the forged entry would not always be 
 in his mind. There were deeds, each witnessed by a differ- 
 ent notary, so that the town would not gossip before he 
 went, transferring all of his real estate to his sister, and 
 the stock he had sold to the bank was transferred, and 
 the records all in the box ; then he/went over the prices 
 again at which he had disposed of his holdings to the 
 bank, and he was sure he had made good bargains in 
 every case for the bank. So it was all fair, he argued for 
 the thousandth time — he was all square with the world. 
 He had left a deposit subject to his check of twenty thou- 
 sand dollars — that ought to do until they could get on 
 their feet somewhere ; and it was all his, he said to him- 
 self — all his, and no one's business. 
 
 And when he thought of the other part, the voice of 
 Adrian Brownwell saying, "Well, come on, old lady, we 
 must be going," rose in his consciousness. It was not 
 so much Brownwell's words, as his air of patronage and 
 possession ; it was cheerful enough, quite gay in fact, 
 but Hendricks asked himself a hundred times why the 
 man didn't whistle for her, and clamp a steel collar 
 about her neck. He wondered cynically if at the bottom 
 of Brownwell's heart, he would not rather have the 
 check for twelve thousand dollars which Hendricks had 
 left for Colonel Culpepper, to pay off the Brownwell 
 note, than to have his wife. For seven years the colonel 
 had been cheerfully neglecting it, and now Hendricks 
 knew that Adrian was troubling him about the old 
 debt. 
 
254 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 As he rounded the depot for the tenth time he got back 
 to their last meeting. There stood General Ward with 
 his arm about the girlish waist of Mrs. Ward, the mother 
 of seven. There was John Barclay with Jane beside him, 
 and they were holding hands like lovers. The Ward 
 children were running like rabbits over the broad lawn 
 under the elms, and there, talking to the wide, wide 
 world, was Adrian Brownwell, propounding the phi- 
 losophy of the Banner, and quoting from last week's 
 editorials. And there sat Bob and Molly by the flower 
 bed that bordered the porch. 
 
 "I am going to the city to hear Gilmore," he said. 
 That was simple enough, and her sigh had no meaning 
 either. It was just a weary little sigh, such as women 
 sometimes bring forth when they decide to say something 
 else. So she had said : " I'll be aU alone next week. I 
 think I'll visit Jane — if she's in town." 
 
 Then something throbbed in his brain and made him 
 say: — 
 
 " So you'd like to hear Gilmore, too ? " 
 
 She coloured and was silent, and the pulse of madness 
 that was beating in her made her answer : — 
 
 " Oh — I can't — you know the folks are going to Wash- 
 ington to the encampment, and Adrian is going as far as 
 Cleveland with the delegation to write it up." 
 
 An impulse loosened his tongue, and he asked : — 
 
 " Why not ? Come on. If you don't know any one up 
 there, go to the Fifth Avenue ; it's all right, and I'll get 
 tickets, and we'll go every night and both matinees. Come 
 on! " he urged. 
 
 She was aflame and could not think. " Oh — don't, Bob, 
 don't — not now. Please don't," she begged, in as low a 
 tone as she dared to use. 
 
 Adrian was thundering on about the tariff, and the 
 general was wrangling with him. The Barclays were 
 talking to themselves, and the children were clattering 
 about underfoot, and in the trees overhead. Bob's eyes 
 and Molly's met, and the man shuddered at what he saw 
 of pathos and yearning, and he said; "Well, why not? 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 265 
 
 It's no worse to go than to want to go. What's wrong 
 about it — Molly, do you think — " 
 
 He did not finish the sentence, for Adrian had ceased 
 talking, and Molly, seeing his jealous eyes upon her, rose 
 and moved away. But before they left that night she 
 found occasion to say, " I've been thinking about it, Bob, 
 and maybe I will." 
 
 In the year that had passed since Hendricks had left 
 her sobbing in the chair on the porch of the Culpepper 
 home, a current between them had been reestablished, 
 and was fed by the chance passing in a store, a smile 
 at a reception, a good morning on the street, and the 
 current was pulsing through their veins night and day. 
 But that fine September morning, as she stood on the 
 veranda of her home with a dust-cap on her head, 
 cleaning up the litter her parents had made in pack- 
 ing, she was not ready for what rushed into her soul 
 from the letter Dolan left her, as he hurried away to 
 overtake the band that was turning from Lincoln Avenue 
 into Main Street. She sat in a chair to read it, and for a 
 moment after she had read it, she held it open in her lap 
 and gazed at the sunlight mottling the blue grass before 
 her, through the elm trees. Her lips were parted and her 
 eyes wide, and she breathed slowly. The tune the band 
 was playing — McHurdie's song — sank into her nlemory 
 there that day so that it always brought back the mottled 
 sunshine, the flowers blooming along the walk, and the 
 song of a robin from a lilac bush near by. She folded the 
 letter carefully, and put it inside her dress, and then mov- 
 ing mechanically, took it out and read it again: — 
 
 " My Darling, my Darling : There is no use struggling any more. 
 Tou must come. I will meet you in the city at the morning train, 
 the one that leaves the Ridge here at 2.35 a.m. We can go to the 
 parks to-morrow and be alone and talk it all out, before the concert — 
 and then — oh, Molly, core of my soul, heart of my heart, why should 
 we ever come back 1 Bob." 
 
 All that she could feel as she sat there motionless was 
 a crashing " no." The thing seemed to drive her mad 
 by its insistence — a horrible racking thing that all but 
 
256 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 shook her, and she chattered at it: "Why not? Why 
 not? Why not?" But the " no " kept roaring through 
 her mind, and as she heard the servant rattling the break- 
 fast dishes in the house, the woman shivered out of sight 
 and ran to her room. She fell on her knees to pray, 
 but all she could pray was, " O God, O God, O God, 
 help me I " and to that prayer, as she said it, the something 
 in her heart kept gibbering, " Why not ? Why not ? Why 
 not ? " From an old box hidden in a closet opening out 
 of her mother's room she took Bob Hendricks' picture, 
 — the faded picture of a boy of twenty, — and holding 
 it close to her breast, stared open-lipped into the heart 
 of an elm tree-top. The whistle of the train brought 
 her back to her real world. She rose and looked at her- 
 self in the mirror, at the unromantic face with its lines 
 showing faintly around her eyes, grown quiet during the 
 dozen years that had settled her fluffy hair into sedate 
 waves. She smiled at the changes of the years and 
 shook her head, and got a grip on her normal conscious- 
 ness, and after putting away the picture and closing the 
 box, she went downstairs to finish her work. 
 
 On the stairs she felt sure of herself, and set about to 
 plan f6r the next day, and then the tumult began, between 
 the " no " and her soul. In a few minutes as she worked 
 the " no " conquered, and she said, " Bob's crazy." She 
 repeated it many times, and found as she repeated it that 
 it was mechanical and that her soul was aching again. So 
 the morning wore away ; she gossiped with the servant a 
 moment; a neighbour came in on an errand; and she dressed 
 to go down town. As she went out of the gate, she won- 
 dered where she would be that hour the next day, and then 
 the struggle began again. Moreover, she bought some new 
 gloves — travelling gloves to match her gray dress. 
 
 In the afternoon she and Jane Barclay sat on the wide 
 porch of the Barclay home. " Gilmore's going to be in 
 the city all this week," said Jane, biting a thread in her 
 sewing. 
 
 " Is he ? " replied Molly. " I should so like to hear him. 
 It's so poky up at the house." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 257 
 
 «' Why don't you ? " inquired Jane. " Get on the train 
 and go on up." 
 
 " Do you suppose it would be all right ? " replied 
 Molly. 
 
 " Why, of course, girl 1 Aren't you a married woman of 
 lawful age ? I would if I wanted to." 
 
 There was a pause, and Molly replied thoughtfully, " I 
 have half a notion to — really 1 " 
 
 But as she walked home, she decided not to do it. Peo- 
 ple from the Ridge might be there, and they wouldn't un- 
 derstand, and her finger-tips chilled at the memory of 
 Adrian Brownwell's jealous eyes. So as she ate supper, 
 she went over the dresses she had that were available. 
 And at bedtime she gave the whole plan up and went up- 
 stairs humming "Marguerite" as happily as the thrush 
 that sang in the lilacs that morning. As she undressed 
 the note fell to the floor. When she picked it up, the 
 flash of passion came tearing through her heart, and the 
 " no " crashed in her ears again, and all the day's struggle 
 was for nothing. So she went to bed, resolved not to go. 
 But she stared through the window into the night, and of 
 a sudden a resolve came to her to go, and have one fair day 
 with Hendricks — to talk it all out forever, and then to 
 come home, and she rose from her bed and tiptoed through 
 the house packing a valise. She left a note in the kitchen 
 for the servant, saying that she would be back for dinner 
 the next evening, and when she struck a match in the front 
 hall to see what time it was, she fomd that it was only 
 one o'clock. For an hour she sat in the chill September 
 air on the veranda, thinking it all over — what she would 
 say; how they would meet and part; and over and over 
 again she told herself that she was doing the sensible thing. 
 As the clock struck two she picked up her valise — it was 
 heavier than she thought, and it occurred to her that she 
 had put in many unnecessary things, and that she had time 
 to lighten it. But she stopped a moment only, and then 
 walked to the gate and down a side street to the station. 
 It was 2.20 when she arrived, and the train was marked 
 on the blackboard by the ticket window on time. She 
 
258 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 kept telling herself that it was best to have it out ; that 
 she would come right back; but she remembered her 
 heavy valise, and again the warning " no " roared through 
 her soul. She walked up and down the long platform, 
 and felt the presence of Bob Hendricks strong and com- 
 pelling ; she knew he had been there that very day, and 
 wondered where he sat. Then she thought perhaps she 
 would do better not to go. She looked into the men's 
 waiting room, and it was empty save for one man ; his 
 back was turned to her, but she recognized Lige Bemis. 
 A tremble of guilt racked and weakened her. And with 
 a thriU as of pain she heard the faint whistle of a train far 
 up the valley. The man moved about the room inside. 
 Apparently he also heard the far-off whistle. She shrank 
 around the corner of the depot. But he caught sight of 
 her dress, and slowly sauntered up and down the platform 
 until he passed near enough to her to identify her in the 
 faint flicker of the gas. He spoke, and she returned his 
 greeting. The train whistled again — much nearer it 
 seemed to her, but still far away, and her soul and the 
 " no " were grappling in a final contest. Suddenly it came 
 over her that she had not bought her ticket. Again the 
 train whistled, and far up the tracks she could see a speck 
 of light. She hurried into the waiting room to buy the 
 ticket. The noise of the train was beginning to sound in 
 her ears. She was frightened and nervous, and she fum- 
 bled with her purse and valise. Nearer and nearer came 
 the train, and the " uo " fairly screamed in her ears, and her 
 face was pallid, with the black wrinkles standing out upon it 
 in the gaslight. The train was in the railroad yards, and 
 the glare of the headlight was in the waiting room. Bemis 
 came in and saw her fumbling with her ticket, her pocket 
 book, and her valise. 
 
 "You'll have to hurry, Mrs. Brownwell, this is the 
 limited — it only stops a minute. Let me help you." 
 
 He picked up the valise and followed her from the 
 room. The rush of the incoming train shattered her 
 nerves. They pulsed in fear of some dreadful thing, and 
 in that moment she wondered whether or not she would 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 25^ 
 
 ever see it all again — the depot, the familiar street, the 
 great mill looming across the river, and the Barclay home 
 half a mile above them. In a second she realized all 
 that her going meant, and the " no " screamed at her, and 
 the " why not " answered feebly. But she had gone too 
 far, she said to herself. The engine was passing her, and 
 Bemis was behind her with the heavy valise. She won- 
 dered what he would say when Bob met her at the train 
 in the city. All this flashed across her mind in a second, 
 and then she became conscious that the rumbling thing in 
 front of her was not the limited but a cattle train, and the 
 sickening odour from it made her faint. In the minute 
 while it was rushing by at full speed she became rigid, 
 and then, taking her valise from the man behind her, 
 turned and walked as fast as she could up the hill, and 
 when she turned the corner she tried to run. Her feet 
 took her to the Barclay home. She stood trembling in 
 terror on the great wide porch and rang the bell. The 
 servant admitted the white-faced, shaking woman, and 
 she ran to Jane Barclay's room. 
 
 " Oh, Jane," chattered Molly, " Jane, for God's love, 
 Jane, hold me — hold me tight ; don't let me go. Don'tl " 
 She sank to the floor and put her face in Jane's lap and 
 stuttered : " I — I — have g-g-got to t-t-tell you, Jane. 
 I've g-g-ot to t-t-t-ell you, J-J-Jane." And then she fell to 
 sobbing. " Hold me, don't let me go out there. When 
 it whistles ag-g-gain h-h-hold me t-t-tight." 
 
 Jane Barclay's strong kind hands stroked the dishevelled 
 hair of the trembling woman. And in time she looked 
 up and said quietly, " You know — you know, Jane, Bob 
 and I — Bob and I were going to run awayl " Molly 
 looked at Jane a fearful second with beseeching eyes, and 
 then dropped her head and fell to sobbing again, and lay 
 with her face on the other woman's knees. 
 
 When she was quiet Jane said : " I wouldn't talk about 
 it any more, dear — not now." She stroked the hair and 
 patted the face of the woman before her. " Shall we go 
 to bed now, dear? Come right in with me." And soon 
 MoUy rose, and her spent soul rested in peace. But they 
 
260 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 did not go to bed. The dawn found the two women 
 talking it out together — clear from the beginning. 
 
 And when the day came Molly Brownwell went to Jane 
 Barclay's desk and wrote. And when Bob Hendricks came 
 home that night, his sister handed him a letter. It ran : — 
 
 "My dear Bob : I have thought it all out, dear; it wouldn't do at 
 aU. I went to the train, and something, I don't know what, caught 
 me and dragged me over to Jane's. She was good — oh, so good. 
 She knows; but it was better that she should than — the other way. 
 
 " It will never do. Bob. We can't go back. The terrible some- 
 thing that I did stands irrevocably between us. The love that might 
 have made both our lives radiant is broken, Bob — forever broken. 
 And all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot ever put it to- 
 gether again. I know it now, and oh Bob, Bob, it makes me sadder 
 than the pain of unsatisfied love in my heart. 
 
 " It just can't be ; nothing ever can make it as it was, and unless it 
 could be that way — the boy and girl way, it would be something 
 dreadful. We have missed the best in the world. Bob ; we cannot 
 enjoy the next best together. But apart, each doing his work in life 
 as God wills it, we may find the next best, which is more than most 
 people know. 
 
 " I have found during this hour that I can pray again. Bob, and I 
 am asking God always to let me hope for a heaven, into which I can 
 bring a few little memories — of the time before you left me. Won't 
 you bring yours there, too, dear ? Until then — good-by. 
 
 "Molly." 
 
 The springs that move God's universe are hidden, — those 
 that move the world of material things and those that 
 move the world of spiritual things, and make events creep 
 out of the past into the future so noiselessly that they seem 
 born in the present. It is all a mystery, the half-stated 
 equation of life that we call the scheme of things. Only 
 this is sure, that however remote, however separated by 
 time and space, the tragedy of life has its root in the weak- 
 ness of men, and of all the heart-breaking phantasms that 
 move across the panorama of the day, somewhere deep- 
 rooted in our own souls' weakness is the ineradicable cause. 
 Even God's mercy cannot separate the punishment that 
 follows sin, and perhaps it is the greatest mercy of His 
 mercy that it cannot do so. For when we leave this world, 
 our books are clear. If our souls grow — we pay the price 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 261 
 
 in suffering; if they shrivel, we go into the next world, 
 poorer for our pilgrimage. 
 
 So do not pity Molly Brownwell nor Robert Hendricks 
 when you learn that as she left the station at Sycamore 
 Ridge that night, Lige Bemis went to a gas lamp and read 
 the note from Robert Hendricks that in her confusion she 
 had dropped upon the floor. Only pity the miserable 
 creature whose soul was so dead in him that he could put 
 that note away to bide his time. In this wide universe, 
 wherein we are growing slowly up to Godhood, only the 
 poor leprous soul, whitened with malice and hate, deserves 
 the angels' tears. The rest of us, — weak, failing, frail, to 
 whom life deals its sorrows and its tears, its punishments 
 and its anguish, — we leave this world nearer to God than 
 when we came here, and the journey, though long and hard, 
 has been worth the while. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Back in the days when John Barclay had become power- 
 ful enough to increase the price of his door strips to the 
 railroad companies from five dollars to seven and a half, he 
 had transferred the business of the factory that made the 
 strips from Hendricks' Exchange National to the new Mer- 
 chants' State Bank which Gabriel Carnine was establishing. 
 For Carnine and Barclay were more of a mind than were 
 Barclay and Hendricks ; Carnine was bent on getting richj 
 and he had come to regard Barclay as the most remarkable 
 man in the world. Hendricks, on the other hand, knew 
 Barclay to the core, and since the quarrel of the seventies, 
 while they had maintained business relations, they were 
 merely getting along together. There w«re times when 
 Barclay felt uncomfortable, knowing that Hendricks knew 
 much about his business, but the more Carnine knew, the 
 more praise Barclay had of him; and so, even though Jane 
 kept her own account with Hendricks, and though John 
 himself kept a personal account with Hendricks, the 
 Economy Door Strip Company and the Golden Belt Wheat 
 Company did business with Carnine, and Barclay became 
 a director of the Merchants' State Bank, and greatly in- 
 creased its prestige thereby. And Bob Hendricks sighed 
 a sigh of relief, for he knew that he would never become 
 John Barclay's fence and be called upon to dispose of stolen 
 goods. So Hendricks went his way with his eyes on a 
 level and his jaw squared with the worM. And when 
 he knew that Jane knew the secret of his soul, about the 
 only comfort he had in those black days was the exultation 
 in his heart that John — whatever he ^ might know — 
 could not turn it into cash at the Exchange National Bank. 
 
 As he walked alone under the stars that first night after 
 Molly Brownwell's note came to him, he saw his life as it 
 
 262 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 263 
 
 •was, with things squarely in their relations. Of course 
 this light did not stay with him always; at times in his 
 loneliness the old cloud of wild yearning would come over 
 him, and he would rattle the bars of his madhouse until 
 he could fight his way out to the clean air of Heaven under 
 the stars. And at such times he would elude Dolan, and 
 walk far away from the town in fields and meadows and 
 woods struggling back to sanity — sometimes through a 
 long night. But as the years passed, this truth came to 
 be a part of his consciousness -7- that in some measure the 
 thing we call custom, or law, or civilization, or society, 
 with all its faults, is the best that man, endowed as he is 
 to-day, can establish, and that the highest service one can 
 pay to man or to God is found in conforming to the social 
 compact, at whatever cost of physical pain, or mental 
 anguish, if the conformation does not require a moral 
 breach. That was the faith he lived by, that by service 
 to his fellows and by sacrifice to whatever was worthy in 
 the social compact, he would find a growth of soul that 
 would pay him^ either here or hereafter. So he lent 
 money, and sold light, and traded in merchandise, and did 
 a man's work in politics — playing each game according 
 to the rules. 
 
 But whatever came to him, whatever of honour or of 
 influence, or of public respect, in his own heart there was the 
 cloud — he knew that he was a forger, and that once he 
 had offered to throw everything he had aside and take in 
 return — But he was not candid enough even in his own 
 heart to finish the indictment. It made him flush with 
 shame, and perhaps that was why on his face there was 
 often a curious self-deprecating smile — not of modesty, 
 not of charity, but the smile of the man who is looking 
 at a passing show and knows that it is not real. As he 
 went into his forties, and the flux of his life hardened, he 
 became a man of reserves — a kind, quiet, strong man, 
 charitable to a fault for the weaknesses of others, but a 
 man who rarely reflected his impulses, a listener in conver- 
 sation, a dreamer amid the tumult of business, whose suc- 
 cess lay in his industry and caution, and who drew men to 
 
264 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 him not by what he promised, but by the faith we chatter- 
 ing daws have in the man who looks on and smiles while 
 we prattle. 
 
 His lank bones began to take on flesh, and his face 
 rounded at the corners, and the eagerness of youth passed 
 from him. He always looked more of a man than John 
 Barclay. For Barclay was a man of enthusiasms, who 
 occasionally liked to mouth a hard jaw-breaking " damn," 
 and who followed his instincts with womanly faith in 
 them — so that he became known as a man of impulse. 
 But Hendricks' power was in repression, and in Sycamore 
 Ridge they used to say that the only reason why Bob 
 Hendricks grew a mustache was to chew it when people 
 expected him to talk. It wasn't much of a mustache — 
 a little blond fuzz about as heavy as his yellow eyebrows 
 over his big inquiring blue eyes, and he once told Dolan 
 that he kept it for a. danger signal. When he found him- 
 self pulling at it, he knew he was nervous and should get 
 out into the open. They tell a story in the Ridge to the 
 effect that Hendricks started to run to a fire, and caught 
 himself pulling at his mustache, and turned around and 
 went out to the power-house instead. 
 
 It was the only anecdote ever told of Hendricks after 
 he was forty — for he was not a man about whom anec- 
 dotes would hang well, though the town is full of them 
 about John Barclay. So Hendricks lived a strong reti- 
 cent man, who succeeded in business though he was hon- 
 est, and who won in politics by choosing his enemies from 
 the kind of noisy men who make many mistakes, and let 
 every one know it. The time came when he did not 
 avoid Molly BrownweU ; she felt that he was not afraid 
 to see her in any circumstances, and that made her happy. 
 Sometimes she went to him in behalf of one of her father's 
 charges, — some poor devil who could not pay his note at 
 the bank and keep the children in school, or some clerk 
 or workman at the power house who had been discharged. 
 At such times they talked the matter in hand over frankly, 
 and it ended by the man giving way to the woman, or 
 showing her simply that she was wrong. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 265 
 
 Only once in nearly a score of years did a personal 
 word pass between them. She had come to him for his 
 signature to a petition for a pardon for a man whose 
 family suffered while he was in the penitentiary. Hen- 
 dricks signed the paper and handed it back to her, and 
 his blue eyes were fixed impersonally upon her, and he 
 smiled his curious, self-deprecatory smile and sighed, 
 "As we forgive our debtors." Then he reached for a 
 paper in his desk and seemed oblivious to her presence. 
 No one else was near them, and the woman hesitated a 
 moment before turning to go and repeated, " Yes, Bob — 
 as we forgive our debtors." She tried to show him the 
 radiance in her soul, but he did not look up and she went 
 away. When she had gone, he pushed aside his work 
 and sat for a moment looking into the street ; he began 
 biting his mustache, and rose, and went out of the bank 
 and found some other work. 
 
 That night as Hendricks and Dolan walked over the 
 town together, Dolan said : " Did you ever know, Rob- 
 ert" — that was as near familiarity as the elder man 
 came with Hendricks — " that Mart Culpepper owed his 
 son-in-law a lot of money ? " 
 
 " Well," returned Hendricks, " he borrowed a lot fifteen 
 years ago or such a matter ; why ? " 
 
 " WeU," answered Dolan, " I served papers on Mart to- 
 day in a suit for — I dunno, a lot of money — as I remem- 
 ber it about fifteen thousand dollars. That seems like a 
 good deal." 
 
 Hendricks grunted, and they walked on in silence. 
 Hendricks knew from Brown well's overdraft that things 
 were not going well with him, and he believed that 
 matters must have reached a painful crisis in the Cul- 
 pepper family if BrownweU had brought suit against the 
 colonel. 
 
 The next morning Colonel Martin Culpepper came into 
 the bank. He had grown into a large gray man — with gray 
 hair, gray mustaches of undiminished size, and chin whis- 
 kers grayed and broadened with the years. His fine black 
 eyes were just beginning to lose their lustre, and the spring 
 
266 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 was going out of his stride. As he came into the bank, 
 Hendricks noticed that the colonel seemed to shuffle just 
 a little. He put out his fat hand, and said : — 
 
 " Robert, will you come into the back room with me a 
 moment? It isn't business — I just want to talk with 
 you." He smiled apologetically and added, "Just 
 troubles, Robert — just an old man wants to talk to some 
 one, in point of fact." 
 
 Hendricks followed the colonel into the directors' room, 
 and without ceremony the colonel sank heavily into a fat 
 leather chair, facing the window, and Hendricks sat down 
 facing the colonel. The colonel looked at the floor and 
 fumbled his triangular watch-charm a moment, and cleared 
 his throat, as he spoke, " I don't know just how to begin 
 — to get at it — to proceed, as I may say, Robert." Hen- 
 dricks did not reply, and the colonel went on, "I just 
 wanted to talk to some one, that's all — to talk to you — 
 just to you, sir, to be exact." 
 
 Hendricks looked kindly at the colonel, whose averted 
 eyes made the younger man feel uncomfortable. Then he 
 said gently, " Well, Colonel, don't be backward about say- 
 ing what you want to to me." It was a long speech for 
 Hendricks, and he felt it, and then qualified it with, 
 " But, of course, I don't want to urge you." 
 
 The colonel's face showed a flush of courage to Hen- 
 dricks, but the courage passed, and there was a silence, 
 and then a little twitch under his eyes told Hendricks 
 that the colonel was contemplating a flank attack as he 
 spoke, " Robert, may I ask you in confidence if Adrian 
 Brownwell is hard up ? " 
 
 Hendricks believed the truth would bring matters to 
 a head, and he answered, " Well, I shouldn't wonder, 
 Colonel." 
 
 "Very hard up? " pressed the colonel. 
 
 Hendricks remembered Brownwell's overdraft and half 
 a dozen past due notes to cover other overdrafts and an- 
 swered, "Well, Colonel, not desperate, but you know the 
 Index has been getting the best of the Banner for two or 
 three years." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 267 
 
 There was a pause, and tlien the colonel blurted oul^ 
 "Well, Bob, he's sued me." 
 
 " I knew that, Colonel," returned Hendricks, anxious 
 to press the matter to its core. "Jake told me yester- 
 day." 
 
 " I was going to pay him ; he's spoken about it several 
 times — dunned me, sir, in point of fact, off and on for 
 several years. But he knew I was good for it. And now 
 the little coward runs off up to Chicago to attend the con- 
 vention and sues me while he's gone. That's what I hate." 
 Hendricks could see that the object of the colonel's visit 
 was still on his mind, and so he left the way open for the 
 colonel to talk. " You know how Mrs. Culpepper feels 
 and how Molly feels — disgraced, sir, humiliated, shamed, 
 to be exact, sir, in front of the whole town. What would 
 you do, Robert ? What can a man do in a time like this 
 
 — I ask you, what can he do ? " 
 
 " Well, I'd pay him, Colonel, if I were you," ventured 
 the younger man. 
 
 The colonel straightened up and glared at Hendricks 
 and exclaimed: "Bob Hendricks, do you think, sir, that 
 Martin Culpepper would rest for a minute, while he had 
 a dollar to his name, or a rag on his back, under the im- 
 putation of not paying a debt like that ? It is paid, sir, 
 
 — settled in full this morning, sir. But what am I going 
 to do about him, sir — the contemptible scamp who pub- 
 licly sued his own wife's father? That's what I came to 
 you for, Robert. What am I going to do ? " 
 
 " It'll be forgotten in a week. Colonel — I wouldn't 
 worry about it," answered Hendricks. " We all have 
 those little unpleasantnesses." 
 
 The colonel was ^silent for a time, and then he said : 
 "Bob — " turning his eyes to meet Hendricks' for the first 
 time during their meeting - — " that scoundrel said to me 
 yesterday morning before leaving, ' If I hadn't the mis- 
 fortune of being your son-in-law, you wouldn't have the 
 honour of owing me this money.' Then he sneered at me 
 — you know the supercilious way he has, the damn miser- 
 able hound-pup way he has of grinning at you, — and says, 
 
268 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 'I regarded it as a loan, eyen though you seemed to re- 
 gard it as a bargain.' And he whirled and left me." The 
 colonel's voice broke as he added : " In God's name, Bob, 
 tell me — did I sell Molly? You know — you can tell 
 me. 
 
 The colonel was on his feet, standing before Hendricks, 
 with his hands stretched toward the younger man. Hen- 
 dricks did not reply at once, and the colonel broke forth: 
 " Bob Hendricks, why did you and my little girl quarrel ? 
 Did she break it or did you ? Did I sell her. Bob, did I 
 sell my little girl ? " He slipped back into the chair and 
 for a moment hid his face, and shook with a great sob, 
 then pulled himself together, and said, " I know I'm a 
 foolish old man. Bob, only I feel a good deal depends on 
 knowing the truth — a good deal of my attitude toward j 
 him." 
 
 Hendricks looked at the colonel for an abstracted mo- 
 ment, and then said : " Colonel, Adrian Brownwell is hard 
 up — very hard up, and you don't know how he is suffer- 
 ijig with chagrin at being beaten by the Index. He is 
 quick-tempered — just as you are. Colonel." He paused a 
 moment and took the colonel by the hand, — a fat, pink 
 hand, without much iron in it, — and brought him to his 
 feet. " And about that other matter," he added, as he 
 put his arm about the colonel, "you didn't sell her. I 
 know that ; I give you my word on that. It was fifteen 
 years ago — maybe longer — since Molly and I were — 
 since we went together as boy and girl. That's a long 
 time ago. Colonel, a long time ago, and I've managed to 
 forget just why we — why we didn't make a go of it." 
 He smiled kindly at the colonel as he spoke — a smile that 
 the colonel had not seen in Hendricks' face in many years. 
 Then the mask fell on his face, and the colonel saw it fall 
 — the mask of the man over the face of the boy. A 
 puzzled, bewildered look crept into the gray, fat face, and 
 Hendricks could see that the doubt was still in the colo- 
 nel's heart. The younger man pressed the colonel's 
 hand, and the two moved toward the door. Suddenly 
 tears flushed into the dimmed eyes of the colonel, and 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 269 
 
 he cried, through a smile, " Bob Hendricks, I believe in 
 my soul you're a liar — a damn liar, sir, but, boy, you're 
 a thoroughbred — God bless you, you're a thoroughbred." 
 And he turned and shuffled from the room and out of the 
 bank. 
 
 When Colonel Martin Culpepper left Robert Hendricks 
 at the door of the directors' room of the Exchange Na- 
 tional Bank, the colonel was persuaded in his heart that 
 his daughter had married Adrian Brownwell to please her 
 parents, and the colonel realized that day that her parents 
 were pleased with Brownwell as a suitor for their daughter, 
 because in time of need he had come to their rescue with 
 money, and incidentally because he was of their own blood 
 and caste — a Southern gentleman of family. The colonel 
 went to the offices of the Culpepper Mortgage and Loan 
 Company and went over his bank-book again. The check 
 that he drew would take all but three hundred and forty- 
 five dollars out of the accounts of his company, and not a 
 dollar of it was his. The Culpepper Mortgage Company 
 was lending other people's money. It had been lending 
 money on farm mortgages for ten years. Pay-day on 
 many mortgages was coming due, and of the fifteen thou- 
 sand dollars he checked out to pay Adrian Brownwell's 
 debt, thirteen thousand dollars was money that belonged 
 to the Eastern dreditors of the company — men and women 
 who had sent their money to the company for it to lend ; 
 and the money checked out represented money paid back 
 by the farmers for the release of their mortgages. Some 
 of the money was interest paid by farmers on their 
 mortgages, some of it was partial payments — but none 
 of it was Colonel Culpepper's money. 
 
 " Molly," said the colonel, as his daughter came into 
 the office, " I've given a check for that — that money, you 
 know, to Adrian — paid it in full, my dear. But — " the 
 colonel fumbled with his pencil a moment and added, 
 " I'm a trifle shy — a few thousand in point of fact, and I 
 just thought I'd ask — would you borrow it of Bob, if you 
 were me ? " 
 
 He looked at her closely, and she coloured and shook hel 
 
270 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 head vehemently as she replied : " Oh, no, father — no, 
 can't you get it somewhere else? Not from Bob — for 
 that ! I mean — oh — I'd much rather not." 
 
 The colonel looked at his daughter a moment and drew 
 a deep breath, and sighed, and smiled across his sigh, and 
 took her hand and put it around his neck and kissed it, 
 and when she was close to him he put his arm about her, 
 and their eyes met for a fleeting instant, and they did not 
 speak. But in a moment from across his desk the daughter 
 spoke, " Why don't you go to John or Carnine, father ? " 
 
 " Well, Gabe — you know Gabe. I'm borrowed clear to 
 the limit there, now. And John — you know John, Molly 
 — and the muss, the disagreeable muss, — the row, in 
 point of fact, we had over that last seventy-five dollars 
 settling up the College Heights business — you remember ? 
 Well, I just can't go to John. But," he added cheerfully, 
 " I can get it elsewhere, my dear — I have other resources, 
 other resources, my dear." And the colonel smiled so 
 gayly that he deceived even his daughter, and she went 
 home as happy as a woman with eyelids as red as hers 
 were that day might reasonably expect to be. 
 
 As for the colonel, he sat figuring for an hour upon a 
 sheet of white paper. His figures indicated that by put- 
 ting all of his property except his home into the market, 
 and reserving all of his commissions on loans that would 
 fall due during the three years coming, he could pay back 
 the money he had taken, little by little, and be square 
 with the company's creditors in three years — or four at 
 the most. So he let the check stand, and did not try to 
 borrow money of the banks to make it good, but trusted 
 to to-morrow's receipts to pay yesterday's debts of the 
 company. Knowing that several mortgages of more than 
 three thousand each would fall due in a few weeks, and 
 that the men carrying them expected to pay them, the 
 colonel wrote dilatory letters to the Eastern creditors whose 
 money he had taken, explaining that there was some delay 
 in the payment of the notes, and that the matter would 
 be straightened out in a few weeks. When the money 
 came in from the mortgages falling due the next month. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 271 
 
 he paid those already due, and delayed the payment of 
 Peter until Paul paid up. It was a miserable business, 
 and Colonel Culpepper knew that he was a thief. The 
 knowledge branded him as one, and bent his eyes to the 
 ground, and wrenched his proud neck so that his head hung 
 loosely upon it. Always when he spoke in public, or went 
 among his poor on errands of mercy, at his elbow stood 
 the accusing spectre, and choked his voice, and unnerved 
 his hand. And trouble came upon the Culpeppers, and 
 the colonel's clothes, which had always been immaculate, 
 grew shabby. As that year and the next passed and 
 mortgages began falling due, not only in the colonel's com- 
 pany but all over the county, all over the state, all over 
 the Missouri Valley, men found they could not pay. The 
 cycle of business depression moved across the world, as 
 those things come and go through the centuries. More- 
 over, General Ward was riding on the crest of a wave of 
 unrest which expressed in terms of politics what the 
 people felt in their homes. Debts were falling due ; crops 
 brought small returns ; capital was frightened ; men in 
 the mills lost their work ; men on the farms burned their 
 corn; and Colonel Martin Culpepper sank deeper and 
 deeper into the mire. 
 
 Those years of the panic of the early nineties pressed 
 all the youth out of his step, dimmed the lustre of his 
 eyes, and slowly broke his heart. His keenest anguish 
 was not for his own suffering, but because his poor, the 
 people at the Mission, came trooping to him for help, and 
 he had to turn so many away. The whole town knew 
 that he was in trouble, though no one know or even sus- 
 pected just what it was. For the people had their own 
 troubles in those days, and the town and the county and 
 the state and the whole world grew shabby. 
 
 One day in the summer of '93, Colonel Culpepper was 
 sitting in his office reading a letter from Vermont demand- 
 ing a long-deferred interest payment on a mortgage. 
 There were three hundred dollars due, and the colonel had 
 but half that amount, and was going to send what he had. 
 Jake Dolan came into the office and saw the colonel 
 
272 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 sitting with the letter crumpled in his hands, and with 
 worry in the dull old eyes. 
 
 " Come in, Jake, come in," cried the colonel, a little 
 huskily. " What's the trouble, comrade — what's wrong ? " 
 
 But let Dolan tell it to Hendricks three days later, as 
 the two are sitting at night on the stone bridge across the 
 Sycamore built by John Barclay to commemorate the 
 battle of Sycamore Ridge. " ' Well, Mart,' says I, ' I'm in 
 vicarious trouble,' says I. ' It's along of my orphan asy- 
 lum,' says I. ' What orphan asylum ? ' says he. ' Well, 
 it's this way. Mart,' says I. ' You know they found Trixie 
 Lee guilty this afternoon in the justice court, don't you ? ' 
 Mart sighs and says, ' Poor Trixie, I supposed they would 
 sooner or later, poor girl — poor girl. An' old Cap Lee 
 of the Red Legs was her father ; did you know that, Jake ? ' 
 he asks. ' Yes, Mart,' says I, ' and Lady Lee before her. 
 She comes by it honestly.' Mart sat drumming with hisi 
 fingers on the table, looking back into the years. 'Poor 
 Jim,' he says, 'Jim was a brave soldier — a brave, big- 
 hearted, generous soldier — he nursed me all that first 
 night at Wilson's Creek when I was wounded. Poor Jim.' 
 'Yes,' says I, 'and Trixie has named her boy for him — 
 Jim Lord Lee Young; that was her husband's name — 
 Young,' says I. ' And it's along of the boy that I'm here 
 for. The nicest bright-eyed little chap you ever saw ; and. 
 he seems to know that something is wrong, and just 
 clings to his mother and cries — seven years old, or mayb& 
 eight — and begs me not to put his mother in jail. And,' 
 says I to Mart, ' Mart, I just can't do it. The sheriff he's 
 run, and so has the deputy ; they can't stand the boy cry- 
 ing, and damn it to hell. Mart, I can't, either ; so I just 
 left 'em in the office and locked the door and come around 
 to see you. I'd 'a' gone to see Bob, only he's out of town 
 this week,' I says. 'I can throw up the job, Mart — 
 though I'd have to go on the county ; but Mart, they ain't 
 a soul for the boy to go to ; and it ain't right to put him. 
 in jail with the scum that's in there.' " 
 
 "Tough — wasn't it?" said Hendricks. "What did 
 you do? Why didn't you go to Carnine or Barclay? " 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 273 
 
 "That's just what I'm a-comin' to, — the Priest or the 
 Levite ? " said Jake. " Well, Mart said, ' Where're the 
 men they caught — won't they help ? ' and I says, ' They 
 paid their tine and skipped.' 'Fine?' asks Mart, 'fine? 
 I thought you said it was jail sentence.' 'Well,' says I, 
 ' it amounts to the same thing ; she can't pay her fine, and 
 that damn reform judge, wanting to make a record as a 
 Spartan, has committed her to jail till it is paid ! ' 'So 
 they go free, and she goes to jail, because she is poor,' says 
 Mart. ' That's what your reform means,' says I, ' or I let 
 her and the boy loose and lose my job. And oh. Mart,' says 
 I, ' the screams of that little boy at the disgrace of it and 
 the terror of the jail — man — I can't stand it I ' ' How 
 much is it ? ' sighs Mart. ' An even hundred fine and seven- 
 teen dollars and fifty cents costs,' says I. Mart's eyes 
 was leaking, and he gets up and goes to the vault, and 
 comes back with the cash and says, blubbering like a calf : 
 ' Here, Jake Dolan, you old scoundrel, take this. I'll pass 
 a paper and get it to-morrow — now get out of here. ' And 
 he handed me the money all cried over where he'd been 
 slow counting it out, and said when he'd got hold of his 
 wobbly jaw: 'Don't you teU her where you got it — I 
 don't want her around here. I'll see her to-morrow when 
 I'm down that way and talk to her for old Cap Lee — ' 
 And then he. laughs as he stands in the door and says: 
 * Well, Jim,' and he points up, ' your bread cast upon the 
 waters was a long time a-coming — but here she is;' and 
 he says, ' Do you suppose the old villain knows ? ' And 
 I turned and hunted up the justice and went around to 
 the office, and told Trixie to 'go sin no more,' and she 
 laughs and says, 'Well, hardly ever I ' and I kissed the 
 kid, and he fought my whiskers, and we all live happy 
 ever after." 
 
 But the colonel, after Dolan left the office, went into 
 the darkening room, and spread out the harsh letter from 
 the Vermont banker demanding money long past due, and 
 read and reread it and took up his burden, and got into 
 the weary treadmill of his life. It rained the next day, 
 and he did not go out with his subscription paper ; he had 
 
274 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 learned that people subscribe better on bright days ; and 
 as Hendricks and Barclay were both out of town, he wrote 
 a dilatory letter to the Vermont people — the fifth he had 
 written about that particular transaction — and waited 
 another rainy day and still another before starting out with 
 his paper. But the event was past ; the cry of the child 
 was not in the people's ears ; they knew that the colonel 
 had put up the money ; so it was not until Hendricks came 
 back and heard the story from Dolan that the colonel was 
 repaid. Then because he actually had the money — at 
 least half of it due on that particular debt, which was one 
 of scores of its kind — the colonel delayed another day and 
 another, and while he was musing the fire burned. And 
 events started in Vermont which greatly changed the 
 course of this story. 
 
 "I wonder," he has written in that portion of the Mc- 
 Hurdie Biography devoted to " The Press of the Years," 
 " why, as we go farther and farther into life, invariably it 
 grows dingier and dingier. The 'large white plumes' 
 that dance before the eyes of youth soil, and are bedraggled. 
 And out of the inexplicable tangle of the mesh of life 
 come dark threads from God knows where and colour the 
 woof of it gray and dreary. Ah for the days of the large 
 white plumes — for the days when life's woof was bright I " 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 If the reader of this tale should feel drawn to visit 
 Sycamore Ridge, he will find a number of interesting 
 things there, and the trip may be made by the transconti- 
 nental traveller with the loss of but half a dozen hours 
 from his journey. The Golden Belt Railroad, fifteen years 
 ago, used to print a guide-book called " California and 
 Back," in which were set down the places of interest to 
 the traveller. In that book Sycamore Ridge was described 
 thus: — 
 
 " Sycamore Eidge, pop. 22,345, census 1890 ; large water-power, main, 
 industry milling ; also manufacturing ; five wholesale houses. Seat 
 Ward Universify, 1300 students ; also Garrison County High School, 
 also Business College. Thirty-five churches, two newspapers, the 
 Daily Banner and the Index; fifty miles of paved streets; largest 
 stone arch bridge in the West, marking site of Battle of Sycamore 
 Ridge, a border ruffian skirmish ; home of Watts McHurdie, famous 
 as writer of war-songs, best known of which is — " etc., etc. 
 
 But excepting Watts, who may be gone before you get 
 there, — for he is an old man now, and is alone and prob- 
 ably does not always have the best of care, — the things 
 above annotated will not interest the traveller. At the 
 Thayer House they will tell you that three things in the 
 town give it distinction: the Barclay home, a rambling gray 
 brick structure which the natives call Barclay Castle, with 
 a great sycamore tree held together by iron bands on the 
 terraced lawn before the house — that is number one; the 
 second thing they will advise the traveller to see is Mary 
 Barclay Park, ten acres of transplanted elm trees, most 
 tastefully laid out, between Main Street and the Barclay 
 home; and the third thing that will be pointed out to the 
 traveller is the Schnitzler fountain, in the cemetery gate- 
 way, done by St. Gaudens; it represents a soldier pouring 
 
 275 
 
276 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 water from his canteen into his hand, as he bathes the 
 brow of a dying comrade. 
 
 These things, of course, — the house, the park, and the 
 fountain, — represent John Barclay and his money. The 
 town is proud of them, but the reader is advised not to 
 expect too much of them. One of the two things really 
 worth seeing at the Ridge is the view over the wheat 
 fields of the Sycamore Valley from the veranda of the 
 Culpepper home on the hill. There one may see the 
 great fields lying in three townships whereon John Bar- 
 clay founded his fortune. The second thing worth seeing 
 may be found in the hallway of the public library build- 
 ing, just at the turn of the marble stairway, where the 
 morning light strikes it. Take the night train out of 
 Chicago and get to the Ridge in the morning, to get the 
 light on that picture. 
 
 It is a portrait of John Barclay, done when he was forty 
 years old and painted by a Russian during the summer 
 when the Barclays were called home from Europe before 
 their journey was half completed, to straighten out an 
 obstreperous congressman, one Tom Wharton by name, who 
 was threatening to put wheat and flour on the free list in 
 a tariff bill, unless — but that is immaterial, except that 
 Wharton was on Barclay's mind more or less while the 
 painter was at work, and the portrait reflects what Barclay 
 thought of a number of things. It shows a small gray- 
 clad man, with a pearl pin in a black tie, sitting rather on 
 the edge of his chair, leaning forward, so that the head is 
 thrown into the light. The eyes are well opened, and the 
 jaw comes out, a hard mean jaw; but the work of the 
 artist, the real work that reveals the soul of the sitter, is 
 shown in three features, if we except the pugnacious 
 shoulders. In the face are two of these features : the 
 mouth, a hard, coarse, furtive mouth, — the mouth of the 
 liar who is not polished, — the peasant liar who has been 
 caught and has brazened it out; the mouth and the fore- 
 head, full almost to bulging, so clean and white and naked 
 that it seems shameful to expose it, a poet's forehead, 
 noble and full of dreams, broad over the eyes, and as deli- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 277 
 
 cately modelled at the temples as a woman's where the curly 
 brown hair is brushed away from it. But the wonderful 
 feature about the portrait is the right hand. The artist 
 obviously asked Barclay to assume a natural attitude, and 
 then seeing him lean forward with his hand stretched out 
 in some gesture of impatience, persuaded him to take that 
 pose. It is the sort of vital human thing that would 
 please Barclay — no sham about it; but he did not real- 
 ize what the Russian was putting into that hand — a long, 
 hard, hairy, hollow, grasping, relentless hand, full in the 
 foreground and squarely in the light — a horrible thing 
 with artistic fingers, and a thin, greedy palm indicated by 
 the deep hump in the back. It reaches out from the pic- 
 ture, with the light on the flesh tints, with the animal hair 
 thick upon it, and with the curved, slender, tapering fin- 
 gers cramped like a claw; and when one follows up the 
 arm to the crouching body, the furtive mouth, the bold, 
 shrewd eyes, and then sees that forehead full of visions, 
 one sees in it more than John Barclay of Sycamore Ridge, 
 more than America, more than Europe. It is the menace 
 of civilization — the danger to the race from the domina- 
 tion of sheer intellect without moral restraint. 
 
 General Ward, who was on the committee that received 
 the picture fifteen years after it was painted, stood looking 
 at it the morning it was hung there on the turn of the 
 stairs. As the light fell mercilessly upon it, the general, 
 white-haired, white-necktied, clean-shaven, and lean-faced, 
 gazed at the portrait for a long time, and then said to his 
 son Neal who stood beside him, " And Samson wist not 
 that the Lord had departed from him." 
 
 It will pay one to stop a day in Sycamore Ridge to see 
 that picture — though he does not know John Barclay, 
 and only understands the era that made him, and gave him 
 that refined, savage, cunning, grasping hand. 
 
 Barclay stopped a week in Washington on his return from 
 Europe the year that picture was painted, made a draft for 
 fifty thousand dollars on the National Provisions Company 
 to cover " legal expenses," and came straight home to Syca- 
 more Ridge. He was tired of cities, he told Colonel Cul- 
 
278 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 pepper, who met_ Barclay at the post-office the morning he 
 returned, with his arms full of newspapers. " I want to 
 hear the old mill. Colonel," said Barclay, " to smell the 
 grease down in the guts of her, and to get my hair full 
 of flour again." When he had gorged himself for two 
 days, he wired Bemis to come to the Ridge, and Barclay 
 and Bemis sat on the dam one evening until late bedtime, 
 considering many things. As they talked, Barclay found 
 that a plan for the reorganization of the Provisions Com- 
 pany was growing in his mind, and he talked it out as 
 it grew. 
 
 " Lige," he said, as he leaned with his elbows on a rock 
 behind him, "the trouble with the company as it now 
 stands is that it's too palpable. There's too much to levy 
 on — too much in sight; too much physical property. 
 How would it do to sell all these mills and elevators, and 
 use the company as a kind of a cream skimmer — a profit 
 shop — to market the products of the mills ? " He paused 
 a moment, and Bemis, who knew he was not expected to 
 reply, flipped pebbles into the stream. Barclay changed 
 his position slightly and began to pick stones out of the 
 crevices, and throw the stones into the water. " That's 
 the thing to do — go ahead and sell every dollar's worth 
 of assets the company's got — I'll take the mill here. I 
 couldn't get along without that. Then we'll buy the 
 products of the mills at cost of the millers, and let them 
 get their profits back as individual holders of our stock. 
 Our company will handle the Door Strip — buy it and sell 
 it — and if any long-nosed reformer gets to snooping 
 around the mills, he'U find they are making only a living 
 profit ; and as for us — any state grain commissioner or 
 board of commissioners who wanted to examine us could 
 do so, and what'd he find ? Simply that we're buying our 
 products at cost of the millers and selling at the market 
 price — sometimes at a loss, sometimes at a profit; and 
 what if we do handle all the grain and grain products in 
 the United States? They can't show that we are hurt- 
 ing anything. I tell you there's getting to be too much 
 snooping now in the state and federal governments. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 279 
 
 Have you got any fellow in your office who can fix up a 
 charter that will let us buy and sell grain, and also sell 
 the Barclay Economy Strip ? " 
 
 Bemis nodded. 
 
 " Then, damn 'em, let 'em go on with their commis- 
 sioners and boards and legislative committees ; they can't 
 catch us. There's no law against the railroads that ship 
 our stuff buying the Economy Door Strip, is there ? You 
 bet there isn't. And we're entitled to a good round in- 
 ventor's profit, ain't we ? You bet we are. You go ahead 
 and get up that reorganization, and I'll put it through. 
 Say, Lige — " Barclay chuckled as a recollection flashed 
 across his mind— "you know I've made some of our 
 Northwest senators promise to make you a federal judge. 
 That's one of the things I did last week ; I thought 
 maybe sometime we'd need a federal judge as one of the 
 — what do you call it — the hereditaments thereunto ap- 
 pertaining of the company." Bemis opened his eyes in 
 astonishment, and Barclay grunted in disgust as he went 
 on : " Of course we can't get you appointed from this 
 state — that's clear — but they think we can work it 
 through in the City — as soon as there is a vacancy — or 
 make a new district. How would you like that ? Judge 
 Bemis — say, that sounds all right, doesn't it ? " 
 
 Barclay rose and stretched his legs and arms. " Well, 
 I must be going — Mrs. Barclay and my mother want to 
 hear the new organ over in the Congregational Church. 
 It's a daisy — Colonel Culpepper, amongst hands, skir- 
 mished up three thousand. They let me pick it out, and 
 I had to put up another thousand myself to get the kind 
 I wanted. Are you well taken care of at the hotel ? " 
 When Bemis explained that he had the bridal chamber, 
 the two men clambered up the bank of the stream, crossed 
 the bridge, and at his gate Barclay said : " Now, I'll sleep 
 on this to-night, — this reorganization, — and then I'll 
 write you a letter to-morrow, covering all that I've said, 
 and you can fix up a tentative charter and fire it down — 
 and say, Lige, figure out what a modest profit on all the 
 grain and grain produce business of the country would 
 
280 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 be — say about two and a haif per cent, and make the 
 capitalization of the reorganization fit that. We'll get 
 the real profits out of the Door Strip, and can fix that up 
 in the books. We'll show the reformers a trick or two." 
 
 It was a warm night, and when the organ recital was 
 over, John and Jane Barclay, after the custom of the 
 town, sat on a terrace in front of the house talking of 
 the day's events. Music always made John babble. 
 
 " Jane," he asked suddenly, " Jane — when does a man 
 begin to grow old? Here I am past forty. I used to 
 think when a man was forty he was middle-aged; every 
 five years I have advanced my idea of what an old man 
 was; when I was fifteen, I thought a man was getting 
 along when he was thirty. When I was twenty-five, I 
 regarded forty as the beginning of the end ; when I was 
 thirty, I put the limit of activity at forty-five ; five years 
 ago I moved it up to fifty; and to-day I have jumped it to 
 sixty. It seems to me, Jane, that I'm as much of a boy 
 as ever ; all this talk about my being a man puzzles me. 
 What's this Provisions Company but a game? And I'm 
 going to play another game ; I'm going to get grain and 
 grain produce organized, and then I'm going to tackle 
 meat. In ten years I'll have the packing-houses where I 
 have the mills ; but it's just play — and it's a lot of fun." 
 
 He was silent a moment. Jane did not disturb his rev- 
 eries. She understood, without exactly putting her feel- 
 ing into language, that she was being talked at, not talked 
 to. 
 
 " Say, Jane," he exclaimed, " wasn't that ' Marche Triom- 
 phante to-night great ? " He hummed a bar from the mo- 
 tif, "That's it — my — " he cried, hitting his chair arm 
 with his fist, " but that's a big thing — almost good enough 
 for Wagner to have done ; big and insistent and strong. 
 I'm getting to like music with go to it — with bang and 
 brass. Wagner does it ; honest, Jane, when I hear his 
 trombones coming into a theme, I get ideas enough to 
 give the whole force in the office nervous prostration for a 
 month. To-night when that thing was swelling up like a 
 great tidal wave of music rolling in, I worked out a big 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 281 
 
 idea ; I'm going to sell all the mills and factories back to 
 the millers for our stock, and when I own every dollar of 
 our stock, I'm going to double the price of it to them 
 and sell it back to them ; and if they haggle about it, I'll 
 build a new mill across the track from every man-jack 
 who tries to give me any funny business — I'll show 'em. 
 That reorganization ought to clean up millions for us in 
 the next year. What a lot of fun it all is 1 I used to 
 think old Jay Gould was some pumpkins ; but if we get 
 this reorganization through, I'll go down there and buy 
 the Gould outfit and sell 'em for old iron." 
 
 The current of his thoughts struck under language, 
 as a prairie stream sometimes hides from its surface bed. 
 After a time Jane said: "Grandma Barclay thought the 
 ' Marche Funebre ' was the best thing the man did. I 
 heard the Wards speaking of it in the vestibule; and 
 Molly, who held my hand through it, nearly squeezed it 
 off — poor girl; but she looks real well these days." 
 Jane paused a moment and added : " Did you notice the 
 colonel ? How worn and haggard he looks — he seems 
 broken so. They say he is in trouble. Couldn't we help 
 him ? " 
 
 Her husband did not reply at once. Finally he recalled 
 his wandering wits and answered: " Oh, I don't know, 
 Jane. He'll pull through, I guess." Then he reverted 
 to the music, which was still in his head. " He played 
 the Largo well — didn't he ? That was made for the 
 organ. But some way I like the big things. The Largo 
 is like running a little twenty-horse-power steam mill, 
 and selling to the home grocers. But ' The Ride of the 
 Valkyries,' with those screaming discords of brass, and 
 those magnificent crashes of harmony — Jane, I've got an 
 idea — Wagner's work is the National Provisions Company 
 set to music, and I'm the first trombone." He laughed and 
 reached for his wife's hand and kissed it; then he rose 
 and stood before her, admiring her in the starlight, as he 
 exclaimed : " And you are those clarinets, sweet and clear 
 and delicious, that make a man want to cry for sheer joy. 
 Come on, my dear — isn't it very late ? " And the little 
 
282 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 man limped across the grass up the steps and into the 
 house. The two stopped a moment while he listened to 
 the roar of the water and the rumble of the mill, that 
 glowed in the night like a phosphorescent spectre. He 
 squeezed her hand and cried out in exultation, " It's great, 
 isn't it — the finest mill on this planet, my dear — do you 
 realize that ? " And then they turned into the house. 
 
 The next morning he kept two stenographers busy ; he 
 was spinning the web of his reorganization, bringing about 
 a condition under which men were compelled to exchange 
 their stock in the National Provisions Company for their 
 former property. He was a crafty little man, and his ways 
 were sometimes devious, even though to outward view his 
 advertised and proclaimed methods were those of a pirate. 
 So when he had dictated a day's work to two girls, he 
 went nosing through the mill, loafing in the engine rooms, 
 looking at the water wheel, or running about rafters in the 
 fifth floor like a great gray rat. As he went he hummed 
 little tunes under his breath or whistled between his teeth, 
 with his lips apart. After luncheon he unlocked a row- 
 boat, and took a cane pole and rowed himself a mile up 
 the mill-pond, and brought home three good-sized bass. 
 Thus did he spend his idle moments around the Ridge. 
 That night he thumped his piano and longed for a pipe 
 organ. The things he tried to play were noisy, and his 
 mother, sitting in the gloaming near him, sighed and said : 
 "John, play some of the old pieces — the quieter ones; 
 pl?iy 'The Long and Weary Day' and some of the old 
 songs. Have you forgotten the 'Bohemian Girl' and 
 those Schubert songs ? " 
 
 His fingers felt their way back to his boyhood, and 
 when he ceased playing, he stood by his mother a moment, 
 and patted her cheeks as he hummed in German the first 
 two lines of the "Lorelei," and then said, "We have 
 come a long way since then — eh, mother? " She held his 
 hand to her cheek and then to her lips, but she did not 
 reply. He repeated it, " A long, long way from the little 
 home of one room here ! " After a pause he added, 
 "Would you like to go back?" 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 283 
 
 A tear fell on the hand against her cheek. He felt hei 
 jaw quiver, and then she said, " Oh, yes, John — yes, I 
 believe I would." 
 
 He knew she did not care for his wealth, and there were 
 many things about his achievements that he felt she might 
 misunderstand; her attitude often puzzled him. So he 
 sat a moment on her chair arm, and said, " Well, mother, 
 I have done my best." It was a question more than a 
 protest. 
 
 " Yes, dear," she replied, " I know you have — you have 
 done your best — your very best. But I think it is in 
 your blood." 
 
 "What?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, all this," she answered ; " all this money-getting. 
 I am foolish, John, but some way, I want my little boy 
 back — the one who used to sit with me so long ago, and 
 play on the guitar and sing ' Sleeping, I Dream, Love.' 
 I don't like your new music, John ; it's so like clanging 
 cars, and crashing hammers, and the groans of men at toU." 
 
 " But this is a new world, mother — a new world that is 
 different," protested the son, impatiently. 
 
 And the mother answered sadly as ^e looked up at him : 
 " I know, dear — it is a new world ; but the same old God 
 moves it; and the same faith in God and love of man 
 move men that always have moved them, and always will 
 move them ; there are as many things to live and die for 
 now, as when your father gave up his life, John — just as 
 many." They rocked together in silence — the boy of 
 forty and the mother of sixty. Finally she said, " John- 
 nie, play me ' Ever of Thee I'm fondly Thinking,' won't 
 you, before you go?" 
 
 He sat with his foot on the soft pedal and played the 
 old love song, and as he played his mother wandered over 
 hills he had never seen, through fields he had never known, 
 and heard a voice in the song he might never hear, even 
 in his dreams. When he finished, she stood beside him 
 and cried with all the passion her years could summon: 
 " Oh, John — John — it will come out some way — some 
 day. It's in your soul, and God in His own way will 
 
284 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 bring it out." He did not understand her then, and it 
 was many years before he prayed her prayer. 
 
 The next day he went to the City and plunged into his 
 work, and the Ridge and its people and the prayers of his 
 mother became to him only as a dream that comes in the 
 night and fades in the day. Even the shabby figure of 
 Colonel Martin Culpepper, with his market basket on his 
 arm, waving a good-by as the Barclay private car pulled 
 out of the Sycamore Ridge depot, disappeared from his 
 mind, though that pathetic image haunted him for nearly 
 a hundred miles as he rode, and he could not shake it off 
 until he immersed himself in the roar of the great City. 
 He could not know that he had any remote relation with 
 the worry in the old man's eyes. Nor did Martin Cul- 
 pepper try to shift his load to John. He knew where the 
 blame was, and he tried to take it like a man. But in 
 reckoning the colonel's account, may not something be 
 charged off to the account of John Barclay, who to save 
 himself and accomplish the Larger Good — which meant 
 the establishment of his own fortunes — sent Adrian 
 Brownwell in those days in the seventies with the money 
 to the colonel, not so much to help the colonel as to save 
 John Barclay ? The Larger Good is a slow, vicious, accumu- 
 lative poison, and heaven only knows when it wiU come 
 out and kill. 
 
 It was a week after the pipe-organ recital at the church, 
 when Mary Barclay, doing her day's marketing, ran into 
 Colonel Culpepper standing rather forlornly in front of 
 McHurdie's shop. He bowed to her with elaborate 
 graciousness, and she stopped to speak with him. In a 
 moment he was saying, " So you have not heard, are un- 
 aware, entirely ignorant, in point of fact, of my misfor- 
 tunes ? " She assented, and the colonel went on : " Well, 
 madam, the end has come ; I have played out my hand ; I 
 have strutted my hour upon the stage, and now I go off. 
 Old Mart Culpepper, my dear, is no longer the leading 
 citizen, nor our distinguished capitalist, not even the 
 hustling real estate agent of former days — just plain old 
 Mart Culpepper, I may say. He who was, is now a haS" 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 285 
 
 been, — just an old man without a business." He saw 
 that she did not appreciate what had happened, and he 
 smiled gently and said : " Closed up, my dear madam. A 
 receiver was appointed a few minutes ago for the Cul- 
 pepper Mortgage Company, and I gave him the key. 
 Failure — failure — " he repeated the word bitterly — 
 "failure is written over the door of this life." 
 
 Mary Barclay grasped his big fat hand and pressed it, 
 and shook her head. Something in her throat choked her, 
 and she could not speak at first. The two stood a moment 
 in silence before the woman said emphatically, "No — 
 no 1 Martin Culpepper, God is keeping your books I " 
 
 The shabby old man stood uncovered, a smile quivering 
 about his eyes. "Maybe so, Mary Barclay, maybe so," 
 he said. The smile fell into his countenance as he added, 
 " That is why I have gone so long without a settlement ; 
 with my account so badly overdrawn, too." Then he 
 turned to go and walked as lightly down the street as a 
 man could walk, broken before his time with the weight 
 of a humiliation upon him and a fear greater than his 
 shame burning in his fluttering old h'.drt. 
 
 And now if you are reading this story to be in the 
 company of the rich Mr. Barclay, to feel the madness of 
 his millions, to enjoy the vain delirium of his power, skip 
 the rest of this chapter. For it tells of a shabby time in 
 the lives of all of the threadbare people who move in this 
 tale. Even John Barclay sees the seams and basting 
 threads of his life here, and as for the others, — the colonel 
 and Jake and the general and Watts, and even Molly, — 
 what do these people mean to you, these common people, 
 in their old clothes, with their old hearts and their rusty 
 sins and their homely sorrows? Milord and his lady will 
 not scamper across these pages ; no rooms with rich ap- 
 pointments will gladden your eyes, and perhaps in the 
 whole book you will not find a man in evening dress nor 
 a woman in a dinner gown. And now the only thing 
 there is to offer is Jake Dolan, aged fifty-seven, with scanty, 
 grizzled hair, sitting in his shirt-sleeves in the basement 
 of the court-house, with the canvas cot he sleeps on for a 
 
286 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 chair, mending his blue army coat. Beside him on the 
 bed are his trousers, thin, almost worn through, patched 
 as to the knees and as to other important places, but clean 
 and without a loose thread hanging from them. Surely 
 an old Irishman mending an old army coat under a dusty 
 electric light bulb in the basement of a court-house, 
 wherein he is janitor by grace of the united demand of 
 Henry Schnitzler Post of the G.A.R. No. 432, is not 
 a particularly inspiring picture. But he has bitten the 
 last thread with his teeth, and is putting away the sewing 
 outfit. And now Mr. Dolan, from the drawer of a little 
 table beside the cot, — a table with Bob Hendricks' picture, 
 framed in plush, sitting on the top, — now Mr. Dolan takes 
 from the drawer a tablet of writing paper printed by the 
 county. It is his particular pride, that writing paper. 
 For upon it at the top is the picture of the new one-hundred- 
 thousand-dollar court-house, and beside the court-house 
 picture are these words : " Office of Jacob Dolan, Custo- 
 dian of Public Buildings and Grounds of Garrison 
 County." Mr. Dolan will be writing a letter, and so 
 long as it begins wl^h " Dear Sir," and nothing more en- 
 dearing, surely we may look over his shoulder while he 
 writes, — even though it is bad form. And as Mr. Dolan 
 will be writing to "Robert Hendricks, care of Cook's 
 Hotel, Cairo, Egypt," — which he spells with an "i," but 
 let that pass, and let some of his literary style and con- 
 struction pass with it, — and as he will be writing to Mr. 
 Hendricks, perhaps Miss Nancy may do well to go sit in 
 the corridor and put her fingers in her ears while we read. 
 For Mr. Dolan is an emotional man, and he is breathing 
 hard, ^.nd by the way he grabs his pen and jabs it into the 
 ink one can see that he is angry. 
 
 « Dear Sir (begins Mr. Dolan) : I take my pen in hand to answer 
 yours of this date from New York and would have written you 
 anyhow, as there is much on my mind and I would cable you, but I 
 can't, being for the moment short of funds. I write to say, Robert, 
 that we have Mart Culpepper in jail — right across the hall. He 
 came in at nine o'clock to-night, and the damn Pop judge put his 
 bail at $15,999 to cover his alleged shortage, and the stinker won't 
 accept us old boys on the bond — Phil and Watts and Os and the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 287 
 
 Company ' C ' boys I could get before the judge went to bed, and Gabe 
 Carnine, the gut, would not sign — would not sign old Mart's bond, 
 sir, and I hope to be in hell with a fishpole some day poking him 
 down every time his slimy fingers get on the rim of the kettle. But 
 we'll have him out in the morning, if every man in Garrison County 
 has to go on the bond. They say Mart received money to pay four or 
 five mortgages due to a Vermont Bank, and they sent a detective here 
 about a month ago and worked up the case, and closed his business 
 to-day and waited until to-night to arrest him. I've just come from 
 Mart. It's hell. Hoping this wUl find you enjoying the same I beg 
 my dear sir to sign myself 
 
 "Your ob't 8'r'v't J. Dolan." 
 
 When Jacob Dolan finished his letter, he addressed the 
 envelope and hurried away to mail it. And so long as 
 we are here in the court-house, and the custodian is gone, 
 would you like to step in and see Martin Culpepper across 
 the hall ? It is still in the basement now, and if you are 
 quiet, so quiet that the slipping patter of a rat's foot on 
 the floor comes to you, a sound as of a faint whining wiU 
 come to you also. There — now it comes again. No, it 
 is not a dog ; it is a man — a man in his agony. Shall 
 we open the great iron door, and go into the cell room ? 
 Why, not even you. Miss Nancy — not even you, who love 
 tears so ? You would not see much — only a man, with 
 his coat and vest off, an old man with a rather shaggy, ill- 
 kept chin whisker and not the cleanest shirt in the world 
 — though it is plaited, and once was a considerable gar- 
 ment. And the man wearing it, who lies prostrate upon 
 his face, once was a considerable man. But he is old 
 now, old and broken, and if he should look up, as you 
 stepped in the corridor before him, you would see a 
 great face ripped and scarred by fear and guilt, and eyes 
 that look so piteously at you — eyes of a man who cannot 
 understand why the blow has fallen, surprised eyes with a 
 horror in them ; and if he should speak, you will find a 
 voice rough and mushy with asthma. The heart that has 
 throbbed so many nights in fear and the breath that has 
 been held for so many footsteps, at last have turned their 
 straining into disease. No — let's not go in. He bade 
 his daughter go, and would not see his wife, and they have 
 
288 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 sent to the City for his son, — so let us not bother him, for 
 to-morrow he will be out on bail. But did you hear that 
 fine, trembling, animal whine — that cry that wrenched 
 itself out of set teeth like a living thing ? Come on — let 
 us go and find Jake, and if he is taking a drink, don't 
 blame him too much. Miss Nancy — how would you like 
 to sleep in that room across the corridor ? 
 
 At nine o'clock the next morning two hundred men had 
 signed the bond the judge required, and Martin Cul- 
 pepper shambled home with averted eyes. They tried to 
 carry him on their shoulders, thinking it would cheer him 
 up ; and from the river wards of the town scores came to 
 give him their hands. But he shook himself away from 
 them, like a great whipped dog, and walked slowly up the 
 hill, and turned into Lincoln Avenue alone. 
 
 John Barclay heard the news of the colonel's trouble as he 
 stepped from his private car in the Sycamore Ridge yards 
 that morning, and Jane went to the Culpepper home with- 
 out stopping at her own. That afternoon, Molly Brown- 
 well knocked at Barclay's office door in the mill, and went 
 in without waiting for him to open it. She was pale and 
 haggard, and she sat down before he could speak to her. 
 
 " John," she said in a dead voice that smote his heart, 
 " I have come for my reward now. I never thought'^ I'd 
 ask it, John, but last night I thought it all out, and I 
 don't believe it's begging." 
 
 " No," he replied quietly, " it's not. I am sure — " 
 
 But she did not let him finish. She broke in with : 
 " Oh, I don't want any of your money; I want my own 
 money — money that you got when you sold me into bond- 
 age, John Barclay — do you remember when?" She 
 cried the last words in a tremulous little voice, and then 
 caught herself, and went on before he could put into 
 words the daze in his face. " Let me tell you ; do you 
 remember the day you called me up into your office and 
 asked me to hold Adrian in town to save the wheat com- 
 pany ? Yes, you do — you know you do ! And you 
 remember that you played on my love for Bob, and my 
 duty to father. Well, I saved you, didn't I ? " 
 
 " Yes, you did, Molly," Barclay replied. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 289 
 
 She stared a moment at the framed pictures of mill 
 designs on the wall, and at the wheat samples on the long 
 table near her, and did not speak; nor did he. She 
 finally broke the silence : " Well, I saved you, but what 
 about father — " her voice broke into a sob — " and Bob 
 — Jane has told you what Bob and I have been — and 
 what about me — what have you taken from me in these 
 twenty years ? Oh, John, John, what a fearful wreck we 
 have made of life — you with your blind selfishness, and 
 I with my weakness I Did you know, John, that the 
 money that father borrowed that day, twenty years ago, 
 of Adrian, to lend to you, is the very money that sent him 
 to jail last night ? I guess he — he took what wasn't his 
 to pay it back." Her face twitched, and she was losing 
 control of her voice. Barclay stepped to the door and 
 latched it. She watched him and shook her head sadly. 
 " You needn't be afraid, John — I'm not going to make a 
 scene." 
 
 " It's all right, Molly," said Barclay. " I want to help 
 you — you know that. I'm sorry, Molly — infinitely 
 sorry." 
 
 She looked at him for a moment in silence, and then 
 said : " Yes, John, I'll give you credit for that; I think 
 you're as sorry as a selfish man like you can be. But are 
 you sorry enough to go to jail a pauper, like father, or 
 wander over the earth alone, like Bob, or come and beg for 
 money, like me ? " Then she caught herself quickly and 
 cried : " Only it's not begging, John — it's my own ; it's 
 the price you got when you sold me into bondage ; it's 
 the price of my soul, and I need it now. Those people 
 only want their money — that is all." 
 
 "Yes," he replied, "I suppose that is all they want." 
 He drummed on his desk a moment and then asked, 
 "Does your father know how much it is?" 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " I found in his desk at the house 
 last night a paper on which he had been figuring — poor 
 father — all the night before. AU the night before — " 
 she repeated, and then sobbed, " Poor father — all the 
 night before. He knew it was coming. He knew the 
 
290 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 detective was here. He told me to-day that the sum he 
 had there was correct. It is sixteen thousand five hun- 
 dred and forty-three dollars. But he doesn't know I'm 
 here, John. I told him I had some money of my own — 
 some I'd had for years — and I have — oh, I have, John 
 Barclay — I have." She looked up at him with the pallid 
 face stained with fresh tears and asked, " I have — I 
 have — haven't I, John, haven't I ? " 
 
 He put his elbows on the desk and sank his head in his 
 hands and sighed, " Yes, Molly — yes, you have." 
 
 They sat in silence until the roar of the waters and the 
 murmur of the wheels about them came into the room. 
 Then the woman rose to go. " Well, John," she said, " I 
 suppose one shouldn't thank a person for giving her her 
 own — but I do, John. Oh, it's like blood money to me — 
 but father — I can't let father suffer." 
 
 She walked to the door, he stepped to unlatch it, and 
 she passed out without saying good-by. When she was 
 gone, he slipped the latch, and sat down with his hands 
 gripping the table before him. As he sat there, he looked 
 across the years and saw some of the havoc he had made. 
 There was no shirking anything that he saw. A footfall 
 passing the door made him start as if he feared to be 
 caught in some guilty act. Yet he knew the door was 
 locked. He choked a little groan behind his teeth, and 
 then, reached for the top of his desk, pulled down the 
 rolling cover, and limped quickly out of the room — as 
 though he were leaving a corpse. What he saw was the 
 ghost of the Larger Good, mocking him through the veil 
 of the past, and asking him such questions as only a man's 
 soul may hear and not resent. 
 
 He walked over the mill for a time, and then calling his 
 stenographers from their room, dictated them blind and 
 himself dumb with details of a deal he was putting through 
 to get control of the cracker companies of the country. 
 When he finished, the sunset was glaring across the water 
 through the window in front of him, and he had laid his 
 ghost. But Molly Brownwell had her check, and her 
 father was saved. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 291 
 
 That evening the colonel sat with Watts McHurdie, 
 on the broad veranda of the Culpepper home, and as the 
 moon came out, General Ward wandered up the walk and 
 Jake Dolan came singing down the street about " the relic 
 of old dacincy — the hat me father wore." Perhaps he 
 had one drink in him, and perhaps two, or maybe three, 
 but he clicked the gate behind him, and seeing the three 
 men on the veranda, he called out : — 
 
 " Hi, you pig-stealing Kansas soldiers, haven't ye heard 
 the war is over ? " And then he carolled : " Oh, can't get 
 'em up. Oh, can't get 'em up, Oh, can't get 'em up in the 
 mornin' — Get up, you " — but the rest of the song, being 
 devoted to the technical affairs of war, and ending with a 
 general exhortation to the soldier to " get into your 
 breeches," would give offence to persons of sensitive 
 natures, and so may as well be omitted from this story. 
 
 There was an awkward pause when Dolan came on the 
 veranda. The general had just tried to break the ice, 
 but Dolan was going at too high a speed to be checked. 
 
 " Do you know," he asked, " what I always remember 
 when I hear that call ? You do not. I'll tell you. 'Twas 
 the morning of the battle of Wilson's Creek, and Mart and 
 me was sleeping under a tree, when the bugler of the 
 Johnnies off somewhere on the hill he begins to crow that, 
 and it wakes Mart up, and he rolls over on me and he 
 says : ' Jake,' he says, or maybe 'twas me says, ' Mart,* 
 says I — anyway, one of us says, ' Shut up your gib, you 
 flannel-mouthed mick,' he says, ' and let me pull my dream 
 through to the place where I find the money,' he says. 
 And I says, ' D'ye know what I'm goin' to do when I get 
 home ? ' says I. ' No,' says he, still keen for that money ; 
 ' no,' says he, ' unless it is you're going to be hanged by 
 way of diversion,' he says. ' I'm going to hire a bugler,' 
 says I. 'What fer — in the name of all the saints?' 
 says he. ' Well,' says I, ' I'm going to ask him to blow 
 his damn horn under my window every morning at five 
 o'clock,' I says, ' and then I'm going to get up and poke 
 my head out of the window and say : " Mister, you can get 
 me up in the army, but on this occasion would you be 
 
292 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 obliging enough to go to hell"! ' And Mart, seeing tha\ 
 the money was gone from his dream, he turns over and 
 wallops me with the blanket till I was merely a palpitating 
 mass. That was a great battle, though, boys — a great 
 battle." 
 
 And then they shouldered arms and showed how fields 
 were won. Boom ! went Sigel's guns out of the past, and 
 crash! came the Texas cavalry, and the whoop of the 
 Louisiana Pelicans rang in their ears. They marched south 
 after Hindman, and then came back with Grant to Vicks- 
 burg, where they fought and bled and died. The general 
 left them and went east, where he "deployed on our 
 right " and executed flank moTcments, and watched 
 Pickett's column come fling itself to death at Gettysburg. 
 And Watts McHurdie rode with the artillery through the 
 rear of the rebel lines at Pittsburg Landing, and when 
 the rebel officer saw the little man's bravery, and watched 
 him making for the Union lines bringing three guns, he 
 waved his hat and told his soldiers not to shoot at that 
 boy. The colonel took a stick and marked out on the floor 
 our position at Antietam, and showed where the reserves 
 were supposed to be and how the enemy masked his guns 
 behind that hill, and we planted our artillery on the opposite 
 ridge; and he marched with the infantry and lay in ambush 
 while the enemy came marching in force through the wood. 
 In time Watts McHurdie was talking to Lincoln in the 
 streets of Richmond, and telling for the hundredth time 
 what Lincoln said of the song and how he had sung it. 
 But who cares now what Lincoln said ? It was something 
 kind, you may be sure, with a tear and a laugh in it, and 
 the veterans laughed, while their eyes grew moist as they 
 always did when Watts told it. Then they fell to carnage 
 again - a fierce fight against time, against the moment when 
 they must leave their old companion alone. Up hills they 
 charged and down dales, and the moon rose high, and cast 
 its shadow to the eastward before they parted. First 
 Dolan edged away, and then the general went, waving his 
 hand military fashion; and the colonel returned the salute. 
 When the gate had clanged. Watts rose to go. He did not 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 293 
 
 speak, nor did the colonel. Arm in arm, they walked 
 down the steps together, and halfway down the garden 
 path the colonel rested his hand on the little man's shoul- 
 der as they walked in silence At the gate they saw each 
 other's tears, and the little man's voice failed him when the 
 colonel said, "Well, good-by, comrade — good night." 
 So Watts turned and ran, while the colonel, for the first 
 time in his manhood, loosed the cords of his sorrow and 
 stood alone in the moonlight with upturned face, swaying 
 like an old tree in a storm. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 And now those who have avoided the gray unpainted 
 shame of these unimportant people of the Ridge may here 
 take up again for a moment the trailing clouds of glory 
 that shimmer over John Barclay's ofBce in the big City. 
 For here there is the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal 
 of great worldly power. Here sits John Barclay, a little 
 gray-haired, gray-clad, lynx-eyed man, in a big light 
 room at the corner of a tower high over the City in the 
 Corn Exchange Building, the brain from which a million 
 nerves radiate that run all over the world and move 
 thousands of men. Forty years before, when John was 
 playing in the dust of the road leading up from the Syca- 
 more, no king in all the world knew so much of the day's 
 doings as John knows now, sitting there at the polished 
 mahogany table with the green blotting paper upon it, 
 under the green vase adorned with the red rose. A blight 
 may threaten the wheat in Argentine, and John Barclay 
 knows every cloud that sails the sky above that wheat, 
 and when the cloud bursts into rain he sighs, for it means 
 something to him, though heaven only knows what, and 
 we and heaven do not care. But a dry day in India Ox 
 a wet day in Russia or a cloudy day in the Dakotas are 
 all taken into account in the little man's plans. And if 
 princes quarrel and kings grow weary of peace, and money 
 bags refuse them war, John Barclay knows it and puts 
 the episode into figures on the clean white pad of paper 
 before him. 
 
 It is a privilege to be in this office; one passes three 
 doors to get here, and even at the third door our statesmen 
 often cool their toes. Mr. Barclay is about to admit one 
 now. And when Senator Myton comes in, deferentially 
 of course, to tell Mr. Barclay the details of the long fight 
 in executive session which ended in the confirmation by the 
 
 294 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 295 
 
 senate of Lige Bemis as a federal judge, the little gray 
 man waves the senator to a chair, and runs his pencil up a 
 column of figures, presses a button, writes a word on a 
 sheet of paper, and when the messenger appears, hands 
 the paper to him and says, " For Judge Bemis." 
 
 " I have just dismissed a Persian satrap," expands Bar- 
 clay, " who won't let his people use our binders ; that 
 country eventually will be a great field for our Mediterra- 
 nean branch." 
 
 Myton is properly impressed. For a man who can 
 make a senator out of Red River clay and a federal judge 
 out of Lige Bemis is a superhuman creature, and Myton 
 does not doubt Barclay's power over satraps. 
 
 When the business of the moment between the two men 
 is done, Barclay, rampant with power, says: "Myton" 
 (it is always " Myton," never " Senator," with Barclay ; 
 he finds it just as well to let his inferiors know their 
 relation to the universe), "Myton, I ran across a queer 
 thing last week when I took over that little jerkwater 
 New England coast line. The Yankees are a methodical 
 lot of old maids. I find they had been made agents of a lot 
 of the big fellows — insurance people, packing-houses, and 
 transcontinental railroads — two of my lines were paying 
 them, though I'd forgotten about it until I looked it up 
 — and the good old sewing society had card-indexed the 
 politics of the United States — the whole blessed coun- 
 try, by state and congressional districts. I took over 
 the chap who runs it, and I've got the whole kit in the 
 offices here now. It's great. If a man bobs up for some- 
 thing in Florida or Nebraska, we just run him down on 
 the card index, and there he stands — everything he ever 
 did, every interview he ever gave, every lawsuit he ever 
 had, every stand he ever took in politics — right there 
 in the index, in an envelope ready for use, and all the 
 mean things ever written about him. I simply can't 
 make a mistake now in getting the wrong kind of fellows 
 in. Commend me to a Yankee or a Jap for pains. I can 
 tell you in five minutes just what influences are behind 
 every governor, congressman, senator, judge, most of the 
 
296 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 legislators in every state, the federal courts clear up to 
 the Supreme Court. There was a man appointed on that 
 court less than a dozen years ago who swapped railroad 
 receiverships like a tin peddler with his senator for his 
 job, when he was on the circuit bench. And. he was con- 
 siderable of a judge in the bean country for a time. Just 
 to verify my index, I asked Bemis about this judge, 
 ' Lige,' I said, ' was Judge So-and-So a pretty honest 
 judge?' ' Oh, hell,' says Lige, and that was all I could 
 get out of him. So I guess they had him indexed right." 
 And Barclay rattles on; he has become vociferous and 
 loquacious, and seems to like to hear the roar of his voice 
 in his head. The habit has been growing on him. 
 
 But do not laugh at the blindness of John Barclay^ sit- 
 ting there in his power, admiring himself, boasting in the 
 strength of his card-index to Senator Myton. For the 
 tide of his power was running in, and soon it would be 
 high tide with John Barclay — high tide of his power, 
 high tide of his fame, high tide of his pride. So let us 
 watch the complacent smile crack his features as he sits 
 listening to Senator Myton : " Mr. Barclay, do you know, 
 I sometimes think that Providence manifests itself in 
 minds like yours, even as in the days of old it was mani- 
 fest in the hearts of the prophets. In those days it was 
 piety that fitted the heart for higher things ; to-day it is 
 business. You and a score of men like you in America 
 are intrusted with the destiny of this republic, as surely as 
 the fate of the children of Israel was in the hands of 
 Moses and Aaron I " 
 
 Barclay closed his eyes a moment, in contemplation of 
 the figure, and then broke out in a roaring laugh, " Hanno 
 is a god I Hanno is a god ! — get out of here, Henry 
 Myton, — get out of here, I say — this is my busy day," 
 and he laughed the young senator out of the room. But 
 he sat alone in his office grinning, as over and over in his 
 mind his own words rang, " Hanno is a god I " And the 
 foolish parrot of his other self cackled the phrase in his 
 soul for days and days ! 
 
 It is our high privilege thus to stand close by and watch 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 297 
 
 the wheels of the world go around. In those days of the 
 late nineties Barclay travelled up and down the earth 
 so much in his private car that Jane used to tell Molly 
 BrownweU that living with John was like being a travel- 
 ling man's wife. But Jane did not seem to appreciate her 
 privilege. She managed to stay at home as much as pos- 
 sible, and sometimes he took; the Masons along for com- 
 pany. Mrs. Mason gloried in it, and lived at the great 
 hotels and shopped at the highest-priced antique stores to 
 her heart's delight. Lycurgus' joy was in being inter- 
 viewed, and the Barclay secretaries got so that they could 
 edit the Mason interviews and keep out the poison, and let 
 the old man swell and swell until the people at home thought 
 he must surely burst with importance at the next town. 
 
 One day in the nineties Barclay appropriated a half-mill- 
 ion dollars to advertise " Barclay's Best " and a cracker 
 that he was pushing. When the man who placed the 
 business in the newspaper had gone, Barclay sat looking 
 out of the window and said to his advertising manager : 
 " I've got an idea. Why should I pay a million dollars to 
 irresponsible newspapers ? I won't do it." 
 
 " But we must advertise, Mr. Barclay — you've proved 
 it pays." 
 
 " Yes," he returned, " you bet it pays, and I might just as 
 well get something out of it besides advertising. Take this ; 
 make five copies of it; I'll give you the addresses later." 
 Barclay squared himself to a stenographer to dictate : — 
 
 " Dear Sik : I spend a million dollars a year advertising grain prod- 
 ucts ; you and the packers doubtless spend that much advertising your 
 products and by-products; the railroads spend as much more, and the 
 Oil people probably half as much more. Add the steel products and 
 the lumber products, and we have ten million dollars going into the 
 press of this country. In a crisis we cannot tell how these newspapers 
 ■will treat us. I think we should organize so that we will know exactly 
 where we stand. Therefore it is necessary absolutely to control the 
 trade advertising of this country. A company to take over the five 
 leading advertising agencies could be formed, for half as much as we 
 spend every year, and we could control nine-tenths of the American 
 trade advertising. We could then put an end to any indiscriminate 
 mobbing of corporations by editors. I will be pleased to hear from 
 you further upon this subject." 
 
298 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 A day or two later, when the idea had grown and rami- 
 fied itself in his mind, he talked it all out to Jane and 
 exclaimed, " How will old Phil Ward's God manage 
 to Work it out, as he says, against that proposition? 
 Brains," continued Barclay, " brains — that's what counts 
 in this world. You can't expect the men who dominate 
 this country — who make its wealth, and are responsible 
 for its prosperity, to be at the mercy of a lot of long-nosed 
 reformers who don't know how to cash their own checks." 
 
 How little this rich man knew of the world about him I 
 How circumscribed was his vision 1 With all his goings 
 up and down the earth, with all of his great transactions, 
 with all of his apparent power, how little and sordid was 
 his outlook on life. For he thought he was somebody in 
 this universe, some one of importance, and in his scheme 
 of things he figured out a kind of partnership between him- 
 self and Providence — a partnership to run the world in 
 the interests of John Barclay, and of course, wherever 
 possible, with reasonable dividends to Providence. 
 
 But a miracle was coming into the world. In the un- 
 der-consciousnesses of men, sown God only knows how and 
 when and where, sown in the weakness of a thousand blind 
 prophets, the seeds of righteous wrath at greed like John 
 Barclay's were growing during all the years of his triumph. 
 Men scarcely knew it themselves. Growth is so simple 
 and natural a process that its work is done before its 
 presence is known. And so this arrogant man, this miser- 
 able, little, limping, brass-eyed, leather-skinned man, looked 
 out at the world around him, and did not see the change 
 that was quickening the hearts of his neighbours. 
 
 And yet change was in everything about him. A thou- 
 sand years are as but a watch in the night, and tick, tock, 
 tick, tock, went the great clock, and the dresses of little 
 Jeanette Barclay slipped down, down, down to her shoe- 
 tops, and as the skirts slipped down she went up. And 
 before her father knew it her shoe-tops sank out of sight, 
 and she was a miss at the last of her teens. But he still 
 gave her his finger when they walked out together, though 
 she Wf^ head and shoulders above him. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 299 
 
 One day when she led him to the Banner office to buy 
 some fancy programmes for a party she was giving, he saw 
 her watching young Neal Ward, — youngest son of the 
 general, — who was sitting at a reporter's desk in the office, 
 and the father's quick eyes saw that she regarded the 
 youth as a young man. For she talked so obviously for 
 the Ward boy's benefit that her father, when they went 
 out of the printing-office, took a furtive look at his 
 daughter and sighed and knew what her mother had 
 known for a year. 
 
 " Jeanette," he said that night at dinner, " where's my 
 shot-gun ? " When she told him, he said : " After dinner 
 you get it, load it with salt, and put it in the corner by 
 the front door." Then he added to the assembled family: 
 "For boys — dirty -faced, good-for-nothing, long-legged 
 boys I I'm going to have a law passed making an open 
 season for boys in this place from January first until 
 Christmas." 
 
 Jeanette dimpled and blushed, the family smiled, and 
 her mother said : " WeU, John, there'll be a flock of them 
 at Jeanette's party next week for you to practise on. All 
 the boys and girls in town are coming." 
 
 And after dessert was served the father sat chuckling 
 and grinning and grunting, " Boys — boys," and at inter- 
 vals, " Measly little milk-eyed kids," and again " Boys — 
 boys," while the family nibbled at its cheese. 
 
 Those years when the nineteenth century was nearing 
 its close and when the tide of his fortunes was running 
 in, bringing him power and making him mad with it, 
 were years of change in Sycamore Ridge — in the old as 
 well as in the young. In those years the lilacs bloomed 
 on in the Culpepper yard; and John Barclay did not know 
 it, though forty years before Ellen Culpepper had guarded 
 the first blossoms from those bushes for him. Miss Lucy, 
 his first ideal, went to rest in those years while the boom- 
 ing tide was running in, and he scarcely knew it. Mrs. 
 Culpepper was laid beside Ellen out on the Hill ; and he hardly 
 realized it, though no one in all the town had watched 
 him growing into worldly success with so kindly an eye 
 
300 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 as she. But the tide was roaring in, and John Barclay's 
 whole consciousness was turned toward it ; the real things 
 of life about him, he did not see and could not feel. 
 And so as the century is old the booming tide is full, and 
 John Barclay in his power — a bubble in the Divine con- 
 sciousness, a mere vision in the real world — stands stark 
 mad before his phantasm, dreaming that it is all real, and 
 chattering to his soul, " Hanno is a god." 
 
 And now we must leave John Barclay for the moment, 
 to explain why Neal Dow Ward, son of General Philemon 
 Ward, made his first formal call at the Barclays'. It can- 
 not be gainsaid that young Mr. Ward, aged twenty-one, a 
 senior at Ward University, felt a tingle in his blood that day 
 when he met Miss Jeanette Barclay, aged eighteen, and home 
 for the spring vacation from the state university; and seeing 
 her for the first time with her eyes and her hair and her 
 pretty, strong, wide forehead poking through the cocoon 
 of gawky girlhood, created a distinct impression on young 
 Mr. Ward. 
 
 But in all good faith it should be stated that he did not 
 make his first formal call at the Barclays' of his own ac- 
 cord; for his sister, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Ward, took him. 
 She came home from the Culpeppers' just before supper, 
 laughing until she was red in the face. And what she 
 heard at the Culpeppers', let her tell in her own way to the 
 man of her heart. For Lizzie was her father's child; the 
 four other Ward girls, Mary Livermore, Frances Willard, 
 Belva Lockwood, and Helen Gougar, had climbed to the 
 College Heights and had gone to Ward University, and 
 from that seat of learning had gone forth in the world to 
 teach school. Elizabeth Cady Stanton Ward had remained 
 in the home, after her mother's death filling her mother's 
 vacant place as well as a daughter may. 
 
 " Well, father," said the daughter, as she was putting 
 the evening meal on the table, addressing the general, who 
 sat reading by the window in the dining room, " you 
 should have been at the Culpeppers' when the colonel 
 came home and told us his troubles. It seems that Nellie 
 McHurdie is going to make Watts run for sheriff — for 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 301 
 
 BherifP, father. Imagine Watts heading a posse, or lock- 
 ing any one up 1 And Watts has passed the word to the 
 colonel, and he has passed it to Molly and me, and I am 
 to see Mrs. Barclay, and she is to see Mrs. Gamine to- 
 morrow morning, and they are all to set to work on Nellie 
 and get her to see that it won't do. Poor Watts — the 
 colonel says he is terribly wrought up at the prospect." 
 
 The general folded his paper and smiled as he said: 
 *' Well, I don't know ; Watts was a brave soldier. He 
 would make a good enough sheriff ; but I suppose he 
 doesn't really care for it." 
 
 " Why, no, of course not, father — why should he ? " 
 asked the daughter. " Anyhow, I want you to make Neal 
 go down to Barclays' with me to-night to talk it over 
 with Jane. Neal," she called to the young man who was 
 sitting on the porch with his book on his knee, " Neal, I 
 want you to go to Barclays' with me to-night. Come in 
 now, supper's ready." 
 
 And so it happened that Neal Dow Ward made his first 
 call on Jeanette Barclay with his sister, and they all sat 
 on the porch together that fine spring evening, with the 
 perfume of the lilacs in the air ; and it happened naturally 
 enough that the curious human law of attraction which 
 unites youth should draw the chairs of the two young 
 people together as they talked of the things that interest 
 youth — the parties and the ball-games and the fraterni- 
 ties and sororities, and the freshman picnic and the senior 
 grind ; while the chairs of the two others drew together 
 as they talked of the things which interest women in mid- 
 dle life — the affairs of the town, the troubles of Watts 
 McHurdie, the bereavement of the Culpeppers, the scarcity 
 of good help in the kitchen, the popularity of Max Nordau's 
 " Social Evolution," and the fun in " David Harum." Nor is 
 it strange that after the girl had shown the boy her Pi Phi 
 pin, and he had shown her his Phi Delta shield, they should 
 fall to talking of the new songs, and that they should slip 
 into the big living room of the Barclay home, lighted by 
 the electric lamps in the hall, and that she should sit down 
 to the piano to show him how the new song went. And if 
 
302 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 the moonlight fell across the piano, and upon her face as 
 she sang the little Irish folk-song, all in minors, with her 
 high, trembling, half-formed notes in the upper register, 
 and if she flushed and looked up abashed and had to be 
 teased to go on, — not teased a great deal, but a little, — 
 will you blame the young man if he forgot for a moment 
 that her father was worth such a lot of money, and thought 
 only that she was a beautiful girl, and said so with his 
 eyes and face and hands in the pretty little pause that 
 followed when she ceased singing ? And if to hide her 
 confusion when her heart knew what he thought, she put 
 one foot on the loud pedal of the piano and began singing 
 "O Margery, O Margery," and he sang with her, and if 
 they thrilled just a little as their voices blended in the rol- 
 licking song — what of it? What of it? Was it not 
 natural that lilacs should grow in April ? Was it not 
 natural that Watts McHurdie should dread the white 
 light that beats upon the throne of the sheriff's office? 
 Was it not natural that he should turn to jvomen for pro- 
 tection against one of their sex, and that the women plot- 
 ting for him should have a boy around and having a boy 
 around where there is a girl around, and spring around 
 and lilacs around and a moon and music and joy around, — 
 what is more natural in all this world than that in the fire 
 struck by the simple joy of youth there should be the 
 flutter of unseen wings around, and when the two had 
 finished singing, with something passing between their 
 hearts not in the words, what is more natural than that 
 the girl, half frightened at the thrill in her soul, should 
 say timidly : ^ 
 
 " I think they will miss us out there — don't you ? " as 
 she rose from the piano. 
 
 And if you were a boy again, only twenty-one, to whom 
 millions of money meant nothing, would you not catch the 
 blue eyes of the girl as she looked up at you, in the twi- 
 light of the big room, and answer, " AH right, Jeanette " ? 
 Certainly if you had known a girl all your life, you would 
 call her by her first name, if her father were worth a billion, 
 and would you not continue, emboldened some way by not 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 303 
 
 being frowned upon for calling her Jeanette, though she 
 would have been astonished if you had said Miss Barclay — 
 astonished and maybe a little fearful of your sincerity — 
 would you not continue, after a little pause, repeating your 
 words, "All right, Jeanette — I suppose so — but I don't 
 care — do you?" as you followed her through the door 
 bjack to the moon-lit porch? 
 
 And as you walked home, listening to your elder sister, 
 would you not have time and inclination to wonder from 
 what remote part of this beautiful universe, from what 
 star or what fairy realm, that creature came, whose hair 
 you pulled yesterday, whose legs seem to have been covered 
 with long skirts in the twinkling of an eye, and whose un- 
 related features by some magic had sloughed off, leaving a 
 beautiful face ? Would you not think these things, good 
 kind sir, when you were twenty-one — even though to-day 
 they seem highly improbable thoughts for any one to have 
 who was not stark mad? But if we were not all stark mad 
 sometimes, how would the world go round? If we were 
 not all mad sometimes, who would make our dreams come 
 true? How would visions in thin air congeal into facts, 
 how would the aspirations of the race make history? And 
 if we were all sane all the time, how would the angels ever 
 get babies into the world at all, at all ? 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 " Speaking of lunatics," said Mr. Dolan to Mr. Hen- 
 dricks one June night, a few weeks after the women had 
 persuaded Mrs. McHurdie not to drag the poet into 
 politics, — " speaking of lunatics, you may remember that I 
 was born in Boston, and 'twas my duty as a lad to drive 
 the Cambridge car, and many a time I have heard Mr. 
 Holmes the poet and Mr. Emerson the philosopher dis- 
 cussing how the world was made ; whether it was objective 
 or subjective, — which I take it to mean whether the world 
 is in the universe or only in your eye. One fine winter 
 night we were waiting on a switch for the Boston car, 
 when Mr. Holmes said to Mr. Emerson : ' What,' says he, 
 'would you think if Jake Dolan driving this car should 
 come in and say, "Excuse me, gentlemen, but the moon I 
 see this moment is not some millions of miles away, but 
 entirely in my own noddle ? " ' ' I'd think,' says the great 
 philosopher, never blinking, ' that Mr. Dolan was drunk,' 
 says he. And there the discussion ended, but it has been 
 going on in my head ever since. Here I am a man climb- 
 ing up my sixties, and when have I seen the moon ? Once 
 walking by this very creek here trying to get me cour- 
 age up to put me arm around her that is now Mary 
 Gamine ; once with me head poked up close to the heads 
 of Watts McHurdie, Gabe Carnine, and Philemon Ward, 
 serenading the girls under the Thayer House window the 
 night before we left for the army. And again to-night, 
 sitting here on the dam, listening to the music coming 
 down the mill-pond. Did you notice them, Robert — the 
 young people — Phil Ward's boy, and John Barclay's girl, 
 and Mary Carnine's oldest, and Oscar Fernald's youngest, 
 with their guitars and mandolins, piling into the boats and 
 rowing up stream ? And now they're singing the songs 
 we sang — to their mothers, God bless 'em — the other 
 
 304 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 305 
 
 day before these children were born or thought of, and 
 now I sit here an old man looking at the moon." 
 
 " But is it the moon ? " he went on after a long sUence, 
 puffing at his pipe. "If the moon is off there, three or 
 thirty or three hundred million miles away in the sky, 
 where has it been these forty years ? I've not seen it. 
 And yet here she pops out of my memory into my eye, 
 and if I say the moon has always been in my eye, and is 
 still in my eye, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson says I'm 
 drunk. But does that settle the question of who's got 
 the moon — me or the cosmos — as the poets call it ? " 
 After that the two men smoked in sUence, and as Hen- 
 dricks threw away the butt of his cigar, Dolan said, " 'Tis 
 a queer, queer world, Robert — a queer, queer world." 
 
 Now do not smile at Mr. Dolan, gentle reader, for Adam 
 must have thought the same thing, and philosophy has 
 been able to say nothing more to the point. 
 
 It is indeed a queer, queer world, and our blindness is 
 the queerest thing in it. Here a few weeks later sit John 
 and Jane Barclay on the terrace before their house one 
 June night, listening to singing on the water. Suddenly 
 they realize that there is youth in the world — yet there 
 has been singing on the mill-pond ever since it was built. 
 It has been the habitat of lovers for a quarter of a century, 
 this mill-pond, yet Jane and John Barclay have not known 
 it, and not until their own child's voice came up to them, 
 singing " Juanita," did they realize that the song had not 
 begun anew after its twenty years' silence in their own 
 hearts, but always had been on the summer breeze. And 
 this is strange, too, considering how rich and powerful John 
 Barclay is and how by the scratch of his pen, he might set 
 men working by the thousands for some righteous cause. 
 Yet so it is; for with aU the consciousness of great power, 
 with all the feeling of unrestraint that such power gives a 
 man, driving him to think he is a kind of god, John Bar- 
 clay was only a two-legged man, with a limp in one foot, 
 and a little mad place in his brain, wherein he kept the 
 sense of his relation to the rest of this universe. And as 
 he sat, blind to the moon, dreaming of a time when he 
 
306 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 would control Presidents and dominate courts if they 
 crossed his path, out on the mill-pond under an elm tree 
 that spread like a canopy upon the water, a boy, letting the 
 oars hang loosely, was playing the mandolin to a girl — a 
 pretty girl withal, blue as to eyes, fair as to hair, strong 
 as to mouth and chin, and glorious as to forehead — who 
 leaned back in the boat, played with the overhanging 
 branches, and listened and looked at the moon, and let 
 God's miracle work unhindered in her heart. And all 
 up and down those two miles of mill-pond were other 
 boats and other boys and other maidens, and as they chatted 
 and sang and sat in the moonlight, there grew in their 
 hearts, as quietly as the growing of the wheat in the fields, 
 that strange marvel of life, that keeps the tide of humanity 
 ceaselessly flowing onward. And it is all so simply done 
 before our eyes, and in our ears, that we forget it is so 
 baffling a mystery. 
 
 Now let us project our astral bodies into the living room 
 of the Barclay home, while Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay 
 are away in Boston, and only John Barclay's mother and 
 his daughter are in Sycamore Ridge; and let us watch a 
 young man of twenty-one and a young woman of eighteen 
 dispose of a dish of fudge together. Fudge, it may be ex- 
 plained to the unsophisticated, is a preparation of chocolate, 
 sugar, and cream, cooked, cooled, and cut into squares. As 
 our fathers and mothers pulled taffy, as our grandfathers 
 and grandmothers conjured with maple sugar, and as their 
 parents worked the mysterious spell with some witchery of 
 cookery to this generation unknown, so is fudge in these 
 piping times the worker of a strange witchery. Observe: 
 Through a large room, perhaps forty feet one way and 
 twenty-five feet the other way, flits a young woman in the 
 summer twilight. She goes about humming, putting a 
 vase in place here, straightening a picture there, kicking 
 down a flapping rug, or rearranging a chair; then she sits 
 down and turns on an electric light and pretends to read. 
 But she does not read ; the light shows her something else 
 in the room that needs attention, and she turns to that. 
 Then she sits down again, and again goes humming about 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 307 
 
 the room. Suddenly the young woman rises and hurries 
 out of the room, and a footstep is heard on the porch, out- 
 side. A bell tinkles, and a maid appears, and — 
 
 "Yes," she says. "I'll see if Miss Jeanette is at 
 home!" 
 
 And then a rustle of skirts is heard on the stairway 
 and Miss Jeanette enters with : " Why, Neal, you are an 
 early bird this evening — were you afraid the worm 
 would escape ? Well, it won't ; it's right here on the 
 piano." 
 
 The young man's eyes, — good, clear, well-set, dark 
 eyes that match his brown hair; eyes that speak from 
 the heart, — note how they dwell upon every detail of the 
 opposing figure, caressing with their shy surreptitious 
 glances the girl's hair, her broad forehead, her lips ; ob- 
 serve how they flit back betimes to those ripe red lips, 
 like bees that hover over a flower trembling in the wind; 
 how the eyes of the young man play about the strong 
 chin, and the bewitching curves of the neck and shoul- 
 ders, and rise again to the hair, and again steal over the 
 face, to the strong shoulders, and again hurry back to the 
 face lest some feature fade. This is not staring — it is 
 done so quickly, so furtively, so deftly withal as the 
 minutes fly by, while the lips and the teeth chatter on, 
 that the stolen honey of these glances is stored away 
 in the heart's memory, all unknown to him who has 
 gathered it. 
 
 An hour has passed now, while we have watched the 
 restless eyes at their work, and what has passed with the 
 hour? Nothing, ladies and gentlemen — nothing; gib- 
 ber, chatter, giggles, and squeals — that is all. Grandma 
 Barclay above stairs has her opinion of it, and wonders 
 how girls can be so addle-pated. In her day — but who 
 ever lived long enough or travelled far enough or in- 
 quired widely enough to find one single girl who was as 
 wise, or as sedate, or as industrious, or as meek, or as 
 gentle, or as kind as girls were in her grandmother's day? 
 No wonder indeed that grandmothers are all married — 
 for one could hardly imagine the young men of that day 
 
308 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 overlooking sucli paragons of virtue and propriety as lived 
 in their grandmothers' days. Fancy an old maid grand- 
 mother with all those qualities of mind and heart that 
 girls had in their grandmothers' days ! 
 
 So the elder Mrs. Barclay in her room at the top of the 
 stairs hears what "he said," "he said he said," and 
 what " she said she said," and what " we girls did," and 
 what " you boys ought to do," and what " would be per- 
 fectly lovely," and what " would be a lot of fun ! " and 
 so grandmother, good soul, grows drowsy, closes her door, 
 and goes to bed. She does not know that they are about 
 to sit down together on a sofa — not a long, straight, cold, 
 formal affair, but a small, rather snuggly sofa, with the 
 dish between them. No, girls never did that in their 
 grandmothers' days, so of course who would imagine 
 they would do so now? Who, indeed? But there they 
 are, and there is the dish between them, and two hands 
 reaching into the same dish, must of course collide. Col- 
 lision is inevitable, and by carefully noting the repeti- 
 tions of the collisions, one may logically infer that the 
 collisions are upon the whole rather pleasurable than 
 otherwise ; and when it comes to the last piece of fudge 
 in the dish, — the very last piece, — the astral observer will 
 see that there is just the slightest, the very slightest, 
 quickest, most fleeting little tussle of hands for it, and 
 much laughter ; and then the young woman rises quickly 
 — also note the slight pink flush in her cheeks, and she 
 goes to her chair and folds her pretty hands in her lap, 
 and asks : — 
 
 " Well, do you like my fudge, Neal Ward ? Is it as 
 good as Belva Lockwood's ? She puts nuts in hers — I've 
 eaten it ; do you like it with nuts in it ? " 
 
 " Not so well as this," says the boy. 
 
 The girl slips into the dining room, for a glass of water. 
 See the eyes of the youth following her. It is dusky in 
 the dining room, and the youth longs for dusky places, but 
 has not developed courage enough to follow her. But he 
 has courage enough to steady his eyes as she comes back 
 with the water, so thathe can look into her blue eyes while 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 309 
 
 you would count as much as one — two — three — slowly 
 — four — slowly — five. A long, long time, so long 
 indeed that she wishes he would look just a second 
 longer. 
 
 So at the end of the evening here stand Neal, and 
 Jeanette, even as Adam and Eve stood in the garden, 
 talking of nothing in particular as they slowly move 
 toward the door. " Yes, I suppose so," she says, as Eve 
 said and as Eve's daughters have said through all the cen- 
 turies, looking intently at the floor. And then Neal, sud- 
 denly finding the language of his line back to Adam, looks 
 up to say, " Oh, yes, I forgot — but have you read 'Mon- 
 sieur Beaucaire ' ? " Now Adam said, " Have you heard 
 the new song that the morning stars are singing together? " 
 and Priam asked Helen if she would like to hear that new 
 thing of Solomon's just out, and so as the ages have rolled 
 by, young gentlemen standing beside their adored but not 
 declared ones have mixed literature with love, and have 
 tied wisdom up in a package of candy or wild honey, and 
 have taken it to the trysting place since the beginning of 
 time. It is thus the poets thrive. And when she was 
 asked about the new song of the morning stars, Eve, 
 though she knew it as she knew her litany, answered no ; 
 and so did Eve's daughter, standing in the dimly lighted 
 hallway of the Barclay home in Sycamore Ridge ; and so 
 then and there being, these two made their next meeting 
 sure. 
 
 In those last years of the last century John Barclay be- 
 came a powerful man in this world — one of the few hun- 
 dred men who divided the material kingdoms of this earth 
 among them. He was a rich man who was turning his 
 money into great political power. Senates listened to him, 
 many courts were his in fee simple, because he had bought 
 and paid for the men who named the judges ; Presidents 
 were glad to know what he thought, and when he came to 
 the White House, reporters speculated about the talk that 
 went on behind the doors of the President's room, and the 
 stock market fluttered. If he desired a law, he paid for 
 it and got it — not in a coarse illegal way, to be sure, but 
 
310 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 through the regular conventional channels of politics, and 
 if he desired to step on a law, he stepped on it, and a court 
 came running up behind him, and legalized his transaction. 
 He sneered at reformers, and mocked God, did John Bar- 
 clay in those days. He grew arrogant and boastful, and 
 strutted in his power like a man in liquor with the vain 
 knowledge that he could increase the population of a state 
 or a group of states, or he could shrivel the prosperity of 
 a section of the country by his whim. For by changing a 
 freight rate he could make wheat grow, where grass had 
 flourished. By changing the rate again, he could beckon 
 back the wilderness. And yet, how small was his power ; 
 here beside him, cherished as the apple of his eye, was his 
 daughter, a slip of a girl, with blue eyes and fair hair, 
 whose heart was growing toward the light, as the hearts 
 of young things grow, and he, with all of his power, could 
 only watch the mystery, and wonder at it. He was not 
 displeased at what he saw. But it was one of the few 
 things in his consciousness over which he could find no 
 way to assume control. He stood in the presence of 
 something that came from outside of his realm and ignored 
 him as the sun and the rain and the simple processes of 
 nature ignored him. 
 
 " Jane," he said one night, when he was in the Ridge 
 for the first time in many weeks, — a night near the end 
 of the summer when Jeanette and Neal Ward were 
 vaguely feeling their way together, " Jane, mother says 
 that while we've been away Neal Ward has been here 
 pretty often. You don't suppose that — " 
 
 " Well, I've rather wondered about it myself a little," 
 responded Jane. " Neal is such a fine handsome young 
 fellow." 
 
 " But, Jane," exclaimed Barclay, impatiently, as he rose 
 to walk the rug, " Jennie is only a child. Why, she's 
 only-" 
 
 "Nineteen, John — she's a big girl now." 
 
 " I know, dear," he protested, " but that's absurdly 
 young. Why — " 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " I was nearly twenty when I was 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 31] 
 
 engaged to you, and Jennie's not engaged yet, nor prob- 
 ably even thinking seriously of it." 
 
 " Don't you think," cried Barclay, as he limped down 
 the diagonal of the rug, "that you should do something ? 
 Isn't it a little unusual ? Why — " 
 
 " Well, John," smiled the'wife, " I might do what mother 
 did : turn the young man over to father I " Barclay 
 laughed, and she went on patiently : " It's not at all un- 
 usual, John, even if they do — that is, if they are — you 
 know ; but they aren't, and Jennie is too much in love 
 with her work at school to quit that. But after all it's the 
 American way ; it was the way we did, dear, and the way 
 our mothers and fathers did, and unless you wish to change 
 it — to Europeanize it, and pick — " 
 
 " Ah, nonsense, Jane — of course I don't want that ! 
 Only I thought some way, if it's serious she ought to — 
 Oh, don't you know she ought to — " 
 
 Mrs. Barclay broke her smile with, " Of course she 
 ought to, dear, and so ought I and so ought mother when 
 she married father and so ought my grandmother when 
 she married grandpa — but did we ? Dear, don't you see 
 the child doesn't realize it ? If it is anything, it is growing 
 in her heart, and I wouldn't smudge it for the world, by 
 speaking to her now — unless you don't likeNeal ; unless 
 you think he's too — unless you want a different boy. I 
 mean some one of consequence ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, it isn't that, Jane — it isn't that. Neal's 
 all right; he's clean and he is honest — I asked Bob 
 Hendricks about him to-day, when we passed the boy 
 chasing news for the Banner, and Bob gives him a fine 
 name." Barclay threw himself into a chair and sighed. 
 " I suppose it's just that I feel Jeanette's kind of leaving 
 us out of it — that is all." 
 
 Jane went to him and patted his head gently, as she 
 spoke: "That is nature, dear — the fawn hiding in the 
 woods; we must trust to Jennie's good sense, and the 
 good blood in Neal. My, but his sisters are proud of 
 him I Last week Lizzie was telling me Neal's wages had 
 been increased to ten dollars a week — and I don't suppose 
 
312 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 their father in all of his life ever had that much of a steady 
 income. The things the family is planning to do with that 
 ten dollars a week brought tears of joy to my eyes. Neal's 
 going to have his mother-in-law on his side, anyway — just 
 as you had yours. I know now how mother felt." 
 
 But John Barclay did not know how mother felt, and 
 he did not care. He knew how father felt — how Lycur- 
 gus Mason felt, and how the father of Mrs. Lycurgus 
 Mason felt ; he felt hurt and slighted, and he could not 
 repress a feeling of bitterness toward the youth. AH the 
 world loves a daughter-in-law, but a father's love for a 
 son-in-law is an acquired taste ; some men never get it. 
 And John Barclay was called away the next morning to 
 throttle a mill in the San Joaquin Valley, and from there 
 he went to North Dakota to stop the building of a com- 
 petitive railroad that tapped his territory ; so September 
 came, and with it Jeanette Barclay went back to school. 
 The mother wondered what the girl would do with 
 her last night at home. She was clearly nervous and 
 unsettled all the afternoon before, and made an errand 
 into town and came back with a perturbed face. But 
 after dinner the mother heard Jeanette at the telephone, 
 and this is the one-sided dialogue the mother caught: 
 "Yes — this is Miss Barclay." "Oh, yes, I didn't recog- 
 nize your voice at first." "What meeting?" "Yes — 
 yes." " And they are not going to have it ? " " Oh, I see." 
 "You were — oh, I don't know. Of course I should have 
 felt — well, I — oh, it would have been all right with me. 
 Of course." Then the voice cheered up and she said : 
 "Why, of course — come right out. I understand." A 
 pause and then, " Yes, I know a man has to go where he 
 is called." "Oh, she'll understand — you know father is 
 always on the wing." "No — why, no, of course not — 
 mother wouldn't think that of you. I'll tell her how it 
 was." "All right, good-by — yes, right away." And 
 Jeanette Barclay skipped away from the telephone and 
 ran to her mother to say, " Mother, that was Neal Ward 
 — he wants to come out, and he was afraid you'd think it 
 rude for him to ask that way, but you know he had a 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 313 
 
 meeting to report and thought he couldn't come, and now 
 they've postponed the meeting, and I told him to come 
 right out — wasn't that all right ? " 
 
 And so out came Neal Ward, a likely-looking young 
 man of twenty-one or maybe twenty -two — a good six 
 feet in height, with a straight leg, a square shoulder, and 
 firm jaw, set like his father's, and clean brown eyes that 
 did not blink. And as Jeanette Barclay, with her mother's 
 height, and her father's quick keen features, and her Grand- 
 mother Barclay's eyes and dominant figure, stood beside 
 him in the doorway, Mrs. Jane Barclay thought a good 
 way ahead, and Jeanette would have blushed her face to 
 a cinder if the mother had spoken her thoughts. The three, 
 mother and daughter and handsome young man, sat for a 
 while together in the living room, and then Jane, who 
 knew the heart of youth, and did not fear it, said, " You 
 children should go out on the porch — it's a beautiful night; 
 I'm going upstairs." 
 
 And now let us once more in our astral bodies watch 
 them there in the light of the veiled moon — for it is the 
 last time that even we should see them alone. She is sit- 
 ting on a balustrade, and he is standing beside her, and their 
 hands are close together on the stones. " Yes," he is say- 
 ing, " I shall be busy at the train to-morrow trying to catch 
 the governor for an interview on the railroad question, 
 and may not see you." 
 
 " I wish you would throw the governor into the deep 
 blue sea," she says, and he responds : — 
 
 " I wish I could." There is a silence, and then he risks 
 it — and the thing he has been trying to say comes out, 
 " I wonder if you will do something for me, Jeanette? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know — don't ask me anything hard — not 
 very hard, Neal I" 
 
 The last word was all he cared for, and by what sleight 
 of hand he slipped his fraternity pin from his vest into 
 her hand, neither ever knew. 
 
 " Wni you ? " he asks. " For me ? " 
 
 She pins it at her throat, and smiles. Then she says, 
 " Is this long enough — do you want it back now ? " 
 
314 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 He shakes his head, and finally she asks, "When?" 
 and then it comes out : — 
 
 " Never." 
 
 And her face reddens, and she does not speak. Their 
 hands, on the waU, have met — they just touch, that is all, but 
 they do not hasten apart. A long, long time they are 
 silent — an eternity of a minute; and then she says, "We 
 shall see in the morning." 
 
 And then another eternal minute rolls by, and the youth 
 slips the rose from her hair — quickly, and without disar- 
 ranging a strand. 
 
 " Oh," she cries, " Neal I " and then adds, " Let me get 
 you a pretty one — that is faded." 
 
 But no, he will have that one, and she stands beside 
 him and pins it on his coat — stands close beside him, 
 and where her elbows and her arms touch him he is 
 thrilled with delight. In the shadow of the great porch 
 they stand a moment, and her hand goes out to his. 
 
 " Well, Jeanette," he says, and still her hand does not 
 shrink away, " well, Jeanette — it will be lonesome when 
 you go." 
 
 " Will it ? " she asks. 
 
 " Yes — but I — I have been so happy to-night." 
 
 He presses her hand a little closer, and as she says, " I'm 
 so glad," he says, " Good-by," and moves down the broad 
 stone steps. She stands watching him, and at the bottom 
 he stops and again says: — 
 
 " Well — good-by — Jeanette — I must go — I sup- 
 pose." And she does not move, so again he says, " Good- 
 by." . 
 
 " Youth," said Colonel Martin Culpepper to the assem- 
 bled company in the ballroom of the Barclay home as 
 the clock struck twelve and brought in the twentieth 
 century ; " Youth," he repeated, as he tugged at the bot- 
 tom of Buchanan Culpepper's white silk vest, to be sure 
 that it met his own black trousers, and waved his free 
 hand grandly aloft ; " Youth," he reiterated, as he looked 
 over the gay young company at the foot of the hall, 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 315 
 
 while the fiddlers paused with their bows in the air, 
 and the din of the New Year's clang was rising in the town ; 
 " Youth, — of all the things in God's good green earth, — 
 Youth is the most beautiful." Then he signalled with 
 some dignity to the leader of the orchestra, and the music 
 began. 
 
 It was a memorable New Year's party that Jeanette 
 Barclay gave at the dawn of this century. The Barclay 
 private car had brought a dozen girls down from the state 
 university for the Christmas holidays, and then had made 
 a recruiting trip as far east as Cleveland and had brought 
 back a score more of girls in their teens and early twenties 
 — for an invitation from the Barclays, if not of much social 
 consequence, had a power behind it that every father rec- 
 ognized. And what with threescore girls from the Ridge, 
 and young men from half a dozen neighbouring states, — 
 and young men are merely background in any social pic- 
 ture, — the ballroom was as pretty as a garden. It was 
 her own idea, — with perhaps a shade of suggestion from 
 her father, — that the old century should be danced out 
 and the new one danced in with the pioneers of Garrison 
 County set in quadrilles in the centre of the floor, while 
 the young people whirled around them in the two-step 
 then in vogue. So the Barclays asked a score or so of the 
 old people in for dinner New Year's Eve ; and they kept 
 below stairs tmtil midnight. Then they filed into the 
 ballroom, with its fair fresh faces, its shrill treble note 
 of merriment, — these old men and women, gray and faded, 
 looking back on the old century while the others looked 
 into the new one. There came Mr. and Mrs. Watts Mc- 
 Hurdie in the lead. Watts in his best brown suit, and Mrs. 
 Watts in lavender to sustain her gray hair; General 
 Ward, in his straight black frock coat and white tie, fol- 
 lowed with Mrs. Dorman, relict of the late William 
 Dorman, merchant, on his arm; behind him came the 
 Brownwells, in evening clothes, and Robert Hendricks 
 and his sister, — all gray-haired, but straight of figure and 
 firm of foot ; Colonel Culpepper followed with Mrs. Mary 
 Barclay ; the Lycurgus Masons were next in the file, and 
 
316 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 in their evening clotlies they looked withered and old, 
 and Lycurgus was not sure upon his feet ; Jacob Dolan in 
 his faded blue uniform marched in like a drum-major with 
 the eldest Miss Ward ; and the Carnines followed, and 
 the Fernalds followed them ; and then came Judge and 
 Mrs. Bemis — he a gaunt, sinister, parchment-skinned man, 
 with white hair and a gray mustache, and she a crumbling 
 ruin in shiny satin bedecked in diamonds. Down the 
 length of the long room they walked, and executed an 
 old-fashioned grand march, such as Watts could lead, 
 while the orchestra played the tune that brought cheers 
 from the company, and the little old man looked at the 
 floor, while Mrs. McHurdie beamed and bowed and smiled. 
 And then they took their partners to step off the quadrille 
 — when behold, it transpired that in all the city orchestra, 
 that had cost the Barclays a thousand dollars according to 
 town tradition, not one man could be found who could 
 call off a quadrille. Then up spake John Barclay, and 
 stood him on a chair, and there, when the colonel had sig- 
 nalled for the music to start, the voice of John Barclay 
 rang out above the din, as it had not sounded before in 
 nearly thirty years. Old memories came rushing back to 
 him of the nights when he used to ride five and ten and 
 twenty miles and play the cabinet organ to a fiddle's lead, 
 and call off until daybreak for two dollars. And such a 
 quadrille as he gave them — four figures of it before he 
 sent them to their seats. There were " cheat or swing," 
 the " crow's nest," " skip to my Loo," — and they all broke 
 out singing, while the young people clapped their hands, 
 and finally by a series of promptings he quickly called the 
 men into one line and the women into another, and then 
 the music suddenly changed to the Virginia reel. And so 
 the dance closed for the old people, and they vanished from 
 the room, looking back at the youth and the happiness 
 and warmth of the place with wistful but not eager eyes ; 
 and as Jacob Dolan, in his faded blues and grizzled 
 hair and beard, disappeared into the dusk of the hall- 
 way, Jeanette Barclay, looking at her new ring, patted it 
 and said to Neal Ward: "Well, dear, the nineteenth 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 317 
 
 century is gone I Now let us dance and be happy in this 
 one." 
 
 And so she danced the new year and the new century 
 and the new life in, as happy as a girl of twenty can be. 
 For was she not a Junior at the state university, if you 
 please ? Was she not the heir of all the ages, and a scan- 
 dalous lot of millions besides, and what is infinitely more 
 important to a girl's happiness, was she not engaged, good 
 and tight, and proud of it, to a youth making twelve dol- 
 lars every week whether it rained or not ? What more 
 could an honest girl ask ? And it was all settled, and so 
 happily settled too, that when she had graduated with her 
 class at the university, and had spent a year in Europe — 
 but that was a long way ahead, and Neal had to go to the 
 City with father and learn the business first. But busi- 
 ness and graduation and Europe were mere details — the 
 important thing had happened. So when it was all over 
 that night, and the girls had giggled themselves to bed, 
 and the house was dark, Jeanette Barclay and her mother 
 walked up the stairs to her room together. There they 
 sat down, and Jeanette began — 
 
 " Neal said he told you about the ring ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered her mother. 
 
 " But he did not show it to you — because he wanted 
 me to be the first to see it." 
 
 " Neal's a dear," replied her mother. " So that was 
 why ? I thought perhaps he was bashful." 
 
 " No, mother," answered the girl, " no — we're both so 
 proud of it." She kept her hand over the ring finger, as 
 she spoke, " You know those ' Short and Simple Annals ' 
 he's been doing for the Star — well, he got his first check 
 the day before Christmas, and he gave half of it to his 
 father, and took the other twenty-five dollars and bought 
 this ring. I think it is so pretty, and we are both real 
 proud of it." And then she took her hand from the ring, 
 and held her finger out for her mother's eyes, and her 
 mother kissed it. They were silent a moment ; then the 
 girl rose and stood with her hand on the door-knob and 
 cried : " I think it is the prettiest ring in all the world, 
 
318 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 and I never want any other." Then she thought of 
 another, and flushed and ran away. 
 
 And we should not follow her. Rather let us climb 
 Main Street and turn into Lincoln Avenue and enter the 
 room where Martin Culpepper sits writing the Biography 
 of Watts McHurdie. He is at work on his famous chap- 
 ter, "Hymen's Altar," and we may look over his great 
 shoulder and see what he has written : " The soul caged 
 in its prison house of the flesh looks forth," he writes, 
 " and sees other chained souls, and hails them in passing 
 like distant ships. But soul only meets soul in some 
 great passion of giving, whether it be man to his fellow- 
 man, to his God, or in the love of men and women ; it mat- 
 ters not how the ecstasy comes, its root is in sacrifice, in 
 giving, in forgetting self and merging through abnegation 
 into the source of life in this universe for one sublime 
 moment. For we may not come out of our prison houses 
 save to inhale the air of heaven once or twice, and then 
 go scourged back to our dungeons. Great souls are they 
 who love the most, who breathe the deepest of heaven's 
 air, and give of themselves most freely." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Tsfi next morning, before the guests were downstairs, 
 Barclay, reading his morning papers before the fireplace, 
 stopped his daughter, who was going through the living 
 room on some morning errand. 
 
 " Jeanette," said the father, as he drew her to his chair 
 arm, "let me see it." 
 
 She brought the setting around to the outside of her 
 finger, and gave him her hand. He looked at it a mo- 
 ment, patted her hand, put the ring to his lips, and the 
 two sat silent, choked with something of joy and some- 
 thing of sorrow that shone through their brimming eyes. 
 Thus Mary Barclay found them. They Idoked up abashed, 
 and she bent over them and stroked her son's hair as she 
 said : — 
 
 " John, John, isn't it fine that Jennie has escaped the 
 curse of your millions?" 
 
 Barclay's heart was melted. He could not answer, so 
 he nodded an assenting head. The mother stooped to 
 kiss her son's forehead, as she went on, " Not with all 
 of your millions could you buy that simple little ring for 
 Jennie, John." And the father pressed his lips to the 
 ring, and his daughter snuggled tightly into his heart 
 and the three mingled their joy together. 
 
 Two hours later Barclay and General Ward met on the 
 bridge by the mill. It was one of those warm midwinter 
 days, when nature seems to be listening for the coming of 
 spring. A red bird was calling in the woods near by, and 
 the soft south wind had spring in it as it blew across the 
 veil of waters that hid the dam. John Barclay's head 
 was full of music, and he was lounging across the bridge 
 from the mill on his way home to try his new pipe organ. 
 He had spent four hours the day before at his organ bench, 
 
 319 
 
320 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 trying to teach his lame foot to keep up with his strong 
 foot. So when General Ward overhauled him, Barclay 
 was annoyed. He was not the man to have his purposes 
 crossed, even when they were whims. 
 
 " I was just coming over to the mill to see you," said 
 the general, as he halted in Barclay's path. 
 
 " All right. General — all right ; what can I do for 
 you?" 
 
 The general was as blunt a man as John Barclay. If 
 Barclay desired no beating around the bush, the general 
 would go the heart of matters. So he said, " I want to 
 talk about Neal with you." 
 
 Barclay knew that certain things must be said, and the 
 two men sat in a stone seat in the bridge wall, with the 
 sun upon them, to talk it out then and there. " Well, 
 General, we like Neal — we like him thoroughly. And 
 we are glad, Jane and I, and my mother too — she likes 
 him ; and I want to do something for him. That's about 
 all there is to say." 
 
 ■• Y es, but what, John Barclay — what ? " exclaimed the 
 general. " That's what I want to know. What are you 
 going to do for him ? Make him a devil worshipper ? " 
 
 " Well now. General, here — don't be too fast," Barclay 
 smiled and drawled. He put his hands on the warm 
 rocks at his sides and flapped them like wing-tips as he 
 went on : " Jeanette and Neal have their own lives to 
 live. They're sensible — unusually sensible. We didn't 
 steal Neal, any more than you stole Jeanette, General, 
 and — " 
 
 "Oh, I understand that, John; that isn't the point," 
 broke in the general. "But now that you've got him, 
 what are you going to do with him ? Can't you see, John, 
 he's my boy, and that I have a right to know ? " 
 
 " Now, General, will you let me do a little of this talk- 
 ing?" asked Barclay, impatiently. "As I was saying, 
 Jeanette and Neal are sensible, and money isn't going to 
 make fools of them. When the time comes and I'm gone, 
 they'll take the divine responsibility — " 
 
 "The divine tommyroti" cried the general; "the divine 
 
A CERTAIN KICH MAN 321 
 
 fiddlesticks I Why should they ? What have they done 
 that they should have that thrust upou them like a curse; 
 in God's name, John Barclay, why should my Neal have to 
 have that blot upon his soid ? Can't they be free and in- 
 dependent ? " 
 
 Barclay did not answer; he looked glumly at the floor, 
 and kicked the cement with his heel. " What would you 
 have them do with the money when they get it," he 
 growled, " burn it ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " snapped the general. 
 
 "Oh — I just thought I'd ask," responded Barclay. 
 
 The two men sat in silence. Barclay regarded conver- 
 sation with the general in that mood as arguing with a 
 lunatic. Presently he rose, and stood before Ward and 
 spoke rather harsHy : " What I am going to do is this — 
 and nothing more. Neal tells me he understands short- 
 hand : I know the boy is industrious, and I know that he 
 is bright and quick and honest. That's all he needs. I 
 am going to take him into our company as a stockholder — 
 with one share — a thousand-dollar share, to be explicit; 
 I'm going to give that to him, and that's all ; then he's to 
 be my private secretary for three years at five thousand a 
 year, so long as you must know, and then at the end of 
 that time, if he and Jennie are so minded, they're going 
 to marry ; and if he has any business sense — of course 
 you know what will happen. She is all we have. Gen- 
 eral — some one's got to take hold of things." 
 
 As Barclay spoke General Ward grew white •— his face 
 was aquiver as his trembling voice cried out : " Oh, God, 
 John Barclay, and would you take my boy — my clean- 
 hearted, fine-souled boy, whom I have taught to fear God, 
 and callous his soul with your damned money-making? 
 How would you like me to take your girl and blacken 
 her heart and teach her the wiles of the outcasts ? And 
 yet you're going to teach Neal to lie and steal and cheat 
 and make his moral guide the penal code instead of his 
 father's faith. Shame on you, John Barclay — shame on 
 you, and may God damn you for this thing, John Bar- 
 clay I " The old man trembled, but the sob that shook 
 
322 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 his frame had no tears in it. He looked Barclay in the 
 eyes without a tremor for an angry moment, and then 
 broke : " I am an old man, John ; I can't interfere with 
 Neal and Jeanette ; it's their life, not mine, and some way 
 God will work it out ; but," he added, " I've still got my 
 own heart to break over it — that's mine — that's mine. " 
 
 He rose and faced the younger man a moment, and then 
 walked quickly away. Barclay limped after him, and 
 went home. There he sat on his bench and made the 
 great organ scream and howl and bellow with rage for 
 two hours. 
 
 When Neal Ward went to the City to live, he had a reve- 
 lation of John Barclay as a man of moods. The Barclay 
 Neal Ward saw was an electric motor rather than an 
 engine. The power he had to perceive and to act seemed 
 transmitted to him from the outside. At times he dictated 
 letters of momentous importance to the young man, which 
 Neal was sure were improvised. Barclay relied on his 
 instincts and rarely changed a decision. He wore himself 
 out every day, yet he returned to his work the next day 
 without a sign of fag. The young man found that Bar- 
 clay had one curious vanity — he liked to seem composed. 
 Hence the big smooth mahogany table before him, with 
 the single paper tablet on it, and the rose — the one rose 
 in the green vase in the centre of the table. Visitors 
 always found him thus accoutred. But to see him limp- 
 ing about from room to room, giving orders in the great 
 offices, dictating notes for the heads of the various depart- 
 ments, to see him in the room where the mail was received, 
 worrying it like a pup, was to see another man revealed. 
 He liked to have people from Sycamore Ridge call upon 
 him, and the man who kept door in the outer office — a 
 fine gray-haired person, who had the manners of a brigadier 
 — knew so many people in Sycamore Ridge that Neal used 
 to call him the City Directory. One day Molly Brown- 
 well called. She was the only person who ever quelled 
 the brigadier ; but when a woman has been a social leader 
 in a country town all of her life, she has a social poise that 
 may not be impressed by a mere brigadier. Mrs. Brown- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 323 
 
 well realized that her, call was unusual, but she refused to 
 acknowledge it to him. Barclay seemed glad to see her, 
 and as he was in one of his mellow moods he talked of old 
 times, and drew from a desk near the wall, which he rarely 
 opened, an envelope containing a tintype picture of Ellen 
 Culpepper. He showed it to her sister, and they both sat 
 silent for a time, and then the woman spoke. 
 
 " Well, John," she said, " that was a long time ago." 
 
 "Forty years, Molly — forty years." 
 
 When they came back to the world she said : " John, I 
 am up here looking for a publisher. Father has written 
 a Biography of Watts, and collected all of his poems and 
 things in it, and we thought it might sell — Watts is so 
 well known. But the publishers won't take it. I want 
 your advice about it." 
 
 Barclay listened to her story, and then wheeled in his 
 chair and exclaimed, "Can Adrian publish that book? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered tentatively ; " that is, he could 
 if it didn't take such an awful lot of money." 
 
 After discussing details with her, Barclay called Neal 
 Ward and said : — 
 
 " Get up a letter to Adrian Brownwell asking him to 
 print for me three thousand copies of the colonel's book, 
 at one dollar and fifty cents a copy, and give seventy-five 
 per cent of the profits to Colonel Culpepper. We'll put 
 that book in every public library in this country. How's 
 that ? " And he looked at the tintype and said, " Bless 
 her dear little heart." 
 
 " Neal," asked Barclay, as Mrs. Brownwell left the room, 
 " how old are you ? I keep forgetting." When the young 
 man answered twenty -five, Barclay, who was putting away 
 the tintype picture, said, " And Jeanette will be twenty- 
 three at her next birthday." He closed the desk and 
 looked at the youth bending over his typewriter and 
 sighed. " Been going together off and on five or six years 
 — I should say." 
 
 Neal nodded. Barclay put his hand on his chin and 
 contemplated the young man a moment. " Ever have 
 any other love affair, son ? " 
 
824 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 The youngster coloured and looked up quickly with a 
 puzzled look and did not reply. 
 
 Barclay cut in with, » Well, son, I'm glad to find you 
 don't lie easily." He laughed silently. "Jennie has — 
 lots of them. "When she was six she used to cry for little 
 Watts Fernald, and they quarrelled like cats and dogs, 
 and when she was ten there was an Irish boy — Finnegan 
 I think his name was — who milked the cow, whom she 
 adored, and when she was fourteen or so, it was some boy 
 in the high school who gave her candy until her mother 
 had to shoo him off, and I don't know how many others." 
 He paused for a few seconds and then went on, "But 
 she's forgotten them — that's the way of women." His 
 eyes danced merrily as he continued, while he scratched 
 his head: "But with us men — it's different. We never 
 forget." He chuckled a moment, and then his face 
 changed as he said, " Neal, I wish you'd go into the mail 
 room and see if the noon mail has anything in it from 
 that damn scoundrel who's trying to start a cracker 
 factory in St. Louis — I hate to bother to smash him 
 right now when we're so busy." 
 
 But it so happened that the damn scoundrel thought 
 better of his intention and took fifty thousand for his 
 first thought, and Neal Ward, being one of the component 
 parts of an engaged couple, went ahead being sensible 
 about it. All engaged couples, of course, resolve to be 
 sensible about it. And for two years and a half — dur- 
 ing nineteen one and two and part of nineteen three — 
 Jeanette Barclay and Neal Ward had tried earnestly and 
 succeeded admirably (they believed) in being exceedingly 
 sensible about everything. Jeanette had gone through 
 school and was spending the year in Europe with her 
 mother, and she would be home in May ; and in June — 
 in June of 1904 — why, the almanac stopped there; the 
 world had no further interest, and no one on earth could 
 imagine anything after that. For then they proposed not 
 to be sensible any longer. 
 
 In the early years of this century — about 1902, prob- 
 ably — John Barclay paid an accounting company twenty- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 325 
 
 five thousand dollars — more money than General Ward 
 and Watts McHurdie and Martin Culpepper and Jacob 
 Dolan had saved in all their long, industrious, frugal, and 
 useful lives — to go over his business, install a system of 
 audits and accounts, and tell him just how much money 
 he was worth. After a score of men had been working 
 for six months, the accounting company made its report. 
 It was put in terms of doUars and cents, which are fleeting 
 and illusive terms, and mean much in one country and 
 little in another, signify great wealth at one time and 
 mere affluence in another period. So the sum need not 
 be set down here. But certain interesting details of the 
 report may be set down to illuminate this narrative. For 
 instance, it indicates that John Barclay was a man of some 
 consequence, when one knows that he employed more men 
 in that year than many a sovereign state of this Union 
 employed in its state and county and city governments. 
 It signifies something to learn that he controlled more 
 land growing wheat than any of half a dozen European 
 kings reign over. It means something to realize that in 
 those years of his high tide John Barclay, by a few lines 
 dictated to Neal Ward, could have put bread out of the 
 reach of millions of his felloAv-creatures. And these are 
 evidences of material power — these men he hired, these 
 lands he dominated, and this vast store of food that he 
 kept. So it is fair to assume that if this is a material 
 world, John Barclay's fortune was founded upon a rock. 
 He and his National Provisions Company were real. They 
 were able to make laws ; they were able to create admin- 
 istrators of the law ; and they were able to influence thbse 
 who interpreted the law. Barclay and his power were 
 substantial, palpable, and translatable into terms of money, 
 of power, of vital force. 
 
 And then one day, after long years of growth in the 
 underconsciousnesses of men, an idea came into full bloom 
 in the world. It had no especial champions. The people 
 began to think this idea. That was all. Now life reduced 
 to its lowest terms consists of you and him and me. Put us 
 on a desert island together — you and him and me — and he 
 
326 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 can do nothing without you and me — except he kiU us, and 
 then he is alone; even then we haunt him, so our inflnenee 
 still binds him. You can do nothing without him and me, 
 and I can do nothing without you and him. Not that you 
 and he will hold me; not that you will stop me; but what 
 you think and say will bind me to your wishes tighter than 
 any chains you might forge. What you and he think is 
 more powerful than all the material forces of this universe. 
 For what you and he think is public opinion. It is not 
 substantial; it is not palpable. It may not readily be trans- 
 lated into terms of money, or power, or vital force. But 
 it crushes all these things before it. When this public 
 opinion rises sure and firm and strong, no material force on 
 this earth can stop it. For a time it may be dammed and 
 checked. For a day or a week or a year or a decade it 
 may be turned from its channel; yet money cannot hold it; 
 arms cannot hold it; cunning cannot baffle it. For it is 
 God moving among men. Thus He manifests Himself in 
 this earth. Through the centuries, amid the storm and 
 stress of time, often muffled, often strangled, often inco- 
 herent, often raucous and inarticulate with anguish, but 
 always in the end triumphant, the voice of the people is 
 indeed the voice of God! 
 
 Nearly a dozen years had passed since the Russian painted 
 the picture of John Barclay, which hangs in the public 
 library of Sycamore Ridge, and in that time the heart of 
 the American people had changed. Barclay was begin- 
 ning to feel upon him, night and day, the crushing weight 
 of popular scorn. He called the idea envy, but it was not 
 envy. It was the idea working in the world, and the 
 weight of the scorn was beginning to crumple his soul; 
 for this idea that the people were thinking was finding its 
 way into newspapers, magazines, and books. They were 
 beginning to question the divine right of wealth to rule, 
 because it was wealth — an idea that Barclay could not 
 comprehend even vaguely. The term honest wealth, which 
 was creeping into respectable periodicals, was exceedingly 
 annoying to him. For the very presence of the term 
 seemed to indicate that there was such a thing as dis- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 327 
 
 honest wealth, — an obvious absurdity ; and when he ad- 
 dressed the students of the Southwestern University at 
 their commencement exercises in 1902, his address at- 
 tracted considerable attention because it deplored the 
 modern tendency in high places toward socialism and 
 warned the students that a nation of iconoclasts would 
 perish from the earth. But the people went on question- 
 ing the divine right of wealth to rule. In the early part 
 of 1903 Barclay was astounded at the action of a score 
 of his senators and nearly a hundred of his congressmen, 
 who voted for a national law prohibiting the giving of rail- 
 road rebates. He was assured by all of them that it was 
 done to satisfy temporary agitation, but the fact that they 
 voted for the law at all, as he explained to Senator Myton, 
 at some length and with some asperity, was a breach of 
 faith with " interests in American politics which may not 
 safely be ignored," " And what's more," he added angrily, 
 " this is a personal insult to me. That law hits my Door 
 Strip." 
 
 And then out of the clear sky like a thunderbolt, not 
 from an enemy, not from any clique or crowd he had 
 fought, but from the government itself, during the last 
 days of Congress came a law creating a Department of 
 Commerce and Labour at Washington, a law giving federal 
 inspectors the right to go through books of private con- 
 cerns. Barclay was overwhelmed with amazement. He 
 raged, but to no avail ; and his wrath was heated by the 
 rumours printed in all the newspapers that Barclay and the 
 National Provisions Company were to be the first victims 
 of the new law. Mrs. Barclay and Jeanette were going 
 to Europe in the spring of 1903, and Barclay on the whole 
 was glad of it. He wished the decks cleared for his fight ; 
 he felt that he must not have Jane at his elbow holding 
 his hand from malice in the engagement that was coming, 
 and when he left them on the boat, he spent a week scur- 
 rying through the East looking for some unknown enemy 
 in high financial circles who might be back of the govern- 
 ment's determination to move against the N.P.C. He 
 felt sure he could uncover the source of his trouble — and 
 
328 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 then, either fight his enemy or make terms. It did not 
 occur to Barclay that he could not find a material, palpa- 
 ble, personal object upon which to charge or with which to 
 capitulate. But he found nothing, and crossed the AUe- 
 ghanies puzzled. 
 
 When he got home, he learned that a government in- 
 spector, one H. S. Smith, was beginning the investigation 
 of the Provisions Company's books in St. Paul, Omaha, 
 Chicago, and Denver. Barclay learned that Smith had 
 secured some bills of lading that might not easily be ex- 
 plained. Incidentally, Barclay learned that an attempt 
 had been made, through proper channels, to buy Smith, 
 and he was nonplussed to learn that Smith was not pur- 
 chasable. Then to end the whole matter, Barclay wrote 
 to Senator Myton, directing him to have Smith removed 
 immediately. But Myton's reply, which was forwarded to 
 Barclay at Sycamore Ridge, indicated that "the orders 
 under which Smith is working come from a higher source 
 than the department." 
 
 Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith — a man whom he 
 could buy and sell a dozen times from one day's income 
 from his wealth — fiamed into a passion. He tore Myton's 
 letter to bits, and refreshed hi» faith in the god of Things 
 As They Are by garroting a mill in Texas. While the 
 Texas miller was squirming, Barclay did not consider In- 
 spector Smith consciously, but in remote places in his mind 
 always there lived the scorned person whom Barclay knew 
 was working against him. 
 
 From time to time in the early summer the newspapers • 
 contained definite statements, authorized from Washington 
 with increasing positiveness, that the cordon around the 
 N.P.C. was tightening. In July Barclay's scorn of In- 
 spector Smith grew into disquietude ; for a letter from Judge 
 Bemis, of the federal court, — written up in the Catskills, 
 — warned him that scorn was not the only emotion with 
 which he should honour Smith. After reading Bemis' con- 
 fidential and ambiguous scrawl, Barclay drummed for a 
 time with his hard fingers on the mahogany before him, 
 stared at the print sketches of machinery above him, and 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 329 
 
 paced the floor of his office with the roar of the mill an- 
 swering something in his angry heart. He could not know 
 that the tide was running out. He went to his telephone 
 and asked for a city so far away that when he had finished 
 talking for ten minutes, he had spent enough money to keep 
 General Ward in comfort for a month. Neal Ward, sitting 
 in his room, heard Barclay say : " Whatkindof a damn bunco 
 game were you fellows putting up on me in 1900 ? You got 
 my money ; that's all right ; I didn't squeal at the assess- 
 ment, did I ? " Young Ward in the pause closed his door. 
 But the bull-like roar of Barclay came through the wood 
 between them in a moment, and he heard : "Matter enough 
 — here's this fellow Smith bullying my clerks out in 
 Omaha, and nosing around the St. Paul ofl&ce ; what right 
 has he got ? Who is he, anyway — who got him his job ? 
 I wrote to Myton to get him removed, or sent to some other 
 work, and Myton said that the White House was back of 
 him. I wish you'd go over to Washington, and tell them 
 who I am and what we did for you in '96 and 1900 ; we 
 can't stand this. It's a damned outrage, and I look to you 
 to stop it." In a moment Ward heard Barclay exclaim: 
 " You can't — why, that's a hell of a note I What kind of 
 a fellow is he, anyway ? Tell him I gave half a million to 
 the party, and I've got some rights in this government that 
 a white man is bound to respect — or does he believe in 
 taking your money and letting you whistle ? " A train 
 rolling by the mill drowned Barclay's voice, but at the end 
 of the conversation Ward heard Barclay say : " Well, 
 what's a party good for if it doesn't protect the men who 
 contribute to its support? You simply must do it. I 
 look to you for it. You got my good money, and it's up 
 to you to get results." 
 
 There was some growling, and then Barclay hung up 
 the receiver. But he was mad all day, and dictated a 
 panic interview to Ward, which Ward was to give to the 
 Associated Press when they went to Chicago the next 
 day. In the interview, Barclay said that economic con- 
 ditions were being disturbed by half-baked politicians, 
 and that values would shrink and the worst panic in the 
 
330 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 history of the country would follow unless the socialistic 
 meddling with business was stopped. 
 
 The summer had deepened to its maturest splendour 
 before Barclay acknowledged to himself his dread of thp 
 City. For he began to feel a definite discomfiture at the 
 panorama of his pictures on the news-stands in connec- 
 tion with the advertising of the Sunday newspapers and 
 magazines. The newspapers were blazoning to the whole 
 country that the Economy Door Strip was a blind for tak- 
 ing railroad rebates, and everywhere he met the report 
 of Inspector Smith that the National Provisions Com- 
 pany's fifty-pound sack of Barclay's Best contained but 
 forty-eight pounds and ten ounces ; also that Barclay had 
 been taking three ounces out of the pound cartons of 
 breakfast food, and that the cracker packages were grow- 
 ing smaller, while the prices were not lowered. Even in 
 Sycamore Ridge the reporters appeared with exasperat- 
 ing regularity, and the papers were filled with diverting 
 articles telling of the Barclays' social simplicity and re- 
 hashing old stories of John Barclay's boyhood. His 
 attempt to stop the investigation of the National Pro- 
 visions Company became noised around Washington, and 
 the news of his failure was frankly given out from the 
 White House. This inspired a cartoon from McCutch- 
 eon in the Chicago Tribune, representing the President 
 weighing a flour sack on which was printed " Barclay's 
 Worst," with Barclay behind the President trying to get 
 his foot on the scales. 
 
 All of his life Barclay had been a fighter ; he liked to 
 hit and dodge or get hit back. His struggles in business 
 and in the business part of politics had been with tangi- 
 ble foes, with material things ; and his weapons had been 
 material things : coercion, bribery (more or less sugar- 
 coated), cheating, and often in these later years the roar 
 of his voice or the power of his name. But now, facing 
 the formless, impersonal thing called public opinion, 
 hitherto unknown in his scheme of things, he was filled 
 with uncertainty and indecision. 
 
 One autumn day, after sending three stenographers 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 331 
 
 home limp and weary with directions for his battles, 
 Barclay strayed into McHurdie's shop. The general and 
 Dolan were the only members of the parliament present 
 that afternoon, besides Watts. Barclay nodded at the 
 general without speaking, and Dolan said : — 
 
 " Cool, ain't it ? Think it will freeze ? " 
 
 Barclay took a chair, and when Dolan and Ward saw 
 that he had come for a visit, they left. 
 
 " Watts," asked Barclay, after the others had gone, and 
 the little man at the bench did not speak, "Watts, what's 
 got into the people of this country? What have I done 
 that they should begin pounding me this way ? " 
 
 McHurdie turned a gentle smile on his visitor, knowing 
 that Barclay would do the talking. Barclay went on: 
 " Here are five suits in county courts in Texas against me ; 
 a suit in Kansas by the attorney-general, five or ten in the 
 Dakotas, three in Nebraska, one or two in each pf the 
 Lake states, and the juries always finding against me. I 
 haven't changed my methods. I'm doing just what I've 
 done for fifteen years. I've had lots of lawsuits before, 
 with stockholders and rival companies and partners, and 
 millers and all that — but this standing in front of the mob 
 and fighting them off — why ? Why ? What have I done ? 
 These county attorneys and attorneys-general seem to de- 
 light in it — now why? They didn't used to; it used to 
 be that only cranks like old Phil Ward even talked of 
 such things, and people laughed at them ; and now prose- 
 cuting attorneys actually do these things, and people re- 
 elect them. Why ? What's got into the people ? What 
 am I doing that I haven't been doing ? " 
 
 " Maybe the people are growing honest, John," sug- 
 gested the harness maker amiably. 
 
 Barclay threw back his head and roared : " Naw — naw 
 — it isn't that; it's the damn newspapers. That's what 
 it is ! They're what's raising the devil. But why ? 
 Why ? What have I done ? Why, they have even bull- 
 dozed some of my own federal judges — my own men. 
 Watts, my own men; men whose senators came into my 
 office with their hats in their hands and asked permission 
 
332 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 to name these judges. Now why ? " He was silent awhile 
 and then began chuckling: " But I fixed 'em the other day. 
 Did you see that article in all the papers briefed out 
 of New York about how that professor had said that the 
 N. P . C . was an economic necessity ? I did that, Watts : and 
 got it published in the magazines, too — and our advertis- 
 ing agents made all the newspapers that get our advertising 
 print it — and they had to." Barclay laughed. After a 
 moody silence he continued : " And you know what I could 
 do. I could finance a scheme to buy out the meat trust and 
 the lumber trust, and I could control every line of advertis- 
 ing that goes into the damn magazines — and I could buy 
 the paper trust too, and that would fix 'em. The PhU 
 Wards are not running this country yet. The men who 
 make the wealth and maintain the prosperity have got to 
 run it in spite of the long-nosed reformers and socialists. 
 You know. Watts, that we men who do things have a 
 divine responsibility to keep the country off the rocks. 
 But she's drifting a lot just now, and they're all after me, 
 because I'm rich. That's all. Watts, just because I've 
 worked hard and earned a little money — that's why." 
 And so he talked on, until he was tired, and limped home 
 and sat idly in front of his organ, unable to touch the keys. 
 
 Then he turned toward the City to visit his temporal 
 kingdom. There in the great Corn Exchange Building 
 his domain was unquestioned. There in the room with 
 the mahogany walls he could feel his power, and stanch 
 the flow of his courage. There he was a man. But alas 
 for human vanity I When he got to the City, he found the 
 morning papers full of a story of a baby that had died 
 from overeating breakfast food made at his mills and 
 adulterated with earth from his Missouri clay banks, as the 
 coroner had attested after an autopsy ; and a miserable 
 county prosecutor was looking for John Barclay. So le 
 hid all the next day in his offices, and that evening took 
 Neal Ward on a special train in his private car, on a round- 
 about way home to Sycamore Ridge. 
 
 It was a wretched homecoming for so great and success 
 ful a man as Barclay. Yet he with all his riches, witii 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 333 
 
 aU. his material power, eyen he longed for the safety of 
 home, as any hunted thing longs for his lair. On the 
 way he paced the diagonals of the little office room in his 
 car, like a caged jackal. The man had lost his anchor ; 
 the things which his life had been built on would not 
 hold him. Money — men envied the rich nowadays, he 
 said, and the rich man had no rights in the courts or out 
 of them ; friends — they had gone up in the market, and 
 he could not afford them ; politics — he had found it a 
 quicksand. So he jabbered to Neal Ward, his secretary, 
 and pulled down the curtains of his car on the station side 
 of every stop the train made in its long day's journey. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 It was nearly midnight when the special train pulled 
 into Sycamore Ridge, and Neal Ward hurried home. 
 He went to his room, and found there a letter and a 
 package, both addressed in Jeanette's handwriting. The 
 letter was only a note that read: — 
 
 " Mt dearest Boy : I could not wait to send it for your Christ- 
 mas present. So I am sending it the very day it is finished. I hope 
 it will bring me close to you — into your very heart and keep me there. 
 I have kissed it — for I knew that you would. 
 
 " Your loving Jeanbtte." 
 
 He tore open the package and found a miniature of 
 Jeanette done on ivorj^ — that seemed to bring her into 
 the room, and illumine it with her presence. The thing 
 bloomed with life, and his heart bounded with joy as his 
 eyes drank the beauty of it. His father called from below 
 stairs, and the youth went down holding the note and the 
 miniature in his hands. Before the father could speak, 
 the son held out the picture, and Philemon Ward looked 
 for a moment into the glowing faces — that of the picture 
 and that of the living soul before him, and hesitated be- 
 fore speaking. 
 
 " I got your wire — " he began. 
 
 " But isn't it beautiful, father — wonderful I " broke in 
 the son. 
 
 The father assented kindly and then continued : " So I 
 thought I'd sit up for you. I had to talk with you." 
 The son's face looked an interrogation, and the father an- 
 swered, "Read that, Neal — ' handing his son a letter in 
 a rich linen envelope bearing in the corner the indication 
 that it was written at the Army and Navy Club in Wash- 
 ington. The lovely face in the miniature lay on the table 
 between them and smiled up impartially at father and son 
 as the young man drew out the letter and read : — 
 
 334 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 335 
 
 " My dear General Ward : This letter will introduce to you 
 Mr. H. S. Smith, an inspector from the Bureau of Commerce and 
 Labour, who has been working upon evidence connected with the 
 National Provisions Company. I happened to be at luncheon this 
 afternoon with a man of the highest official authority, whose name it 
 would be bad faith to divulge, but whom I know you respect, even 
 if you do not always agree with him. I mentioned your name and 
 the part you took in the battle of the Wilderness, and my friend was 
 at once interested, though, of course, he had known you by name and 
 fame for forty years. One word led to another, as is usual in these 
 oases, and my friend mentioned the fact that your son, Neal Dow 
 Ward, is secretary to John Barclay, and in a position to verify certain 
 evidence which the government now has in the N.P.C. matter. I 
 happen to know that the government is exceedingly anxious to be 
 exactly correct in every charge it makes against this Company, and 
 hence I am writing to you. Your son can do a service to his country 
 to-day by telling the truth when he is questioned by Inspector Smith, 
 to my mind as important as that you did in the Wilderness. In- 
 spector Smith has a right to question him, and will do so, and I have 
 promised my friend here to ask you to counsel with your son, and beg 
 him in the name of that good citizenship for which you have always 
 stood, and for which you offered your life, to tell the simple truth. 
 As a comrade and a patriot, I have no doubt what you will do, know- 
 ing the facts." 
 
 Neal Ward put his hand on the table, with the letter 
 still in his fingers. " Father," he asked blankly, " do you 
 know what that means ? " 
 
 " Yes, Neal, I think I understand ; it means that to- 
 morrow morning will decide whether you are a patriot or 
 a perjurer, my boy — a patriot or a perjurer ! " The gen- 
 eral, who was in his shirt-sleeves and coUarless, rose, and 
 putting his hands behind him, backed to the radiator to 
 warm them. 
 
 " But, father — father," exclaimed the boy, "how can I ? 
 What I learned was in confidence. How can I ? " 
 
 The father saw the anguish in his son's face, and did 
 not reply at once. " Is it crooked, Neal ? " 
 
 " Yes," replied the son, and then added : " So bad I was 
 going to get out of it, as soon as Jeanette came home. I 
 couldn't stand it — for a life, father. But I promised to 
 stay three years, and try, and I think I should keep my 
 promise." 
 
 The father and son were silent for a time, and then the 
 
336 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 father spoke. "And you love her with all your life — 
 don't you, Nealie ? " The son was gazing intently at the 
 miniature and nodded. At length the father sighed. " My 
 poor, poor boy — my poor, poor boy." He walked to the 
 table on which were his books and papers, and then stood 
 looking at the girl's face. "You couldn't explain it to 
 her, I suppose ? " he asked. 
 
 " No," replied the son. " No ; she adores her father ; to 
 her he is perfect. And I don't blame her, for he is good 
 
 — you can't know how good, to her." Again they stood 
 in silence. The son looked up from the picture and said, 
 " And you know, father, what the world would think of me 
 
 — a spy, an informer — an ingrate ? " 
 
 The old man did not reply, and the son shook his head 
 and his face twitched with the struggle that was in him. 
 Suddenly the father walked to the son and cried : " And 
 yet you must, Neal Ward — you must. Is there any con- 
 fidence in God's world so sacred as your duty to mankind ? 
 Is there any tie, even that of your wife, so sacred as that 
 which binds you to humanity ? I left your mother, my 
 sweetheart, and went out to fight, with the chance of 
 never seeing her again. I went out and left her for the 
 same country that is calling you now, Neal I " The boy 
 looked up with agony on his face. The father paused a 
 moment and then went on : " Your soul is your soul — 
 not John Barclay's, my boy — not Jeanette Barclay's ^- 
 but yours — yours, Neal, to blight or to cherish, as you 
 will." A moment later he added, " Don't you see, son — 
 don't you see, Neal?" The son shook his head and 
 looked down, and did not answer. The father put his arm 
 about the son. " Boy, boy," he cried, "boy, you've got a 
 a man's load on you now — a man's load. To-morrow you 
 can run away like a coward ; you can dodge and lie like 
 a thief, or you can tell the simple truth, as it is asked of 
 you, like a man — the simple truth like a man, Neal." 
 
 " Yes, I know, father — I see it all — but it is so hard — 
 for her sake, father." 
 
 The old man was silent, while the kitchen clock ticked 
 away a minute and then another and a third. Then he 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 337 
 
 took his arm away from his son, and grasped the boy's 
 hand. " Oh, little boy — little boy," he cried, " can't I make 
 you see that the same God who has put this trial upon you 
 will see you through it, and that if you fail in this trial, 
 your soul will be crippled for life, and that no matter what 
 you get in return for your soul — you will lose in the bar- 
 gain ? Can't you see it, Nealie — can't you see it ? All 
 my life I have been trying to live that way, and I have 
 tried to make you see it — so that you would be ready for 
 some trial like this." 
 
 The son rose, and the two men stood side by side, clasp- 
 ing hands. The boy suddenly tore himself loose, and 
 throwing his hands in the air, wailed, " Oh, God — it is too 
 hard — I can't, father — I can't." 
 
 And with the miniature in his hand he walked from the 
 room, and Philemon Ward went to his closet and wrestled 
 through the night. At dawn his son sat reading and re- 
 reading a letter. Finally he pressed another letter to his 
 lips, and read his own letter again. It read : — 
 
 "My darling Girl: This ia the 'last letter I shall ever mail to 
 you, perhaps. I can imagine no miracle that will bring us together 
 again. My duty, as I see it, stands between us. The government 
 inspector is going to put me under oath to-morrow — unless I run, 
 and I won't — and question me about your father's business. What 
 I must tell will injure him — maybe ruin him. I am going to tell 
 your father what I am going to do before I do it. But by all the faith 
 I have been taught in a God — and you know I am not pious, and 
 belong to no church — I am forced to do this thing. Oh, Jeanette, 
 Jeanette — if I loved you less, I would take you for this life alone and 
 sell my soul for you; but I want you for an eternity — and in that 
 eternity I want to bring you an unsoiled soul. Good-by — oh, good- 
 by. Neal." 
 
 The next morning when Neal Ward went out of the 
 oiBce at the mill, John Barclay sat shivering with wrath 
 and horror. Every second stamped him with its indelible 
 finger, as a day, or a month, puts its stain on other men. 
 
 Another morning, a week later, as he sat at his desk, a 
 telegram from his office manager in the city fluttered in his 
 hands. It read : " We are privately advised that you were 
 indicted by the federal grand jury last night — though we 
 
338 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 do not know upon what specific charge - — our friend B, 
 will advise us later in the day." 
 
 It was a gray December day, and a thin film of ice 
 covered the mill-pond. Barclay looked there and shud- 
 dered away from the thought that came to him. He was 
 alone in the mill. He longed for his wife and daughter, 
 and yet when he thought of their home-coming to disgrace, 
 he shook with agony. Over and over again he whispered 
 the word "indicted." The thought of his fnother and 
 her sorrow broke him down. He locked the door, dropped 
 heavily into his chair, and bowed his head on his crossed 
 arms. And then — 
 
 What, tears ? Tears for Mr. Barclay? — for himself ? 
 Look back along the record for his life: there are many 
 tears charged to his account, but none for his own use. 
 Back in the seventies there are tears of Miss Culpepper, 
 charged to Mr. Barclay, and one heart-break for General 
 Hendricks. Again in the eighties there is sorrow for Mr. 
 Robert Hendricks, and more tears for Mrs. Brownwell, 
 that was Miss Culpepper — all charged to the account of 
 Mr. Barclay; and in the early nineties there are some manly 
 tears for Martin F. Culpepper, also charged to Mr. Barclay 
 — but none before for his own use. Are they, then, tears 
 of repentance ? No, not tears for the recording angel, not 
 good, man's size, soul-washing tears of repentance, but 
 miserable, dwarf, useless, self -pitying, corroding tears — 
 tears of shame and rage, for the proud, God-mocking, man- 
 cheating, powerful, faithless, arrogant John Barclay, dealer 
 in the Larger Good. 
 
 And so with his head upon his arms, and his arms upon 
 his desk, — a gray-clad, gray-haired, slightly built, time- 
 racked little figure, — John Barclay strained his soul and 
 wrenched his body and tried in vain to weep. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 Down comes the curtain. Only a minute does John 
 Barclay sit there with his head in his arms, and then, while 
 youarestretchingyourlegs, or reading your programme, or 
 looking over the house to see who may be here, up rises 
 John Barclay, and while the stage carpenters are setting 
 the new scene, he is behind there telephoning to Chicago, 
 to Minneapolis, to Omaha, to Cleveland, to Buffalo, — he 
 fairly swamps the girl with expensive long-distance calls, 
 — trying to see if there is not some way to stop the filing 
 of that indictment. For to him the mere indictment ad- 
 vertises to mankind that money is not power, and with him 
 and with all of his caste and class a confession of weak- 
 ness is equivalent to a confession of wrong. For where 
 might makes right, as it does in his world, weakness spells 
 guilt, and with all the people jeering at him, with the 
 press saying: "Aha, so they have got Mr. Barclay, have 
 they ? Well, if all his money and all his power could 
 not prevent an indictment, he must be a pretty tough 
 customer," — with the public peering into his private books 
 and papers in a lawsuit, confirming as facts all that they 
 had read in the newspapers, in short with the gold plating 
 of respectability rubbed off his moral brass, he feels the 
 crushing weight of the indictment, as he limps up and 
 down his room at the mill and frets at the long-distance 
 operator for being so slow with his calls. 
 
 But he is behind the scenes now ; and so is Neal Ward, 
 walking the streets of Chicago, looking for work on a 
 newspaper, and finally finding it. And so are Mrs. Jane 
 Barclay and Miss Barclay, as they sail away on their ten 
 days' cruise of the Mediterranean. And while the or- 
 chestra plays and the man in the middle of row A of the 
 dress circle edges out of his seat and in again, we cannot 
 hear John Barclay sigh when the last telephone call ia 
 
 339 
 
340 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 answered, and he finds that nothing can be done. And 
 he is not particularly cheered by the knowledge that the 
 Associated Press report that very afternoon is sending all 
 over the world the story of the indictment. But late in 
 the afternoon Judge Bemis, in whose court the indict- 
 ment was found, much to his chagrin, upon evidence 
 furnished by special counsel sent out from Washington — 
 Judge Bemis tells him, as from one old friend to another, 
 that the special counsellor isn't much of a lawyer. The 
 pleasant friendly little rip-saw laugh of the judge over the 
 telephone nearly a thousand miles away is not distinct 
 enough to be heard across the stage even if the carpenters 
 were not hammering, and the orchestra screaming, and the 
 audience buzzing ; but that little laugh of his good friend, 
 Judge Bemis, was the sweetest sound John Barclay had 
 heard in many a day. It seemed curious that he should 
 so associate it, but that little laugh seemed to drown the 
 sound of a clicking key in a lock — a large iron lock, that 
 had been rattling in his mind since noon. For even in 
 the minds of the rich and the great, even in the minds of 
 men who fancy they are divinely appointed to parcel out 
 to their less daring brethren the good things of this world, 
 there is always a child's horror of the jail. So when Mr. 
 Barclay, who was something of a lawyer himself, heard his 
 good friend. Judge Bemis, laugh that pleasant little friendly 
 laugh behind the scenes, the heart of Mr. Barclay gave a 
 little pulse-beat of relief if not of joy. 
 
 But an instant later the blight of the indictment was 
 over him again. Hammer away, and scream away, and 
 buzz away with all your might, you noises of the play- 
 house ; let us not hear John Barclay hastening across the 
 bridge just before the early winter sunset comes, that he 
 may intercept the Index and the Banner in the front yard 
 of the Barclay home, before his mother sees them. 
 Always heretofore he has been glad to have her read of his 
 achievements, in the hope that she would come to approve 
 them, and to view things as he saw them — his success 
 and his power and his glory. But to-night he hides the 
 paper under his gray coat and slips into the house. She 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 341 
 
 and her son sit down to dinner alone. This must be a 
 stage dinner they are eating — though it is all behind the 
 scenes ; for Mr. Barclay is merely going through the empty 
 form of eating. " No, thank you," for the roast. " Why, 
 Mr. Barclay did not touch his soup I " " Well," says the 
 cook, tasting it critically, "that's strange." And "No, 
 thank you " for the salad, and " Not any pie to-night, 
 Clara." "What — none of the mince pie, John ? Why, 
 I went out in the kitchen and made it for you myself." 
 » Well, a little." 
 
 Heigh-ho I We sigh, and we drum on our table-cloth 
 with our fingers, and we are trying to find some way to 
 tell something. We have been a bad boy, maybe — a bad 
 little boy, and must own up; that is part of our punish- 
 ment — the hardest part perhaps, even with the curtain 
 down, even with the noise .in front, even with the maid 
 gone, even when a mother comes and strokes our head, as 
 we sit idly at the organ bench, unable to sound a key. 
 Shall the curtain go up now ? Shall we sit gawking 
 while a boy gropes his way out of a man's life, back through 
 forty years, and puts his head in shame and sorrow against 
 a mother's breast ? How he stumbles and falters and halts, 
 as the truth comes out — and it must come out; on the 
 whole the best thing there is to say of John Barclay on 
 that fateful December day in the year of our Lord 1903 
 is that he did not let his mother learn the truth from any 
 lips but his. And so it follows naturally, because he was 
 brave and kind, that instead of having to strengthen her, 
 she sustained him — she in her seventies, he in his fifties. 
 
 " My poor dear child," she said, " I know — I know. 
 But don't worry, John — don't worry. I don't mind. 
 Jane won't mind, I am sure, and I know Jennie will under- 
 stand. It isn't what even we who love you think of you, 
 John — it is what you are that counts. Oh, Johnnie, 
 Johnnie, maybe you could serve your country and human- 
 ity in jail — by showing the folly and the utter uselessness 
 of all this money -getting, just as your father served it by 
 dying. I would not mind if it made men see that money 
 isn't the thing — if it made you see it, my boy; if you 
 
342 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 could come out of a jail with that horrible greed for money 
 purged from you — " 
 
 But no — we will not peep behind the curtain; we will 
 not dwell with John Barclay as he walked all night up and 
 down the great living room of his home. And see, the 
 footlights have winked at the leader of the orchestra, to let 
 him know he is playing too long; observe, how quickly 
 the music dies down — rather too quickly, for the clatter 
 of cast iron is heard on the stage, and the sound of hurried 
 footsteps is audible, as of some one moving rapidly about 
 behind the curtain. The rattling iron you hear is the stove 
 in Watts McHurdie's shop; they have just set it up, and 
 got it red hot; for it is a cold day, that fifteenth day of 
 December, 1903, and the footsteps you hear are those of 
 the members of the harness shop parliament. 
 
 Ah I There goes the curtain, and there sits Watts 
 astraddle of his bench, working with all his might, for he 
 has an order to sew sleigh-bells on a breast strap, for some 
 festivity or another ; and here sits the colonel, and over 
 there the general, and on his home-made chair Jacob Dolan 
 is tilted back, warming his toes at the stove. They are aU 
 reading — all except Watts, who is working ; on the floor 
 are the Chicago and St. Louis evening papers, and the 
 Omaha and Kansas City morning papers. And on the 
 first pages of all of these papers are pictures of John Bar- 
 clay. There is John Barclay in the Bee, taken in his 
 Omaha office by the Bee's own photographer — a new 
 picture of Mr. Barclay, unfamiliar to the readers of most 
 newspapers. It shows the little man standing by a desk, 
 smiling rather benignly with his sharp bold eyes fixed on 
 the camera. There is a line portrait of Mr. Barclay in the 
 Times, one of recent date, showing the crow's-feet about 
 the eyes, the vertical wrinkle above the nose, and the 
 furtive mouth, hard and naked, and the square mean jaw, 
 that every cartoonist of Barclay has emphasized for a 
 dozen years. And there are other pictures of Mr. Bar- 
 clay in the papers on the floor, and the first pages of the 
 papers are filled with the news of the Barclay indictment. 
 All over this land, and in Europe, the news of that indict- 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 343 
 
 ment caused a sensation. In the Times, there on the floor, 
 is an editorial comment upon the indictment of Barclay 
 cabled from London, another from Paris, and a third from 
 Berlin. It was a big event in the world, an event of more 
 than passing note — this sudden standing up of one of the 
 richest men of his land, before the front door of a county 
 jail. Big business, and little business that apes big busi- 
 ness, dropped its jaw. The world is not accustomed 
 to think of might making wrong, so when a Charles I or 
 a Louis XVI or a John Barclay comes to harm, the 
 traditions of the world are wrenched. Men say: "How 
 can these things be — if might makes right? Here is a 
 case where might and right conflict — how about it? 
 Jails are for the poor, not for the rich, because the poor 
 are wrong and the rich are right, and no just man made 
 perfect by a million should be in jail." 
 
 And so while the members of the parliament in Watts 
 McHurdie's shop read and were disturbed at the strange 
 twist of events, the whole world was puzzled with them, 
 and in unison with Jacob Dolan, half the world spoke, " I 
 see no difference in poisoning breakfast foods and poison- 
 ing wells, and it's no odds to me whether a man pinches a 
 few ounces out of my flour sack, or steals my chickens." 
 
 And the other half of the world was replying with 
 Colonel Culpepper, " Oh, well, Jake, now that's all right 
 for talk ; but in the realms of high finance men are often 
 forced to be their own judges of right and wrong, and 
 circumstances that we do not appreciate, cannot under- 
 stand, in point of fact, nor comprehend, if I may say so, 
 intervene, and make what seems wrong in small trans- 
 actions, trivial matters and pinch-penny business, seem 
 right in the high paths of commerce." 
 
 The general was too deeply interested in reading what 
 purported to be his son's testimony before Commissioner 
 Smith, to break into the discussion at this point, so Dolan 
 answered, "From which I take it that you think that 
 Johnnie down at the mill keeps a private God in his pri- 
 vate car." 
 
 The colonel was silent for a time ; he read a few lines 
 
344 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 and looked into space a moment, and then replied in a 
 gentle husky voice : "Jake, what do we know about it? 
 The more I think how every man differs from his neighbour, 
 and all our sins are the result of individual weakness at the 
 end of lonely struggles with lonely temptations — the 
 more I think maybe there is something in what you say, 
 and that not only John but each of us — each of us under 
 this shining sun, sir — keeps his private God." 
 
 " You'll have to break that news gently to the Pope," 
 returned Dolan. "I'll not try it. Right's right. Mart 
 Culpepper, and wrong's wrong for me and for Johnnie Bar- 
 clay, white, black, brown, or yellow — 'tis the same." 
 
 " There's nothing in your theory, Mart," cut in the gen- 
 eral, folding his paper across his knee ; " not a thing in 
 the world. We're all parts of a whole, and the only 
 way this is an individual problem at all — this working out 
 of the race's destiny — is that the whole can't improve so 
 long as the parts don't grow. So long as we all are like 
 John Barclay save in John's courage to do wrong, laws 
 won't help us much, and putting John in jail won't do so 
 very much — though it may scare the cowards until John's 
 kind of crime grows unpopular. But what we must have 
 is individual — " 
 
 Tinkle goes the bell over Watts McHurdie's head — the 
 bell tied to a cord that connects with the front door. 
 Down jumps Watts, and note the play of the lights from 
 the flies, observe that spot light moving toward R. U. E., 
 there by the door of the shop. Yes, all ready ; enter John 
 Barclay. See that iron smile on his face ; he has not sur- 
 rendered. He has been clean-shaven, and entering that 
 door, he is as spick and span as though he were on a 
 wedding journey. Give him a hand or a hiss as yoU wUl, 
 ladies and gentlemen, John Barclay has entered at the 
 Right Upper Entrance, and the play may proceed. 
 
 " Well," he grinned, " I suppose you are talking it over. 
 Colonel, has the jury come to a verdict yet ? " 
 
 What a suave John Barclay it was ; how admirably he 
 held his nerve ; not a quiver in the face, not a ruffle of the 
 voice. The general looked at him over his spectacles, and 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 345 
 
 could not keep the kindness out of Ms eyes. " What a brick 
 you are I " he said to himself, and Jake Dolan, conquered 
 by the simplicity of it, surrendered. 
 
 " Oh, well, John, I suppose we all have our little troub- 
 les," said Jake. Only that ; the rack of the inquisitor 
 grew limp. And Colonel Culpepper rose and gave Bar- 
 clay his hand and spoke not a word. The silence was 
 awkward, and at the end of a few moments the colonel 
 found words. ' 
 
 " How," he asked in his thick asthmatic voice, mushy 
 with emotion, " how in the world did this happen, John ? 
 How did it happen ? " 
 
 Barclay looked at the general ; no, he did not glare, 
 for John Barclay had grown tame during the night, al- 
 most docile, one would say. But he did not answer at 
 first, and Watts McHurdie, bending over his work, 
 chuckled out : " Ten miles from Springfield, madam — 
 ten miles from Springfield." And then John sloughed 
 off thirty years and laughed. And the general laughed, 
 and the colonel smiled, and Jake Dolan took John Bar- 
 clay's hand from the colonel, and said : — 
 
 " The court adjudges that the prisoner at the bar pay 
 the assembled company four of those cigars in his inside 
 pocket, and stand committed until the same is paid." 
 
 And then there was a scratching of matches, and a puff- 
 ing, and Barclay spoke : " I knew there was one place on 
 earth where I was welcome. The mill is swarming with re- 
 porters, and I thought I'd slip away. They'll not find me 
 here." The parliament smoked in silence, and again Bar- 
 clay said, "Well, gentlemen, it's pretty tough — pretty 
 tough to work all your life to build up an industry and 
 in the end — get this." 
 
 "Well, John," said the general, as he rolled up his news- 
 paper and put it away, " I'm sorry — just as sorry as Mart 
 is ; not so much for the indictment, that is all part of the 
 inevitable consequence of your creed; if it hadn't been the 
 indictment, it would have been something else, equally sad 
 — don't you see, John ? " 
 
 " Oh, I know what you think, General," retorted Bar* 
 
346 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 clay, bitterly. " I know your idea ; you think it's retribu- 
 tion." 
 
 " Not exactly that either, John — just the other side of 
 the equation. You have reaped what you sowed, and I 
 am sorry for what you sowed. God gave you ten talents, 
 John Barclay — ten fine talents, my boy, and you wrapped 
 them in a napkin and buried them in the grbund, buried 
 them in greed and cunning and love of power, and you 
 are reaping envy and malice and cruelty. You were effi- 
 cient, John ; oh, if I had been as efficient as you, how much 
 I could have done for this world — how much — how 
 much I " he mused wistfully. 
 
 Barclay did not reply, but his face was hard, and his 
 neck was stiff, and he was not moved. He was still the 
 implacable Mr. Barclay, the rich Mr. Barclay, and he 
 would have no patronage from old Phil Ward — Phil 
 Ward the crank, who was a nation's joke. Ting-a-ling 
 went the bell over Watts McHurdie's head, and the little 
 man climbed down from his bench and hurried into the 
 shop. But instead of a customer, Mr. J. K. Mercheson, 
 J. K. Mercheson representing Barber, Hancock, and Kohn, 
 — yes, the whip trust ; that's what they call it, but it is 
 really an industrial organization of the trade, — Mr. J. K. 
 Mercheson of New York came in. No, McHurdie did 
 not need anything at present, and he backed into the shop. 
 He had all of the goods in that line that he could carry 
 just now ; and he sidled toward his seat. The members 
 of the parliament effaced themselves, as loafers do in every 
 busy place when business comes up ; the colonel got behind 
 his paper, Barclay hid back of the stove, Dolan examined a 
 bit of harness, and the general busied himself picking up 
 the litter on the floor, and folding the papers with the 
 pictures of Barclay inside so that he would not be annoyed 
 by them. But Mr. Mercheson knew how to get orders; 
 he knew that the thing to do is to stay with the trade. 
 
 So he leaned against the work bench and began : — 
 
 " This is a great town, Mr. McHurdie ; we're always 
 hearing from Sycamore Ridge. When I'm in the East 
 they say, ' What kind of a town is that Sycamore Ridge 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 347 
 
 where Watts McHurdie and your noted reformer, Robert 
 Hendricks, who was offered a place in the cabinet, apd 
 this man John Barclay live ? ' " 
 
 Mr. Mercheson paused for effect. Mr. McHurdie 
 smiled and went on with his work. 
 
 " Say," said Mr. Mercheson, " your man Barclay is in 
 all the papers this morning. I was in the smoker of the 
 sleeper last evening coming out of Chicago, and we got to 
 talking about him — and Lord, how the fellows did roast 
 him." 
 
 " They did ? " asked Barclay, from his chair behind the 
 stove. 
 
 " Sure," replied Mr. Mercheson ; " roasted him good 
 and brown. There wasn't a man in the smoker but me 
 to stand up for him." 
 
 " So you stood up for the old scoundrel, did you ? " 
 asked Barclay. 
 
 " Sure," answered the travelling man. " Anything to 
 get up an argument, you know," he went on, beginning 
 to see which way sentiment lay in the shop. " I've been 
 around town this morning, and I find the people here 
 don't approve of him for a minute, any more than they did 
 on the train." 
 
 " What do they say ? " asked Barclay, braiding a four- 
 strand whip, and finding that his cunning of nearly fifty 
 years had not left his fingers. 
 
 " Oh, it isn't so much what they say — but you can tell, 
 don't you know ; it's what they don't say ; they don't 
 defend him. I guess they like him personally, but they 
 know he's a thief ; that's the idea — they simply can't 
 defend him and they don't try. The government has got 
 him dead to rights. Say," he went on, " just to be argu- 
 ing, you know last evening I took a poll of the train — 
 the limited — the Golden State Limited — swell train, swell 
 crowd — all rich old roosters ; and honest, do you know 
 that out of one hundred and twenty-three votes polled 
 only four were for him, and three of those were girls who 
 said they knew his daughter at the state university, and 
 had visited at his house. Wasn't that funny ? " 
 
348 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Barclay laughed grimly, and answered, "Well, it was 
 pretty funny considering that I'm John Barclay." 
 
 The suspense of the group in the shop was broken, and 
 they laughed, too. 
 
 " Oh, hell," said Mr. Merpheson, " come off I " Then he 
 turned to McHurdie and tried to talk trade to him. But 
 Watts was obdurate, and the man soon left the shop, eying 
 Barclay closely. He stood in the door and said, as he 
 went out of the store, " Well, you do look some like his 
 pictures. Mister." 
 
 There was a silence when the stranger went, and Barclay, 
 whose face had grown red, cried, "Damn 'em — damn 
 'em all — kick a man when he is down! " 
 
 Again the bell tinkled, and McHurdie went into the 
 shop. Evidently a customer was looking at a horse collar, 
 for through the glass door they could see Watts' hook go 
 up to the ceiling and bring one down. 
 
 "John," said the colonel, when Barclay had spoken, 
 " John, don't mind it. Look at me, John — look at me I 
 They had to put me in jail, you know ; but every one 
 seems to have forgotten it but me — and I am a dog that 
 I don't." 
 
 John Barclay looked at the old, broken man, discarded 
 from the playing-cards of life, with the hurt, surprised 
 look always in his eyes, and it was with an effort that the 
 suave Mr. Barclay kept the choke in his throat out of his 
 voice as he replied: — 
 
 " Yes, Colonel, yes, I kndw I have no right to kick 
 against the pricks." 
 
 Watts was saying: "Yes, he's in there now — with the 
 boys; you better go in and cheer him up." 
 
 And then at the upper right-hand entrance entered 
 Gabriel Gamine, president of the State Bank, unctuous 
 as a bishop. He ignored the others, and walking to Bar- 
 clay, put out his hand. " Well, well, John, glad to see you; 
 just came up from the miU — I was looking for you. 
 Couldn't find Neal, either. Where is he?" 
 
 The general answered curtly, "Neal is in Chicago, 
 working on the Record-Herald." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 349 
 
 "Oh," returned Carnine, and did not pursue the sub- 
 ject further. " Well, gentlemen," he said, " fine winter 
 weather we're having." 
 
 " Is that so ? " chipped in Dolan. " Mr. Barclay was 
 finding it a little mite warm." i 
 
 Carnine ignored Dolan, and Barclay grinned. " Well, 
 John," Carnine hesitated, " I was just down to see you — 
 on a little matter of business." 
 
 " Delighted, sir, delighted," exclaimed Dolan, as he rose 
 to go; "we were going, anyway — weren't we. General? " 
 The veterans rose, and Colonel Culpepper said as he went, 
 "I told Molly to call for me here about noon with the 
 buggy — if she comes, tell her to wait." 
 
 AH of life may not be put on the stage, and this scene 
 has to be cut; for it was at the end of half an hour's 
 aimless, footless, foolish talk that Gabriel Carnine came 
 to the business in hand. Round and round the bush he 
 beat the devil, before he hit him a whack. Then he said, 
 as if it had just occurred to him, " We were wondering — 
 some of the directors — this morning, if under the circum- 
 stances — oh, say just for the coming six months or such 
 a matter — it might not be wise to reorganize our board; 
 freshen it up, don't you know; kind of get some new 
 names on it, and drop the old ones — not permanently, 
 but just to give the other stockholders a show on the 
 board." 
 
 " So you want me to get off, do you ? " blurted Barclay. 
 " You're afraid of my name — now ? " 
 
 The screams of Mr. Carnine, the protesting screams of 
 that oleaginous gentleman, if they could have been vocal- 
 ized in keeping with their muffled, low-voiced, whispering 
 earnestness, would have been loud enough to be heard a 
 mile away, but Barclay talked out: — 
 
 " All right, take my name off; and out comes my account. 
 I don't care." 
 
 And thereupon the agony of Mr. Carnine was unutter- 
 able. If he had been a natural man, he would have 
 howled in pain; as it was, he merely purred. But Bar- 
 clay's skin was thin that day, sensitive to every touch, 
 
350 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 and he felt the rough hand of Carnxn6 and winced. He 
 let the old man whine and pur and stroke his beard 
 awhile, and then Barclay said wearily, " All right, just as 
 you please, Gabe — I'll not move my account. It's 
 nothing to me." 
 
 In another minute the feline foot of Mr. Carnine was 
 pattering gently toward the front door. Barclay sat 
 looking at the stove, and Watts went on working. Bar- 
 clay sighed deeply once or twice, but McHurdie paid no 
 heed to him. Finally Barclay rose and went over to the 
 bench. 
 
 " Watts," cried Barclay, " what do you think about it 
 — you, your own self, what do you think way down in 
 your heart ? " 
 
 Watts sewed a stitch or two without speaking, and then 
 put down his thread and put up his glasses and said, 
 " That's fairly spoken, John Barclay, and will have a 
 fair answer." 
 
 The old man paused; Barclay cried impatiently, " Oh, 
 well. Watts, don't be afraid — nothing can hurt me much 
 now! " 
 
 " I was just a-thinking, lad," said Watts, gently, " just 
 a-thinking." 
 
 "What?" cried Barclay. 
 
 " Just a-thinking," returned the old man, as he put his 
 hand on the younger man's shoulder, "what a fine poet 
 you spoiled in your life, just to get the chance to go to jail. 
 But the Lord knows His business, I suppose I " he added 
 with a twinkle in his eye, "and if He thinks a poet 
 more or less in jail would help more than one out — it 
 is all for the best, John, all for the best. But, my boy," he 
 cried earnestly, "if you'll be going to jail, don't whine, 
 lad. Go to jail like a gentleman, John Barclay, go to 
 jail like a gentleman, and serve your Lord there like 
 a man." 
 
 "Damn cheerful you are, Watts," returned Barclay. 
 "What a lot of Job's comforters you fellows have been 
 this morning." He went on half bitterly and half jok- 
 ingly: "Beginning -with the general, continuing with 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 351 
 
 your travelling salesman friend, and following up with 
 Gabe, who wants me to get off the board of directors of 
 his bank for the moral effect of it, and coming on down 
 to you who bid me Godspeed to jail — I have had a — a 
 
 — a rather gorgeous morning." 
 
 The door-bell tinkled, and a woman's voice called, 
 "Father, father!" 
 
 "Yes, Molly," the harness maker answered; "he'll be 
 here pretty soon. He said for you to wait." 
 
 "Come in, for heaven's sake, Molly," cried Barclay, 
 "come back here and cheer me up." 
 
 " Oh, all right — it's you, John ? What are you doing 
 back here ? I'm so glad to find you. I've just got the 
 dearest letter from Jane. We won't talk business or any- 
 thing — you know how I feel, and how sorry I am — so 
 just let's read Jane's letter; it has something in it to 
 cheer you. She said she was going to write it to you the 
 next day — but I'll read it to you." And so Mrs. Brown- 
 well took from her pocketbook the crumpled letter and 
 unfolded it. "It's so like Jane — just good hard sense 
 clear through." She turned the pages hastily, and finally 
 the fluttering of the sheets stopped. " Oh, yes," she said, 
 "here's the place — the rest she's told you. Let me see — 
 Oh : ' And, Molly, what do you think ? — there's a duke 
 after Jeanette — a miserable, little, dried-up, burned-out, 
 poverty-stricken Italian duke. And oh, how much good 
 it did us both to cut him, and let him know how ill-bred 
 we considered him, how altogether beneath any whole- 
 some honest girl we thought such a fellow.' And now, 
 John, isn't this like Jane ? " interposed Mrs. Brownwell. 
 " Listen ; she says, ' Molly, do you know, I am so happy 
 about Jeanette and Neal. We run such an awful risk 
 with this money — such a horrible risk of unhappiness and 
 misery for the poor child — heaven knows she would be so 
 much happier without it. And to think, dear, that she 
 has found the one in the world for her, in the sweet simple 
 way that a girl should always find him, and that the money 
 
 — the menacing thing that hangs like a shadow over her — 
 cannot by any possibility spoil her life ! It makes me 
 
352 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 happy all the day, and I go singing through life with joy 
 at the thought that the money won't hurt Jennie — that 
 it can't take from her the joy that comes from living with 
 her lover all her life, as I have lived.' Isn't that fine, 
 John ? " asked Mrs. Brownwell, and looking up, she saw 
 John Barclay, white-faced, with trembling jaw, staring in 
 pain at the stove. Watts had gone into the store to wait 
 on a customer, and the woman, seeing the man's anguish, 
 came to him and said : " Why, John, what is it ? How 
 have I hurt you? — I thought this would cheer you so." 
 
 The man rose heavily. His colour was coming back. 
 "Oh, God — God," he cried, "I needed that to-day — I 
 needed that." 
 
 The woman looked at him, puzzled and nonplussed. 
 " Why — why — why ? " she stammered. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," he smiled back at her bitterly, "ex- 
 cept — " and his jaw hardened as he snapped — " except 
 that Neal Ward is a damned informer — and I've sent 
 him about his business, and Jeanette's got to do the same." 
 
 MoUie Brownwell looked at him with hard eyes for a 
 moment, and then asked, " What did Neal do ? " 
 
 " Well," replied Barclay, " under cross-examination, I'll 
 admit without incriminating myself that he gave the testi- 
 mony which indicted me." 
 
 "Was it that or lie, John?" He did not reply. A 
 silence fell, and the woman broke it with a cry : " Oh, 
 John Barclay, John Barclay, must your trafi&c in souls 
 reach your own flesh and blood ? Haven't you enough 
 without selling her into Egypt, too? Haven't you 
 enough money now ? " And without waiting for answer, 
 Molly Brownwell turned and left him staring into noth- 
 ing, with his jaw agape. 
 
 It was noon and a band was playing up the street, and 
 as he stood by the stove in McHurdie's shop, he remem- 
 bered vaguely that he had seen banners flying and some 
 " Welcome " arches across the street as he walked through 
 the town that morning. He realized that some lodge or 
 conclave or assembly was gathering in the town, and that 
 the band was a part of its merriment. It was playing a 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 353 
 
 gay tune and came nearer and nearer. But as he stood 
 leaning upon his chair, with his heart quivering and raw 
 from its punishment, he did not notice that the band had 
 stopped in front of the harness shop. His mind went 
 back wearily to the old days, fifty years before, when as a 
 toddling child in dresses he used to play on that very 
 scrap-heap outside the back door, picking up bits of 
 leather, and in his boyhood days, playing pranks upon the 
 little harness maker, and braiding his whips for the town 
 herd. Then he remembered the verses Watts had written 
 about Bob Hendricks and him in that very room, and the 
 music he and Watts had played together there. The old 
 song Watts had made in his presence in the hospital at 
 St. Louis came back to his mind. Did it come because 
 outside the band had halted and was playing that old song 
 to serenade Watts McHurdie ? Or did it come because 
 John Barclay was wondering if, had he made a poet of 
 himself, or a man of spiritual and not of material power, 
 it would have been better for him? 
 
 Heaven knows why the old tune came into his head. 
 But when he recognized that they were serenading the 
 little harness maker, and that so far as they thought of 
 John Barclay and his power and his achievements, it 
 was with scorn, he had a flash of insight into his relations 
 with the world that illumined his soul for a moment and 
 then died away. The great Mr. Barclay, alone, sitting in 
 the dingy little harness shop, can hear the band strike up 
 the old familiar tune again, and hear the crowd cheer and 
 roar its applause at the little harness maker, who stands 
 shamefaced and abashed, coatless and aproned, before the 
 crowd. And he is only a poet — hardly a poet, would be 
 a better way to say it; an exceedingly bad poet who makes 
 bad rhymes, and thinks trite thoughts, and says silly and 
 often rather stupid things, but who once liad his say, 
 and for that one hour of glorious liberty of the soul has 
 moved millions of hearts to love him. John Barclay does 
 not envy Watts McHurdie — not at all; for Barclay, with 
 all his faults, is not narrow-gauged; he does not wish they 
 would call for him — not to-day — not at all; he could not 
 2a 
 
354 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 face them now, even if they cheered him. He says in his 
 heart of pride, beneath his stiff neck, that it is all right ; 
 that Watts, — poor little church-mouse of a Watts, whom 
 he could buy five times over with the money that has 
 dropped into the Barclay till since he entered the shop — 
 that Watts should have his due ; but only — only — only 
 — that is it — only, but only — 1 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 And now as we go out into the busy world, after this 
 act in the dawning of John Barclay's life, let the court 
 convene, and the reporters gather, and the honourable 
 special counsel for the government rage, and the defendant 
 sit nervous and fidgety as the honourable counsel reads the 
 indictment; let the counsel for the defendant swell and 
 strut with indignation that such indignities should be put 
 upon honest men and useful citizens, and let the court 
 frown, and ponder and consider; for that is what courts 
 are for, but what do we care for it all? We have left it all 
 behind, with the ragged programmes in the seats. So if 
 the honourable court, in the person of the more or less 
 honourable Elijah Westlake Bemis, after the fashion of 
 federal judges desiring to do a questionable thing, calls 
 in a judge from a neighbouring court — what do we care ? 
 And if the judge of the neighbouring court, after much 
 legal hemming and judicial hawing, decides in his great 
 wisdom — that the said defendant Barclay has been charged 
 in the indictment with no crime, and instructs the jury to 
 find a verdict of not guilty for said defendant John Bar- 
 clay, upon the mere reading of the indictment, — what are 
 the odds? What do we care if the men in the packed 
 courtroom hiss and the reporters put down the hisses in 
 their note-books and editors write the hisses in headlines, 
 and presses print the hisses all over the world? For the 
 fidgety little man is free now — entirely free save for fifty- 
 four years of selfish life upon his shoulders. 
 
 In the trial of nearly every cause it becomes necessary 
 at some point in the proceedings to halt the narrative and 
 introduce certain exhibits, records, and documents, upon 
 which foregone evidence has been based, and to which 
 coming testimony may properly be attached. That point 
 has been reached in the case now before the reader. And 
 
 355 
 
356 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 as "Exhibit A" let us submit a letter written by John 
 Barclay, January seventh, nineteen hundred and four, 
 to Jane, his wife, at Naples. 
 
 *• As I cabled you this afternoon, the case resulted exactly as I said 
 it would the day after the indictment. I had not seen or talked with 
 Lige since that day I talked with him over the telephone, before the 
 indictment was made public, but I knew Lige well enough to know 
 how he would act under fire. I had him out to dinner this evening, 
 and we talked over old times, and he tells me he wants to retire from 
 the bench. Jane, Lige has been my mainstay ever since this com- 
 pany was organized. Sometimes I feel that without his help in poli- 
 tics — looking to see that pernicious legislation was killed, and that 
 the right men were elected to administrative offices, and appointed to 
 certain judicial places — we never would have been able to get the 
 company to its present high standing. I feel that he has been so 
 raluable to us that we should settle a sum on him that will make 
 him a rich man as men go in the Ridge. Heaven knows that is little 
 enough, considering all that he has done. He may have his faults, 
 Jane, but he has been loyal to me. 
 
 " I hope, my dear, that Jeanette has ceased to worry about the other 
 matter ; ne is not worth her tears. Don't come home for a month or 
 two yet. The same conditions prevail that I spoke of in my first cable 
 the day of the indictment. The press and the public are perfectly 
 crazy. America is one great howling mob, and it would make you 
 and Jennie unhappy. As for me, 1 don't mind it. You know me." 
 
 And that the reader may know how truthful John Bar- 
 clay is, let us append herewith a letter written by Mrs. 
 Mary Barclay, of Sycamore Ridge, to her granddaughter 
 at Naples, January 15, 1904. She writes among other 
 things: — 
 
 " Well, dear, it is a week now since your father's case was settled, 
 and he was at home for the first time last night. I expected that 
 his victory — such as it was — would cheer him up, but some way he 
 seems worse in the dumps than he was before. He does not sleep 
 well, and is getting too nervous for a man of his age. I have the im- 
 pression that he is forever battling with something. Of course the 
 public temper is bitter, dearie. You are a woman now, and should 
 not be shielded and pampered with lies, so I am going to tell you the 
 truth. The indignation of the people of this nation at your father, 
 as he represents present business methods, is past belief. And frankly, 
 dearie, 1 can't blame them. Your father and my son is a brave, sweet, 
 loving man ; none could be finer in this world, Jennie. But the head 
 of the National Provisions Company is another person, dear; and of 
 him I do not approve, as you know so well. I am sending yon Neal 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 357 
 
 Ward's statement •which was published by the government the day 
 after the case was dismissed. I have not sent it to you before, because 
 I wanted to ask your father if it was true. Jennie, he admits that 
 Neal told the truth, and nothing but the truth — and did not make it 
 as bad as it was. You are entitled to the facts. You are a grown 
 woman now, dear, and must make your own decisions. But on, my 
 dear little girl, I am heartsick to see your father breaking as he is. 
 He seems to be fighting — fighting — fighting all the time; perhaps 
 it is against the flames of public wrath, but some way I think he is 
 fighting something inside himself — fighting it back; fighting it down 
 — whatever it is." 
 
 Counsel also begs indulgence while he introduces and 
 reads two clippings from the Sycamore Ridge Daily Ban- 
 ner, of February 12, 1904, The first one reads ; — 
 
 "JuDGB Behis Ketires 
 
 " Hon. E. W. Bemis has retired from the federal bench, and mmonr 
 has it that he is soon to return with his estimable wife to our midst. 
 Our people will welcome the judge and Mrs. Bemis with open arms. 
 He retires from an honourable career, to pass his declining years in 
 the peace and quiet of the town in which he began his career over 
 fifty years ago. For as every one knows, he came West as a boy, and 
 before having been admitted to the bar dealt largely in horses and 
 cattle. He has always been a good business man, having with his 
 legal acumen the acquisitive faculty, and now he is looking for soma 
 place to invest a modest competence here in the Ridge, and rumour 
 has it again that he is negotiating for the purchase of the Sycamore 
 Bidge Waterworks bonds, which are now in litigation. H so, he 
 will make an admirable head of that popular institution." 
 
 In this connection, and before introducing the other 
 clipping from the Banner, it would be entirely proper to 
 introduce the manuscript for the above, in the typewrit- 
 ing of the stenographer of Judge Bemis's court, and a 
 check for fifty dollars payable to Adrian Brownwell, 
 signed by Judge Bemis aforesaid; but those documents 
 would only clog the narrative and would not materially 
 strengthen the case, so they will be thrown out. 
 
 The second clipping, found in the personal column of 
 the Banner of the date referred to, February 12, 1904, 
 follows : — 
 
358 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 "Mrs. John Barclay and Miss Barclay are on the steamer Etruria 
 ■which was sighted ok Fire Island to-day. They will spend a few 
 weeks in New York, and early in March Miss Barclay will enter the 
 state university to do some post-graduate work in English, and Mra 
 Barclay will return to Sycamore Ridge. Mr. Barclay will meet them 
 at the pier, and they expect to spend the coming two weeks attending 
 German opera. Mrs. Mary Barclay left to-day for the East to join them. 
 She will remain a month visiting relatives near Haverhill, Mass." 
 
 It becomes necessary to append some letters of Miss 
 Jeanette Barclay's, and they are set down here in the order 
 in which they were written, though the first one takes the 
 reader back a few weeks to December 5, 1903. It was posted 
 at Rome, and in the body of it are found these words : — 
 
 " My dear, I know you will smile when you hear I have been read- 
 ing all the Italian scientific books I can find, dealing with the human 
 brain — partly to help my Italian, but chiefly, I think, to see if I can 
 find and formulate some sort of a definition for love. It is so much a 
 part of my soul, dear heart, that I would like to know more about it. 
 And I am going to write down for you what I think it is as we know 
 it. I have been wearing your ring nearly three years, Neal, and if 
 you had only known it, I would have been happy to have taken it a 
 year sooner. In those four years I have grown from a girl to a woman, 
 and you have become aman full grown. In that time all my thoughts 
 have centred on you. In all my schoolbooks your face comes back 
 to me as I open them in fancy. As I think of the old room at school, 
 of my walk up the hill, as I think of home and my room there, some 
 thought of you is always between me and the picture. All through 
 my physical brain are little fibres running to every centre that bring 
 np images of you. You are woven into my life, and I know in my 
 heart that I am woven into your life. The thing is done ; it is as much 
 apart of my being as my blood — those million fibres of my brain 
 that from every part of my consciousness bring thoughts of you. We 
 cannot be separated now, darling — we are united for life, whether 
 we unite in life or not. I am yours and you are mine. It is now as 
 inexorable as anything we caU material. More than that — you have 
 made my soul. All the aspirations of my spiritual life go to you for 
 beginning and for being as truly as the fibres of my brain thrill to 
 the sound of your name or the mental image of your face. My soul 
 is your soul, because in the making the thought of you was uppermost. 
 I know that my love for you is immortal, ineffaceable, and though 
 I should live a hundred years, that love would still be as much a 
 part of my life as my hands or my eyes or my body. And the best 
 of it all is that I am so glad it is so. Divorce is as impossible with 
 a love like that as amputation of the brain. It is big and vital in 
 me, real and certain, and so long as I live on earth, or dwell in 
 eternity, my soul and your soul are knit together." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 359 
 
 Three weeks later, on December 28, 1903, Miss Barclay 
 wrote to Mr. Ward as follows: — 
 
 " Tour letter and father's letter were on my c|esk when we returned 
 from our cruise. I have just finished writing to him, and I herewith 
 return your ring and your pin." 
 
 There was neither signature nor superscription— just 
 those words. And a month later. Miss Barclay wrote 
 this letter to her Grandmother Barclay in Sycamore 
 Ridge: — 
 
 "My dear, deab Grankt: I have told mother what you wrote of 
 father, and we are coming home just as soon as we can get a steamer. 
 We are cabling him to-day, and hope to sail within a week or ten days at 
 the very farthest. But I cannot wait until I see you, dear, to come close 
 into your heart. And first of all I want you to know that I share your 
 views about the heart-break of aU this money and the miserable man- 
 killing way it is being piled up. I know the two men you speak of — 
 father and the president of the N.F.C. But he is my father, and I must 
 stand by him, and brace him if I can. But, oh. Granny, I don't 
 want the old money I It has never made me happy — never for one 
 minute. The only happiness I have ever had was when he was at 
 home with us all, away from business — and — but you know about that 
 other happiness, and it hurts to speak of it now. I have not read 
 what you sent me. I can't. But I will keep it. That it is true 
 doesn't help me any. Nothing can help me. It is just one of those 
 awful things that I have read of coming to people, but which I thought 
 never could possibly come to me. Oh, Granny, Granny, you who pray 
 so much for others, now pray for me. Granny, you can't cut some- 
 thing out of you — right out of the heart of you, by merely saying 
 so ; it keeps growing back ; it hurts, and hurts, and keeps hurting ; 
 even if you know it is cut out and thrown away. They say that men 
 who have had legs cut off can feel them for months and even years 
 if they are cramped when they are buried. The nerves of the old 
 dead body reach through space and hurt. It is that way with me. 
 The old dead thing in my heart that is buried and gone keeps cramp- 
 ing and hurting. Ton are the only one I can come to, Granny. It 
 hurts mother too much, and she is not strong this winter. I think it 
 is worry. She is growing thin, and her heart doesn't act right. I am 
 terribly worried about her ; but she made me promise to say nothing 
 to father, and you must not, either ; for he will see for himself soon." 
 
 A few letters from Neal Ward to Jeanette Barclay, 
 and a document some twenty years old, which the reader 
 may have forgotten, but which one person connected with 
 this narrative has feared would come to light every day in 
 
360 A CERTAIN RICH MAM 
 
 that time — and then this tedious business of introducing 
 documentary evidence will be over. The letter from Neal 
 Ward to Jeanette Barclay is one of hundreds that he wrote 
 and never mailed. They were dated, sealed, addressed, 
 and put away. This one was written at midnight as the 
 bells and whistles and pistols and fireworks were wel- 
 coming the year 1904. It begins : — 
 
 " Mt vert Dearest: Here I am sitting at the old desk again, in 
 the old office of the Banner. I could only scribble you a little note on 
 the train last night to tell you that my heart still was with you, and I 
 did not have the time to explain why I was coming. It is a dead 
 secret, little woman, and perhaps I shouldn't tell even you, but I feel 
 that I must bring everything to you. Bob Hendricks wired me to 
 come down. He has a mortgage on the Banner, and he feels that 
 things are not being properly managed, so he persuajied Mr. Brown- 
 well to give me a place as sort of manager of the paper at twenty dol- 
 lars a week — a sum that seems princely considering that I was making 
 only eighteen dollars in Chicago, and that it costs so much less to live 
 here. Hendricks guarantees my wages, so that Adrian cannot stand 
 me off. Hendricks has another motive for wanting me to come here. 
 The waterworks franchise will come up for renewal June first of this 
 year, and Mr. Hendricks is for municipal ownership. Gamine and 
 the State Bank are against municipal ownership, because the water 
 company does business with them, and as they control the Index, they 
 are preparing to make a warm fight for the renewal of the old franchise. 
 So there will be a hot time in the old town this spring. But the mis- 
 erable part of it is this. The growth of the town has made it danger- 
 ous to use the present supply station. The water must not come out 
 of the mill-pond any longer, as the town is tilted so that all the surface 
 drainage goes into it, and the sewers that drain into it, while they 
 drain a few hundred yards below the intake of the waterworks, cannot 
 help tainting the whole pond. Mr. Hendricks has had an expert here 
 who declared that both the typhoid and diphtheria epidemics here last 
 fall were due directly to the water supply, and Mr. Hendricks is going 
 to make the fight of his life to have the city buy the waterworks 
 plant, and move the intake six miles above town, where there is plenty 
 of clean water. Of course it will mean first a city election to get 
 decent councilmen, and then a bond election to vote money to buy the 
 old plant ; the waterworks company are going to move heaven and 
 earth to get an anti-Hendrieks council elected and to renew the fran- 
 chise and let things go as they are. So that is why I am here, dear 
 heart, and oh, my darling, you do not know how painful it all seems to 
 be here and not have you — I mean — you know what I mean. All 
 my associations with the work here in the office and on the street are 
 with my heart close to yours. Everything in the old town tells me 
 of you. ' Saint Andrews by the Northern sea, a haunted city is to me.' 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 361 
 
 To-night I hear the music of the New Tear's dance, and I can shut my 
 eyes and feel you •with me there. Oh, sweetheart, I have kept you so 
 close, by writing to you every night. I come and lay my heart and all 
 its thoughts at your shrine, and put all my day's work before you for 
 your approval, just as I used to do. It is so sweet a privilege. 
 
 "kLast night 1 dreamed about you. It was so real and your voice 
 sounded so clearly, crying to me, that you have been with me aU day. 
 I wonder if while we sleep, we whose souls would struggle to meet 
 through eternity, if through the walls of space they may not find 
 each other, and speak to each other through our dreams. It is mid- 
 night here now, and you are just waking, perhaps, or just sleeping 
 that sleep of early morning wherein the soul sinks to unknown depths. 
 Oh — oh — oh, if I could but speak to you there, my dear I I am 
 going to sit here and close my eyes and try." 
 
 The next letter in the exhibit was written six weeks later 
 and is dated February 12, 1904. It says in part : - — 
 
 "I must tell you what a bully fellow Bob Hendricks is. Judge 
 Bemis sent a highly laudatory article about himself to the office to- 
 day with a check for fifty dollars. In the article it develops that he 
 is going to retire from the federal bench and come down here and 
 buy the waterworks plant — on the theory that he will get a bargain 
 because of the expiring franchise and the prospective fight. That 
 fifty doUars looked as big as a barn to poor Adrian, so he trotted off 
 with the letter and the check to Hendricks. Of course, the letter and 
 the check together, just framed and put in the bank window, would 
 make great sport of the judge ; but Bob is a thoroughbred, and prob- 
 ably Bemis knows it, and figures on that in his dealings with him. 
 I was in the bank when Adrian came in with the letter. He showed 
 the check and the article to Hendricks, and you could almost see 
 Adrian wag his tail and hear him whine to keep the check; Bob 
 looked at the poor fellow's wistful eyes and handed it back with a 
 quizzical little smile and said, ' Oh, I guess I'd run it ; it can't hurt i 
 anything.' The light that came into Adrian's eyes was positively 
 beatific, and he shook Bob by the hand, and twirled his cane, and 
 waved his gloves in a sort of canine ecstasy, and trotted to the 
 cashier's window with the check like a dog with a bone. It is the largest 
 piece of real money he has had in six months, the boys say, and he 
 has spent it for clothes. To-morrow he will hurry off to the first con- 
 vention in the city like a comet two centuries behind time. But that 
 is beside the point ; the thing I don't like is the coming of Bemis. I 
 know him ; the things I have seen him do in your father's business and 
 when he was on the bench, make me shudder for decent politics in this 
 town. He is shrewd, unscrupulous, and without any restraint on earth. 
 
 "1 feel closer to you than I- have felt since I put the barrier be- 
 tween us. For you are in this country to-night — I could go to the 
 telephone there five ieet away and reach you if I would. I looked 
 
362 ■ A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 to-day in the papers and saw that they would be giving Lohenffrin at 
 the Metropolitan Opera House, and knowing your father as 1 do, I 
 think he will take you there. I can hear the music rising and,see 
 you drinking in the harmony, and as it swells into exquisite pain, and 
 thrills through the holy places of your soul where are old memories 
 of our love, sweetheart, maybe your spirit will go forth in God's 
 strange universe where we all dwell neighbours, loosed from those 
 material chains that bind our bodies, and will seek the heart that is 
 searching for you out there in the highway of heaven. I seem to feel 
 you now, dear soul — did the music fling your spirit fi'ee for a second 
 till it touched my own ? I am so happy, Jeanette — even to love you 
 and to know that you have loved me, and must always love me while 
 you are you and I am I." 
 
 And now let us consider the final exhibit. It will be 
 necessary to turn back the action of this story a month 
 and a half and sit with John Barclay and his friend, 
 former federal judge Elijah Westlake Bemis, before the 
 fire in the wide fireplace in the Barclay home, one cold 
 January night, a week after Barclay had gone free from 
 the court and the world had hissed him. They were 
 talking of the judge's business future, and the judge was 
 saying: — 
 
 " John, how did Bob Hendricks ever straighten out that 
 affair in the treasurer's office in connection with the first 
 year's taxes of the old Wheat Company ? What did he 
 do with it finally ? " 
 
 Barclay looked at the fire and then turned his search- 
 light eyes into Bemis's. There was not a quiver. The 
 man sat there without a muscle of hig parchment face 
 moving. His eyes were squinted up, looking at the tip 
 of his long cigar. 
 
 " Why ? " asked Barclay. 
 
 "Well," responded Bemis, impassive as an ox, 'it 
 would help me in my business to know.' Tell me." 
 
 He spoke the last two words as one in authority. 
 
 " Well," answered Barclay, " one day back in the 
 seventies, I was appointed to check up the treasurer's 
 book, and I found where he had fixed it on the county 
 books — apparently between two administrations. I rec- 
 ognized his hand; and it made the balance for the first 
 time." 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 363 
 
 Bemis smoked awhile. " What time in the seventies ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 There was a pause. " In January, 1879." 
 
 Bemis grinned a wicked, mean little grin and said : 
 •' That settles it. I believe I am safe in buying the water- 
 works." 
 
 " What are you going to do to Bob ? " Barclay asked. 
 
 " Nothing, nothing — absolutely nothing, if he has any 
 sense and drops this municipal ownership tommyrot. 
 Absolutely nothing." 
 
 Again the grin came over his face, and at the end of a 
 pause Barclay said : — 
 • " Well, if not, what then ? " 
 
 Bemis shut his eyes and crossed his gaunt legs, and 
 began : " Think back twenty years ago — more or less. 
 Do you remember when I brought your car , down here 
 for Watts McHurdie and his crowd to go to Washington 
 in, to the G.A.R. celebration? All right; do you re- 
 member that I came to the office and told you I saw Bob 
 Hendricks waiting for some one at the Union Station, 
 when the train got into the city that morning ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Barclay, "you were so mysterious and 
 funny about it, I remember." 
 
 " Well," said Bemis, as he got up and poked a log that 
 was annoying him in the fireplace, " well, I have a little 
 document in my desk at home, that I got the night before 
 in the Ridge, which will convince Bobbie, if he has any 
 sense, that this municipal ownership business isn't all it's 
 cracked up to be." 
 
 Barclay, who knew from Jane something of the truth, 
 guessed the rest, but he did not question Bemis further. 
 " Oh, I don't know, Lige," he began j " it seems to me I 
 wouldn't drag that into it." 
 
 Bemis turned his old face, full of malicious passion, 
 toward Barclay and cried, "Maybe you wouldn't, John 
 Barclay — you forget things ; but I never do ; and you're 
 a coward sometimes, and I am not." ' 
 
 The blaze of his wrath went out in a moment, and Bar- 
 day's mind went back to that afternoon in the seventies 
 
864 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 when Hendrick; picked Bemis up and threw him bodily 
 from the county convention and branded him as a boodler. 
 Barclay knew argument was useless. So he said nothing. 
 
 " He has the county officers — every man-jack of them 
 from the treasurer to Jake Dolan, the janitor — and I 
 couldn't get hold of that book by fair means without his 
 knowing it. But I am going to have that book, John — 
 I'm going to have that book." 
 
 Barclay followed Bemis's mental processes, as if they 
 were his own. " Well — what if he does know it ? " asked 
 Barclay. ' 
 
 " Oh, if he knew I was after the book, he'd fix me, — 
 have it destroyed or something ; he could do lots of things 
 or beat me some way. I've got to get that book — get it 
 out of the court-house — and there's just one way to get 
 into the court-house, without using the doors and the 
 windows." When Bemis had finished speaking, he gazed 
 steadily into Barclay's eyes. And Bemis saw the fear 
 that was in Barclay's face. " Yes, I know a way into the 
 court-hoiise, John — it's mine by fifty years' right of dis- 
 covery. I'm going to have that book, and get an expert 
 opinion as to the similarity of the handwriting in the 
 book and the handwriting of my own little document. 
 My own little document," he mused, licking his chops like 
 a hound at the prospect. 
 
 Now we will call that little document " Exhibit I " in 
 the case of the Larger Good vs. The People, and close 
 thereby a long and tedious chapter. But we will begin 
 another chapter in which the wheels of events spin rapidly 
 in their courses toward that moral equilibrium that deeds 
 must find before they stop when they are started for the 
 Itarger Good. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 The spring of 1904 in Sycamore Ridge opened in tur- 
 moil. The turmoil came from the contest over the pur- 
 chase of the town's water system. Robert Hendricks as 
 president of the Citizens' League was leading the forces 
 that advocated the purchase of the system by the town, 
 as being the only sure way to change the water supply 
 from the polluted mill-pond to a clean source. Six months 
 before he had leased every bill-board in town, and for the 
 two months preceding the city election that was to decide 
 the question of municipal purchase he had hired every 
 available hall in town, for every vacant night during those 
 months, and had bought half of the first page of both the 
 Banner and the Index for those months — and all of this 
 long before the town knew the fight was coming. He 
 covered the bill-boards and the first pages of the news- 
 papers with analyses of the water in the mill-pond — badly 
 infected from the outlet of the town sewers and its sur- 
 face drainage. The Citizens' League filled the halls with 
 speakers demanding the purchase of the plant and the re- 
 moval of the pumping station to a place several miles 
 above the town, and four beyond the mill-pond. Judge 
 Bemis, with the aid and abetment of John Barclay, 
 who was in the game to help his old friend, put up ban- 
 ners denouncing Hendricks as a socialist, accusing him of 
 being the town boss, and charged through the columns of 
 the Index that Hendricks' real motive in desiring to have 
 the city take over the waterworks system was to make 
 money on the sale of the city's bonds. So Hendricks 
 was the centre of the fight. 
 
 In the first engagement, a malicious contest, Hendricks 
 lost. The town refused to vote the bonds to buy the 
 plant. But at the same election the same people elected 
 
 365 
 
366 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 a city council overwhelmingly in favour of municipal own- 
 ership and in favour of compelling the operating company 
 to move its plant from the mill-pond. The morning after 
 the election Hendricks began a lawsuit as a taxpayer 
 and citizen to make the waterworks company move its 
 plant. The town could understand that issue, and, senti- 
 ment rallied to Hendricks again. Judge Bemis, at the 
 head of the company, although irritated, was not alarmed. 
 For in the courts he could promote delays, plead techni- 
 calities, and wear out his adversary. It was an old game 
 with him. Still, the suit disturbed the value of his bonds, 
 and having other resources, he gleefully decided to use 
 them. 
 
 And thus it fell out that one fine day in April, Trixie Lee, 
 from the bedraggled outer hem of the social garment down 
 by the banks or the Sycamore, called to the telephone 
 Robert Hendricks of the town's purple and fine linen, who 
 dwelt on the hill. He did not recognize her voice, the 
 first time she called. But shrewd as Judge Bemis was, 
 and bad as he was, he did not know it all. He did not 
 know that when Hendricks had received the first anony- 
 mous letter three days before, he had instructed the girls in 
 the telephone office, which he controlled, to make a record 
 of every telephone call for his office or his house, and when 
 the woman's voice on the telephone that day delivered 
 Judge Bemis's message, the moment after she quit talking 
 he knew with whom he had been talking. 
 
 " Is this Mr. Hendricks ? " the voice had begun, rather 
 pleasantly. Yes, it was Mr. Hendricks. " Well, I am 
 your friend, but I don't dare to let you know my name 
 now; it would be all my life is worth." And Robert 
 Hendricks grinned pleasantly into the rubber transmitter 
 as he realized that his trap would work. " Yes, Mr. 
 Hendricks, I am your friend, and you have a powerful 
 enemy." What with the insinuations in the Index and 
 the venom that Lige Bemis had been putting into anony- 
 mous circulars during the preliminary waterworks cam- 
 paign, this was no news to Mr. Hendricks ; so he let the 
 voice go on, "They want you to dismiss that suit against 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 367 
 
 the waterworks company that you brought last week." 
 There was a pause for a reply ; but none came ; then the 
 voice said, "Are you there, Mr. Hendricks — do you hear 
 me ? " And Mr. Hendricks said that he heard perfectly. 
 "And," went on the voice, " as your friend I wish you 
 would, too. Do you remember a letter you once wrote to 
 a woman, asking her to elope with you — a married woman, 
 Mr. Hendricks ? " There was a pause for a reply, and 
 again the voice asked, " Do you hear, Mr. Hendricks ? " 
 and Mr. Hendricks heard ; heard in his soul and was afraid, 
 but his voice did not quaver as he replied, " Yes, I hear 
 perfectly." Then the voice went on, " Well, they have 
 that letter — a little note — not over one hundred words, 
 and with no date on it, and the man who has it also has a 
 photograph of page 234 of a certain ledger in the county 
 treasurer's office for 1879, and there is an entry there in 
 your handwriting, Mr. Hendricks ; and he has had them 
 both enlarged to show that the handwriting of the note 
 and of the county book are the same ; isn't that mean, Mr. 
 Hendricks ? " Hendricks coughed into the transmitter, 
 and she knew that he was there, so she continued : " As 
 your friend in this matter, I have got them to promise 
 that if you will come to the Citizens' League meeting that 
 you have called for to-morrow night at Barclay Hall and 
 tell the people that you think we need harmony in the 
 Ridge worse than we need this everlasting row, if you will 
 merely say to Mr. Barclay as you pass into the meeting, 
 ' Well, John, I believe I'll dismiss that suit,' you can have 
 your letter back. He hasn't got the letter, but he will be 
 sure to tell the news to a friend who has." Here the 
 voice faltered, and said unconsciously, " Wait a minute, 
 I've lost my place ; oh, here it is ; all right. And if you 
 don't come to the meeting and say that, I believe they 
 are going to spring those documents on the meeting to 
 put you in bad odour." 
 
 " Is that all ? " asked Hendricks. 
 
 " Well — "a pause and then finally — " yes," came the 
 Toice. 
 
 " Well, my answer is no," said Hendricks, and while he 
 
368 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 was trying to get central the voice called again and 
 said: — 
 
 " Just one word more : if you still maintain yon* 
 present decision, a copy of that letter you wrote will be 
 put into the hands of Mr. Brownwell of the Banner before 
 the meeting; I tell you this to protect you. He and Mis. 
 Brownwell and Mrs. Barclay will be in town to-morrow 
 evening on the Barclay car from the West on No. 6; you 
 will have until then to reconsider your decision; after 
 that you act at your own risk." 
 
 Again the voice ceased, and Hendricks learned from 
 central who had been talking with him. It was after 
 banking hours, and he sat for a time looking the situation 
 squarely in the face. The reckoning had come. He 
 had answered " no " with much bravery over the tele- 
 phone — but in his heart a question began to rise, and his 
 decision was clouded. 
 
 Hendricks walked alone under the stars that night, and as 
 he walked he turned the situation over and over as one who 
 examines a strange puzzle. He saw that his ' no " could 
 not be his own "no." Molly must be partner in it. For 
 to continue his fight for clean water he must risk her good 
 name. He measured Bemis, and remembered the old 
 quarrel. The hate in the face of the bribe-giver, thrown 
 out of the county convention a quarter of a century before, 
 came to Hendricks, and he knew that it was no vain 
 threat he was facing. So he turned up the other facet 
 of the puzzle. There was Adrian. For an hour he con- 
 sidered Adrian Brownwell, a vain jealous old man with the 
 temper of a beast. To see Molly, tell her of their common 
 peril, get her decision, and be with it at the meeting before 
 Adrian saw the note, all in the two hours between the arrival 
 of the train bearing the Brown wells and Mrs. Barclay, and 
 the time of the meeting in Barclay Hall, was part of Hen- 
 dricks' puzzle. He believed that by using the telephone 
 to make an appointment he could manage it. Then he 
 turned the puzzle over and saw that to save Molly Brown- 
 well's good name and his father's, human lives must be 
 sacrificed by permitting the use of foul water in the town. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 369 
 
 And in the end his mind set. He knew that unless she 
 forbade it, the contest must go on to a righteous finish, 
 through whatever perils, over any obstacles. Yet as he 
 walked back to the bank, determined not to take his hand 
 from the plough, he saw that he must prepare to go into the 
 next day as though it were his last. For in his conscious- 
 ness on the other side of the puzzle — always there was 
 the foolish Adrian, impetuous at best, but stark mad in his 
 jealousy and wrath. 
 
 And Elijah Westlake Bemis, keeping account of the 
 man's movements, chuckled as he felt the struggle in the 
 man's breast. For he was a wise old snake, that Lige 
 Bemis, and he had seduced many another man after the 
 brave impulsive " no " had roared in his face. Just before 
 midnight when he saw the electric light flash on in the 
 private office of the president of the Exchange National 
 Bank, Lige Bemis, libertine with men, strolled home and 
 counted the battle won. " He's writing his speech," he 
 said to Barclay over the telephone at midnight. And 
 John Barclay, who had fought the local contest in the 
 election with Bemis to be loyal to a friend, and to help 
 one who was in danger of losing the profit on half a mill- 
 ion dollars' investment in the Sycamore Ridge water- 
 works, laughed as he walked upstairs in his pajamas, and 
 said to himself, " Old Lige is a great one — there is a lot 
 of fight in the old viper yet." It was nothing to Barclay 
 that the town got its water from a polluted pond. That 
 phase of the case did not enter his consciousness, though 
 it was placarded on the bill-boards and had been printed 
 in the Banner a thousand times during the campaign. 
 To him it was a fight by the demagogues against property 
 interests, and he was with property, even a little prop- 
 erty — even a miserable little dribble of property like 
 half a million dollars' worth of waterworks bonds. 
 
 And Robert Hendricks — playfellow of John Barclay's 
 boyhood, partner of his youth — sat working throughout 
 the night, a brave man, going into battle without a tremor. 
 He went through his books, made out statements of 
 his business relations, prepared directions for the heads 
 2b 
 
370 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 of his different concerns, as a man would do who might 
 be going on a long journey. For above everything, 
 Robert Hendricks was foresighted. He prepared for 
 emergencies first, and tried to avoid them afterwards. 
 And with the thought of the smallness of this life in his 
 soul, he looked up from his work to see the hard gray 
 lines of the dawn in the street outside of his office, bring- 
 ing the ugly details from the shadows that hid them dur- 
 ing the day, and he sighed as he wondered in what bourne 
 he should see the next dawn break. 
 
 It was a busy day for Robert Hendricks, that next day, 
 and through it all his mind was planning every moment 
 of the time how he could protect Molly Brownwell. Did 
 he work in the bank, behind his work his mind was seek- 
 ing some outlet from his prison. If he went over the 
 power-house at the electric plant, always he was looking 
 among the wheels for some way of refuge for Molly. 
 When he spent an hour in the office of the wholesale 
 grocery house, he despatched a day's work, but never for 
 a second was his problem out of his head. He spent two 
 hours with his lawyers planning the suit against the 
 water company, pointing out new sources of evidence, and 
 incidentally leaving a large check to pay for the work. 
 But through it all Molly Brownwell's good name was ever 
 before him, and when he thought how twenty years be- 
 fore he had walked through another day planning, schem- 
 ing, and contriving, all to produce the climax of calamity 
 that was hovering over her to-day, he was sick and faint 
 with horror and self-loathing. 
 
 But as the day drew to its noon, Hendricks began to 
 feel a persistent detachment from the world about him. 
 It floated across his consciousness, like the shadow anchor 
 of some cloud far above him. He began to watch the 
 world go by. He seemed not to be a part of it. He 
 became a spectator. At four o'clock he passed Dolan on 
 the street and said, absently, " I want you to-night at 
 the bank at seven o'clock sharp — don't forget, it's very 
 important." 
 
 As he walked down Main Street to the bank, the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 371 
 
 shadow anchor of the cloud had ceased to flit across hia 
 consciousness. Life had grown all gray and dull, and he 
 was apart from the world. He saw the handbills an- 
 nouncing the meeting that night as one who sees a curioua 
 passing show; the men he met on the street he greeted as 
 creatures from another world. Yet he knew he smiled 
 and spoke with them casually. But it was not he who 
 spoke ; the real Robert Hendricks he knew was separated 
 from the pantomime about him. When he went into the 
 bank at five o'clock, the janitor was finishing his work. 
 Hendricks called up the depot on the telephone and found 
 that No. 6 was an hour late. With the realization that 
 a full hour of his fighting time had been taken from 
 him and that the train would arrive only a scant hour 
 before the meeting, the Adrian face of his puzzle turned 
 insistently toward Hendricks. It was not fear but de- 
 spair that seized him. The cloud was over him. And for 
 want of something, to do he wrote. First he wrote ab- 
 stractedly and mechanically to John Barclay, then to Neal 
 Ward — a note for the £anner — and as the twilight deep- 
 ened in the room, he squared his chair to the table and 
 wrote to Molly Brownwell ; that letter was the voice of 
 his soul. That was real. Six o'clock struck. Half-past 
 six clanged on the town clock, and as Jake Dolan opened 
 the bank door, Hendricks heard the roar of the train cross- 
 ing at the end of Main Street. 
 
 "There goes Johnnie's private car, switching on the 
 tail of her," said Dolan, standing in the doorway. 
 
 Hendricks sent Dolan to a back room of the bank, and 
 at seven-twenty went to the telephone. " Give me 876, 
 central," he called. " Hello — hello — hello," he cried 
 nervously, "liello — who is this?" The answer came 
 and he said, " Oh, I didn't recognize your voice." Then 
 he asked in a low tone, as one who had fear in his heart : 
 " Do you recognize me ? If you do, don't speak my name. 
 Where is Adrian ? " Then Mr. Dolan, listening in the 
 next room, heard this : " You say Judge Bemis phoned to 
 him ? Oh, he was to meet him at eight o'clock. How long 
 ago did he leave ? " After a moment Hendricks' answer 
 
372 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 was : " Then he has just gone ; and will not be back ? " 
 Hendricks cut impatiently into whatever answer came 
 with: "Molly, I must see you within the next fifteen 
 minutes. I can't talk any more over the telephone, but 
 I must come up." "Yes," in a moment, "I must have 
 your decision in a matter of great importance to you — 
 to you, Molly." There was a short silence, then Dolan 
 heard : " All right, I'll be there in ten minutes." Then 
 Hendricks turned from the telephone and called Dolan in. 
 He unlocked a drawer in his desk, and began speaking to 
 Dolan, who stood over him. Hendricks' voice was low, 
 and he was repressing the agitation in his heart by main 
 strength. 
 
 " Jake," he said, talking as rapidly as he could, " I must 
 be ungodly frank with you. It doesn't make any differ- 
 ence whether he is right or not, but Adrian Brownwell 
 may be fooled into thinking he has reason to be jealous of 
 me." Hendricks was biting his mustache. " He's a rag- 
 ing maniac of jealousy, Jake, but I'm not afraid of him — 
 not for myself. I can get him before he gets me, if it 
 comes to that, but to do it I'll have to sacrifice Molly. 
 And I won't do that. If it comes to her good name or 
 my life — she can have my life." They were outside now 
 and Dolan was unhitching the horse. He knew instinc- 
 tively that he was not to reply. In a moment Hen- 
 dricks went on, "Well, there is just one chance in a 
 hundred that it may turn that way — her good name or 
 my life — and on that chance I've written some letters 
 here." He reached in his coat and said, " Now, Jake, 
 put these letters in your pocket and if anything goes 
 wrong with me, deliver them to the persons whose names 
 are on the envelopes — and to no one else. I must trust 
 everything to you, Jake," he said. 
 
 Driving up the hill, he met Bemis coming down town. 
 He passed people going to the meeting in Barclay Hall. 
 He did not greet them, but drove on. His jaw was set 
 hard, and the muscles of his face were firm. As he neared 
 the Culpepper home he climbed from the buggy and 
 hitched the horse to the block in front of his own house. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 373 
 
 He hurried into the Cnlpepper yard, past the lilac bushes 
 heavy with blooms, and up the broad stone steps with the 
 white pillars looming above him. It was a quarter to 
 eight, and at that minute Bemis was saying to Adrian 
 Brownwell, " All right, if you don't believe it, don't 
 take my word for it, but go home right now and see what 
 you find." 
 
 Molly Brownwell met Hendricks on the threshold 
 with trembling steps. "Bob, what is it?" she asked. 
 They stood in the shadow of the great white pillars, where 
 they had parted a generation ago. 
 
 " It's this, Molly," answered Hendricks, as he put hia 
 hand to his forehead that was throbbing with pain $ 
 " Lige Bemis has my letter to you. Yes," he cried as she 
 gasped, "the note — the very note, and to get it I must 
 quit the waterworks fight and go to the meeting to-night 
 and surrender. I had no right to decide that alone. It 
 is our question, Molly. We are bound by the old life — 
 and we must take this last stand together." 
 
 The woman shrank from Hendricks with horror on her 
 face, as he personified her danger. She could not reply 
 at once, but stood staring at him in the dusk. As she 
 stared, the feeling that she had seen it all before in a 
 dream came over her, and the premonition that some 
 awful thing was impending shook her to the marrow. 
 
 "Molly, we have no time to spare," he urged. "I 
 must answer Bemis in ten minutes — ■ I can do it by phone. 
 But say what you think." 
 
 "Why — why — why — Bob — let me think," she whis- 
 pered, as one trying to speak in a dream, and that also 
 seemed familiar to her. " It's typhoid for my poor who 
 died like sheep last year," she cried, "or my good name 
 and yours, is it, Bob? Is it, Bob ? " she repeated. 
 
 He put his hand to his forehead again in the old way 
 she remembered so well — to temples that were covered 
 with thin gray hair — and answered, "Yes, Molly, that's 
 our price." 
 
 Those were the last words that she seemed to have heard 
 before; after that the dialogue was all new to her. She was 
 
374 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 silent a few agonized seconds and then said, " I know what 
 you think, Bob; you are for my poor; you are brave." 
 He did not answer, fearing to turn the balance. As she 
 sank into a porch chair a rustling breeze moved the lilac 
 plumes and brought their perfume to her. From down 
 the avenue came the whir of wheels and the hurrying click 
 of a horse's hoofs. At length she rose, and said tremu- 
 lously : " I stand with you, Bob. May God make the 
 blow as light as He can." 
 
 They did not notice that a buggy had drawn up on the 
 asphalt in front of the house. Hendricks put out his 
 hand and cried, " Oh, . Molly — Molly — Molly — " and 
 she took it in both of hers and pressed it to her lips, and 
 as Adrian Brownwell passed the lilac thicket in the gather- 
 ing darkness that is what he saw. Hendricks was halfway 
 down the veranda steps befor&he was aware that Brown- 
 well was running up the walk at them, pistol in hand, like 
 one mad. Before the man could fire, Hendricks was upon 
 him, and had Brownwell's two hands gripped tightly in 
 one of his, holding them high in the air. The little man 
 struggled. 
 
 " Don't scream — for God's sake, don't scream," cried 
 Hendricks to the woman in a suppressed voice. Then he 
 commanded her harshly, "Go in the house — quick — 
 Molly — quick." 
 
 She ran as though hypnotized by the force of the sug- 
 gestion. Hendricks had his free hand over Brownwell's 
 mouth and around his neck. The little old man was kick- 
 ing and wriggling, but Hendricks held him. " Not here, 
 you fool, not here. Can't you see it would ruin her, you 
 fool? Not here." He carried and dragged Brownwell 
 across the grass through the shrubbery and into the 
 Hendricks yard. No one was passing, and the night had 
 fallen. " Now," said Hendricks, as he backed against a 
 pine tree, still holding Brownwell, " I shall let you go if 
 you'll promise to listen to me just a minute until I tell 
 you the whole truth. Molly is innocent, man — absolutely 
 innocent, and I'll show you if you'll talk for a moment. 
 Will you promise, man ? " 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 375 
 
 Brownwell nodded his assent ; Hendricks looked at him 
 steadily for a second and then said, " All right," and set 
 the little man on his feet. The glare of madness came 
 into Brownwell's eyes, and as he turned he came at Hen- 
 dricks with his pistol drawn. An instant later there was 
 a shot. Brownwell saw the amazement flash into Hen- 
 dricks' eyes, and then Hendricks sank gently to the foot 
 of the pine tree. 
 
 And Molly Brownwell, with the paralysis of terror still 
 upon her, heard the shot and then heard footsteps running 
 across the grass. A moment later her husband, empty- 
 handed, chattering, shivering, and white, stumbled into the 
 room. Rage had been conquered by fear. For an 
 agonized second the man and woman stared at one another, 
 speechless — then the wife cried : — 
 
 "Oh — oh — why — why — Adrian," and her voice was 
 thick with fear. — 
 
 The man was a-tremble — hands, limbs, body — and his 
 mad eyes seemed to shrink from the woman's gaze. " Oh, 
 God — God — oh, God — " he panted, and fell upon his 
 face across the sofa. They heard a hurrying step running 
 toward the Hendricks house, there came a frightened, 
 choked cry of " Help ! " repeated twice, another and another 
 sound of pattering feet came, and five minutes after the 
 quaking man had entered the door the whole neighbourhood 
 seemed to be alive with running figures hurrying silently 
 through the gloom. The thud of feet and the pounding 
 of her heart, and the whimpering of the little man who 
 lay, face down, on the sofa, were the only sounds in her 
 ears. She started to go with the crowd. But Adrian 
 screamed to her to stay. 
 
 " Oh," he cried, " he sank so softly — - he sank so softly — 
 he sank so softly ! Oh, God, oh, God — he sank so softly ! " 
 
 And the next conscious record of her memory was that 
 of Neal Ward bursting into the room, crying, " Aunt 
 Molly — Aunt Molly — do you know Mr. Hendricks has 
 committed suicide ? They've found him dead with a pistol 
 by his side. I want some whiskey for Miss Hendricks. 
 And they need you right away." 
 
376 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 But Molly Brownwell, with what composure she could, 
 said, "Adrian is sick, Neal — I can't — I can't leave him 
 now." And she called after Neal as he ran toward the 
 door, "Tell them, Neal, tell them — why I can't come." 
 There was a hum of voices in the air, and the sound of a 
 gathering crowd. Soon the shuffle and clatter of a thou- 
 sand feet made it evident that the meeting at Barclay 
 Hall had heard the news and was hurrying up the hill. 
 The crowd buzzed for an hour, and Molly and Adrian 
 Brownwell waited speechless together — he face down- 
 ward on the sofa, she huddled in a chair by the window. 
 And then the crowd broke, slowly, first into small groups 
 that moved away together and then turned in a steady 
 stream and tramped, tramped, tramped down the hill. 
 
 When the silence had been unbroken a long time, save 
 by the rumble of a buggy on the asphalt or by the foot- 
 steps of some stray passer-by, the man on the sofa lifted 
 his head, looked at his wife and spoke, " Well, Molly ? " 
 
 " Well, Adrian," she answered, " this is the end, I sup- 
 pose ? " 
 
 He did not reply for a time, and when he did speak, it 
 was in a dead, passionless voice : " Yes — I suppose so. I 
 can't stay here now." 
 
 " No — no," she returned. " No, you should not stay 
 here." 
 
 He sat up and stared vacantly at her for a while and 
 then said, " Though I don't see why I didn't leave years 
 and years ago ; I knew all this then, as well as I do now." 
 
 The wife looked away from him as she replied : " Yes, I 
 should have known you would know. I knew your se- 
 cret and you — " 
 
 " My secret," said Adrian, " my secret ? " 
 
 " Yes — that you came North with your inherited money 
 because when you were in the Confederate army you were 
 a coward in some action and could not live among your 
 own people." 
 
 " Who told you," he asked, " who told you ? " ~ 
 
 " The one who told you I have always loved Bob ; life 
 has told me that, Adrian. Just as life has told you my 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 377 
 
 story." They sat without speaking for a time, and then 
 the woman sighed and rose. " Two people who have 
 lived together twenty -five years can have no secrets from 
 each other. In a thousand ways the truth comes out." 
 
 " I should have gone away a long time ago," he repeated, 
 " a long time ago ; I knew it, but I didn't trust my in- 
 stincts." 
 
 " Here comes father," she said, as the gate clicked. 
 
 They stood together, listening to the slow shuffle of the 
 colonel coming up the walk, and the heavy fall of his cane. 
 The wife put out her hand and said gently, " I think I 
 have wronged you, Adrian, more than any one else." 
 
 He did not take her hand but sighed, and turned and went 
 up the wide stairway. He was an old man then, and she 
 remembered the years when he tripped up gayly, and then 
 she looked at her own gray hair in the mirror and saw 
 that her life was spent too. 
 
 As the colonel came in gasping asthmatically, he found 
 his daughter waiting for him. "Is Adrian better?" he 
 asked excitedly. " Neal said Adrian was sick."' 
 
 " Yes, father, he's upstairs packing. He is going out on 
 the four o'clock train." 
 
 " Oh," said the colonel, and then panted a moment before 
 asking, " Has any one told you how it happened ? " 
 
 "Yes," she replied, "I know everything. I think I'll 
 run over there now, father." As she stood in the doorway, 
 she said, "Don't bother Adrian — he'll need no help." 
 
 And so Molly Brown well passed the last night with her 
 dead lover. About midnight the bell rang and she went 
 to the door. 
 
 " Ah, madam," said Jacob Dolan, as he fumbled in his 
 pockets, and tried to breathe away from her to hide the 
 surcease of his sorrow, " Ah, madam," he repeated, as he 
 suddenly thought to pull off his hat, " I did not come for 
 you — 'twas Miss Hendricks I called for; but I have one 
 for you, too. He gave the bundle to me the last thing 
 — poor lad, poor lad." He handed her the letter ad- 
 dressed to Mrs. Brownwell, and then asked, " Is the sister 
 about?" 
 
378 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 And when he found she could not be seen he went 
 away, and Molly BrownweU sat by the dead man's body 
 and read:^- 
 
 " My darling — my darling — they will let a dead man 
 say that to you — won't they ? And yet, so far as any 
 thought of mine could sin against you, I have been dead 
 these twenty years. Yet I know that I have loved you all 
 that time, and as I sit alone here in the bank, and take the 
 bridle off my heart, the old throb of joy that we both 
 knew as children comes back again. It is such a strange 
 thing — this life — such a strange thing." Then there fol- 
 lowed a burst of passionate regret from the man's very 
 heart, and it is so sacred to a manly love that curbed itself 
 for a score of years, that it must not be set down here. 
 
 Over and over Molly BrownweU read the letter and 
 then crept out to her Hlac thicket and wept till dawn. She 
 heard Adrian BrownweU go, but she could not face him, 
 and listened as his footsteps died away, and he passed from 
 her life. 
 
 And John Barclay kept vigil for the dead with her. As 
 he tossed in his bed through the night, he seemed to see 
 glowing out of the darkness before him the words Hen- 
 dricks had written, in the letter that Dolan gave Barclay 
 at midnight. Sometimes the farewell came to him: — 
 
 " It is not this man of mUlions that I wish to be with a 
 moment to-night, John — but the boy I knew in the old 
 days — the boy who ran with me through the woods at 
 Wilson's Creek, the boy who rode over the hill into the 
 world with me that September day forty years ago; the 
 boy whose face used to beam eagerly out of yours when 
 you sat playing at your old melodeon. I wish to be near 
 him a little while to-night. When you get this, can't you 
 go to your great organ and play him back into conscious- 
 - ness and tell him Bob says good-by ? " 
 
 At dawn Barclay caUed Bemis out of bed, and before 
 sunrise he and Barclay were walking on the terrace in 
 front of the Barclay home. 
 
 "Lige," began Barclay, "did you tell Adrian of that 
 note last night?" Bemis grinned his assent. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 379 
 
 " And he went home, found Bob there conferring with 
 Mrs. Brovvnwell about his position in the matter, and 
 Adrian killed him." 
 
 " That's the way I figured it out myself," replied Bemis, 
 laconically, "but it's not my business to say so." 
 
 " I thought you promised me you would just bluff with 
 that note and not go so far, Lige Bemis," said Barclay. 
 
 "Did he just bluff with me when he called me a boodler 
 and threw me downstairs in the county convention ? " 
 
 " Then you lied to me, sir," snapped Barclay. 
 
 " Oh, hell, John — come off," sneered Bemis. " Haven't 
 I got a right to lie to you if I want to ? " 
 
 The two men stared at each other like growling dogs 
 for a moment, and then Barclay turned away with, " What 
 is there in the typhoid talk? " 
 
 "Demagogery — that's all. Of course there may be 
 typhoid in the water; but let 'em boil the water." 
 
 " But they won't." 
 
 " Well, then, if they eat too much of your ' Old Hon- 
 esty ' or drink too much of my water unboiled, they take 
 their own risk. You don't make a breakfast food for 
 hogs, and I can't run my water plant for fools." 
 
 " But, Lige," protested Barclay, " couldn't we hitch up 
 the electric plant — " 
 
 "Hitch up the devil and Tom Walker ^ohn Barclay. 
 When the wolves got after you, did I come olubbering to 
 you to lay down and take a light sentence?" Barclay 
 did not answer. Bemis continued : " Brace up, John — 
 what's turned you baby when we've got the whole thing 
 won? We didn't kill Hendricks, did we? Are you full 
 of remorse and going to turn state's evidence ? " 
 
 Barclay looked at the ground for a time, and said : " I 
 believe, Lige, we did kill Bob — if it comes to that ; and 
 we are morally responsible for — 
 
 " Oh, bag your head, John ; I'm going home. When 
 you can talk some sense, let me know." 
 
 And Bemis left Barolay standing in the garden looking 
 at the sunrise across the mill-pond. Presently the carrier 
 boy with a morning paper came around, and in it Barclay 
 
380 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 read the account of Hendricks' reported suicide, corrobo 
 rated by his antemortem statement, written and delivered 
 to Jacob Dolan an hour before he died. 
 
 " When I took charge of the Exchange National Bank," 
 it read, " I found that my father owed Garrison County 
 nine thousand dollars for another man's taxes, which he, 
 my father, had agreed to pay, but had no money to do so. 
 The other man insisted on my father forging a note to 
 straighten matters up. It seemed at that time that the 
 bank would close and the whole county would be ruined if 
 my father had not committed that deed. I could not put 
 the money back into the treasury without revealing my 
 father's crime, so I let the matter run for a few years, re- 
 newing the forged note, and then, as it seemed an inter- 
 minable job of forgery, I forged the balance on the county 
 books, one afternoon between administrations in 1879. 
 Mr. E. W. Bemis, who is trying to force polluted water 
 on Sycamore Ridge, has discovered this forgery and has 
 threatened to expose me in that and perhaps other matters. 
 So I feel that my usefulness in the fight for pure water in 
 the town is ended. I leave funds to fight the matter in 
 the courts, and I feel sure that we will win." 
 
 Barclay sat in the warm morning sun, reading and re- 
 reading the statement. Finally Jane Barclay, thin, broken 
 and faded, on whom the wrath of the people was falling 
 with crushing weight, came into the veranda, and put 
 her hands on heurhusband's shoulders. 
 
 " Come in, John, breakfast is ready." 
 
 The woman whom the leprosy of dishonest wealth was 
 whitening, walked dumbly into the great house, and ate 
 in silence. " I am going to Molly," she said simply, as 
 the two rose from their meal. "I think she needs me, 
 dear ; won't you come, too? " she asked. 
 
 "I can't, Jane — I can't," cried Barclay. And when 
 his wife had pressed him, he broke forth : " Because Lige 
 Bemis made Adrian kill Bob and I helped — " he groaned, 
 and sank into his chair, "and I helped." 
 
 When Neal Ward came to the office the next morning, he 
 found Dolan waiting for him. Ward opened the envelope 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 381 
 
 that Dolan gave him, and found in it the mortgage Hen- 
 dricks had owned on the Banner office, assigned to Ward, 
 and around the mortgage was a paper band on which was 
 written: "God bless you, my boy — keep up the fight; 
 never say die." 
 
 Then Ward read Adrian Brownwell's valedictory that 
 was hanging on a copy spike before him. It was the 
 heart-broken sob of an old man who had run away from 
 failure and sorrow, and it need not be printed here. 
 
 On Memorial Day, when they came to the cemetery on 
 the hUl to decorate the soldiers' graves, men saw that the 
 great mound of lilacs on Robert Hendricks' grave had with- 
 ered. The seven days' wonder of his passing was ended. 
 The business that he had left prospered without him, or lan- 
 guished and died; within a week in all but a dozen hearts 
 Hendricks' memory began to recede into the past, and so, 
 where there had been a bubble on the tide, that held in 
 its prism of light for a brief bit of eternity all of God's 
 spectacle of life, suddenly there was only the tide moving 
 resistlessly toward the unknown shore. And thus it is 
 with aU of us. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIIl 
 
 In the summer of 1904, following the death of Robert 
 Hendricks, John Barclay spent much time in the Ridge, 
 more time than he had spent there for thirty years. For 
 in th*? City he was a marked man. Every time the market 
 quivered, reporters rushed to get his opinion about the 
 cause of the disturbance; the City papers were full of 
 stories either of his own misdeeds, or of the wrong-doings 
 of other men of his caste. His cronies were dying all 
 about him of broken hearts or wrecked minds, and it 
 seemed to him that the word " indictment " was in every 
 column of every newspaper, was on every man's lips, and 
 literally floated in the air. 
 
 So he remained in Sycamore Ridge much of the time, 
 and every fair afternoon he rowed himself up the mill-pond 
 to fish. He liked to be alone ; for when he was alone, he 
 oould fight the battle in his soul without interruption. 
 The combat had been gathering for a year; a despair was 
 rising in him, that he concealed from his womenkind — 
 who were his only intimate associates in those days — as 
 if it had been a crime. But out on the mill-pond alone, 
 casting minnows for bass, he could let the melancholy in 
 his heart rage and battle with his sanity, without let or 
 hindrance. His business was doing well ; the lawsuits 
 against the company in a dozen states were not affecting 
 dividends, and the department in charge of his charities 
 was forwarding letters of condolence and consolation 
 from preachers and college presidents, and men who under 
 the old regime had been in high walks of life. Occasion- 
 ally some conservative newspaper or magazine would 
 praise him and his company highly ; but he knew the 
 shallowness of all the patter of praise. He knew that he 
 paid for it in one way or another, and he grew cynical ; 
 
 382 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 383 
 
 and in his lonely afternoons on the river, often he laughed 
 at the whole mockery of his career, smiled at the thought 
 of organized religion, licking his boots for money like a 
 dog for bones, and then in his heart he said there is no God. 
 Once, to relieve the pain of his soul's woe, he asked aloud, 
 who is God, anyway, and then laughed as he thought that 
 the bass nibbling at his minnow would soon think he, 
 John Barclay, was God. The analogy pleased him, and 
 he thought that his own god, some devilish fate, had the 
 string through his gills at that moment and was prepar- 
 ing to cast him into the fire. Up in the office in the city, 
 they went on making senators and governors, and slipping 
 a federal judge in where they could, but he had little hand 
 in it, for his power was a discarded toy. He sat in his 
 boat alone, rowing for miles and miles, from stump to 
 stump, and from fallen tree-top to tree-top, hating the 
 thing he called God, and distrusting men. 
 
 But when he appeared in the town, or at home, he was 
 cheerful enough ; he liked to mingle with the people, and 
 it fed his despair to notice what a hang-dog way they had 
 with him. He knew they had been abusing him behind 
 his back, and when he found out exactly what a man had 
 said, he delighted in facing the man down with it. 
 
 "So you think John Barclay could have saved Bob 
 Hendricks' life, do you, Oscar ? " asked Barclay, as he 
 overhauled Fernald coming out of the post-office. 
 
 " Who said so ? " asked Fernald, turning red. 
 
 " Oh," chuckled Barclay, " I got it from the hired girls' 
 wireless news agency; But you said it all right — you 
 said it, Oscar ; you said it over to Ward's at dinner night 
 before last." And Barclay grinned maliciously. 
 
 Fernald scratched his head, and said, "Well, John, to 
 be frank with you, that's the talk all over town — among 
 the people." 
 
 "The people — the people," snapped Barclay, impa.- 
 tiently, " the people take my money for bridges and halls 
 and parks and churches and statues and then call me a 
 murderer — oh, damn the people I Who started this 
 story ? " 
 
384 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " See Jake Dolan, John — it's up to him. He can sat 
 isfy you," said Fernald, and turned, leaving Barclay in 
 the street. 
 
 Up the hill trudged the gray-clad little man, with his 
 pugnacious shoulders weaving and his bronzed face set 
 hard and his mean jaw locked. On the steps of the court- 
 house he found Jake Dolan, smoking a morning pipe with 
 the loafers in the shade of the building. 
 
 " Here you, Jake Dolan," called Barclay, " what do 
 you mean by accusing me of murdering Bob Hendricks ? 
 What did I have to do with it ? " 
 
 " Easy, easy, Johnnie, my boy," returned Dolan, knock- 
 ing the ashes from his pipe on the steps between his feet. 
 " Gentlemen," said Dolan, addressing the crowd, " j'^oii've 
 heard what our friend says. All right — come with me 
 to my office, Johnnie Barclay, and I'll show you." Bar- 
 clay followed Dolan into the basement of the court-house, 
 with the crowd at a respectful distance. " Right this 
 way — " and Dolan switched on an electric light. " Do 
 you see that break in the foundation, Mr. Barclay ? You 
 do ? And you know in your soul that it opens into the 
 cave that leads to the cellar of your own house. Well, 
 then, Mr. Johnnie Barclay — the book that contained the 
 evidence against Bob Hendricks did not go out of this 
 court-house by the front door, as you well know, but 
 through that hole — stolen at night when I was out ; and 
 the man who stole it was the horse thief that used to run 
 the cave — your esteemed friend, Lige Bemis." 
 
 The crowd was gaping at the rickety place in the foun- 
 dation, and one man pulled a loose stone out and let the 
 cold air of the cave into the room. 
 
 " Lige Bemis came to your house, Mr. Johnnie Barclay, 
 got into the cave from your cellar, broke through this wall, 
 and stole the book that contained the forgery ma,de to 
 cover General Hendricks' disgrace- And who caused 
 that disgrace but the overbearing, domineering John Bar- 
 clay, who made that old man steal to pay John Barclay's 
 taxes, back in the grasshopper year, when the sheriff and 
 the jail were almost as familiar to him as they are now, — 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 385 
 
 by all counts. Ah, John Barclay," said the Irishman, 
 turning to the crowd, "John Barclay, John Barclay — 
 you're a brave little man sometimes ; I've seen you when 
 I was most ungodly proud of you ; I've seen you do grand 
 things, my little man, grand things. But you're a coward 
 too, Johnnie ; sitting in your own house while your horse- 
 thief friend used your cellar to work out the disgrace of 
 the man who gave his good name to save your own — 
 that was a fine trick — a damn fine trick, wasn't it, Mr. 
 Barclay ? " 
 
 Barclay started to go, but the crowd blocked his 
 way. Dolan saw that Barclay was trying to escape. 
 " Turn tail, will you, my little man ? Wait one min- 
 ute," cried Dolan. "Wait one minute, sir. For what 
 was you conniving against the big man? I know — 
 to win your game; to win your miserable little game. 
 Ah, what a pup a man can be, Johnnie, what a mangy, 
 miserable, cowardly little pup a man can be when he 
 tries — and a decent man, too. Money don't mean any- 
 thing to you — you got past that, but it's to win the game. 
 Why, man, look at yourself — look at yourself — you'd 
 cheat your own mother playing cards with matches for 
 counters — just to win the game." Dolan waved for the 
 crowd to break. " Let him out of here, and get out your- 
 selves — every one of you. This is public property you're 
 desecrating." 
 
 Dolan sat alone in his office, pale and trembling after 
 the crowd had gone. Colonel Culpepper came puffing in 
 and saw the Irishman sitting with his head in his hands and 
 his elbows on the table. 
 
 "What's this, Jake — what's this I hear?" asked the 
 colonel. 
 
 " Oh, nothing," answered Dolan, and then he looked up 
 at the colonel with sad, remorseful eyes. " What a fool — 
 what a fool whiskey in a man's tongue is — what a fool." 
 He reached under his cot for his jug, and repeated as he 
 poured the liquor into a glass, " What a fool, what a fool, 
 what a fool." And then, as he gulped it down and made 
 a wry face, " Poor little Johnnie at the mill ; I didn't mean 
 2o 
 
386 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 to hit him so hard — not half so hard. What a fool, what 
 a fool," and the two old men started off for the harness 
 shop together, 
 
 Neal Ward that night, in the Banner office alone, wrote to 
 his sweetheart the daily letter that was never mailed. 
 
 " How sweet it is," he writes, " to have you at home. Sometimes I 
 hear your voice through the old leaky telephone, talking to Aunt 
 Molly ; her phone and ours are through the same board, and your voice 
 seems natural then, and unstrained, not as it is when we meet. But I 
 knowthat some way we are meeting — our souls — in the infinite realm 
 outside ourselves — beyond our consciousness — either sleeping or wak- 
 ing. Last night I dreamed a strange dream. A little girl, like one of 
 the pictures in mother's old family photograph album, seemed to be 
 talking with me, — dressed so quaintly in the dear old fashion of the days 
 when mother taught the Sycamore Ridge School. She seemed to be 
 playing with me in some way, and then she said : ' Oh, yes, I am your 
 telephone ; she knows all about it. I tell her every night as we play to- 
 gether.' And then she was no longer a little girl but a most beautiful 
 soul and she said with great gentleness : ' In her heart she loves you — 
 in her heart she loves you. This I know, only she is proud — proud 
 with the Barclay pride ; but in her heart she loves you ; is not that 
 enough?' What a strange dreamt I wonder where we are — we 
 who animate our bodies, when we sleep. What is sleep, but the proof 
 that death is but a sleep? Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette, come into my soul 
 as we sleep." 
 
 He folded the letter, sealed and addressed it, and dated 
 the envelope, and put it in his desk — the desk before which 
 Adrian Brownwell had sat, eating his heart out in futile 
 endeavour to find his place in the world. Neal Ward had 
 cleaned out one side of the desk, and was using that for 
 his own. Mrs. Brownwell kept her papers in the other 
 side, and one key locked them both. As he walked home 
 that night under the stars, his heart was full of John Bar- 
 day's troubles. Neal knew Barclay well enough to know 
 that the sensitive nature of the man, with his strongly de- 
 veloped instinctive faculty for getting at the truth, would 
 be his curse in the turmoil or criticism through which he 
 was going. So a day or two later Neal was not surprised 
 to find a long statement in the morning press despatches 
 from Barclay explaining and defending the methods of the 
 National Provisions Company. He proved carefully that 
 the notorious Door Strip saved large losses in transit of the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 387 
 
 National Provisions Company's grain and grain produce, 
 and showed that in paying him for the use of these strips 
 the railroad companies were saving great sums for widowed 
 and orphaned stockholders of railroads — sums which 
 would be his due for losses in transit if the strips were 
 not used. 
 
 Neal Ward knew what it had cost Barclay in pride to give 
 out that statement ; so the young man printed it on the 
 first page of the Banner with a kind editorial about Mr. 
 Barclay and his good works. That night when the paper 
 was off, and young Ward was working on the books of his 
 office, he was called to the telephone. 
 
 " Is this you, Nealie Ward ? " asked a woman's voice — 
 the strong, clear, deep voice of an old woman. And when 
 he had answered, the voice went on : " Well, Nealie, I wish 
 to thank you for that editorial about John to-night in the 
 paper ; I'm Mary Barclay. It isn't more than half true, 
 Nealie ; and if it was aU true, it isn't a fraction of what 
 the truth ought to be if John did what he could, but it 
 will do him a lot of good — right here in the home paper, 
 and — Why, Jennie, I'm speaking with Nealie Ward, — ■ 
 why, do you think I am not old enough to talk with Nealie 
 without breeding scandal ? — as I was saying, my dear, it 
 will cheer John up a little, and heaven knows he needs 
 something. I'm — Jennie, for mercy sakes keep still ; I 
 know Nealie Ward and I knew his father when he wasn't 
 as old as Nealie — did his washing for him ; and boarded 
 his mother four winters, and I have a right to say what I 
 want to to that chUd." The boy and the grandmother 
 laughed into the telephone. " Jennie is so afraid I'll do 
 something improper," laughed Mrs. Barclay. " Oh, yes, 
 by the way — here's a little item for your paper to-mor- 
 row : Jennie's mother is sick ; I think it's typhoid, but 
 you can't get John to admit it. So don't say typhoid." 
 Then with a few more words she rang off. 
 
 When the Banner printed the item about Mrs. Barclay's 
 illness, the town, in one of those outbursts of feeling which 
 communities often have, seemed to try to show John Bar- 
 clay the affection that was in their hearts for the man who 
 
388 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 had grown up among them, and the family that had heen 
 established under his name. Flowers — summer flowers 
 — poured in on the Barclays. Children came with wild 
 flowers, prairie flowers that Jane Barclay had not seen 
 since she roamed over the unbroken sod about Min- 
 neola as a girl ; and Colonel Culpepper came marching up 
 the walk through the Barclay grounds, bearing his old- 
 fashioned bouquet, as grandly as an ambassador bringing 
 a king's gift. Jane Barclay sent word that she wished to 
 see him. 
 
 " My dear," said the colonel, as he held the flowers to- 
 ward her, " accept these flowers from those who have 
 shared your bounty — from God's poor, my dear ; these 
 are God's smiles that they send you from their hearts — 
 from their very hearts, my dear, from their poor hearts 
 wherein God's smiles come none too often." She saw 
 through glistening eyes the broken old figure, with his 
 coat tightly buttoned on that July day to hide some shab- 
 biness underneath. But she bade the colonel sit down, 
 and they chatted of old times and old places and old faces 
 for a few minutes ; and the colonel, to whom any sort of 
 social function was a rare and sweet occasion, stayed until 
 the nurse had to beckon him out of the room over Mrs. 
 Barclay's shoulder. 
 
 General Ward sent a note with a bunch of monthly 
 blooming roses. 
 
 "My dear Jane (he wrote) : " These roses are from slips we got 
 from John's mother when we planted our little yard. This red one 
 is from the very bush on which grew the rose John wore at his wed- 
 ding. Pin it on the old scamp to-night, and see how he will look. He 
 was a dapper little chap that night, and the years have hardly begun 
 their work on him; or perhaps he is such a tough customer that he 
 dulls the chisel of time. I do not know, and so long as it is so, you do 
 not care, but we both know, and are both glad that of all the many 
 things Grod has sent you in thirty years, he has sent you nothing so 
 fine as the joy that came with the day John wore this rose for you — a 
 joy that has grown while the rose has faded. And may this rose 
 renew your joy for another thirty years." 
 
 John read the note when he came in from the mill that 
 evening, and Jane watched the years slip off his face. He 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 389 
 
 looked into the past as it spread itself on the carpet near 
 the bed. 
 
 " Well, well, well," he said, as he smiled into the pic- 
 ture he saw, " I remember as well the general bringing 
 that rose down to the office that morning, wrapped in blue 
 tissue paper from cotton batting rolls I The package was 
 tied with fancy red braid that used to bind muslin bolts." 
 He laughed quietly, and asked, " Jane, do you remember 
 that old red braid?" The sick woman nodded. "Well, 
 with the little blue package was a note from Miss Lucy, 
 which said that my old teacher could not give me a pres- 
 ent that year — times were cruelly hard then, you remem- 
 ber — but that she could and did put the blessing of her 
 prayers on the rose, that all that it witnessed at my wed- 
 ding would bring me happiness." He sat for a moment 
 in silence, and, as the nurse was gone, he knelt beside the 
 sick woman and kissed her. And as the wife stroked his 
 aead she whispered, " How that prayer has been answered, 
 John — dear, hasn't it?" And the great clock in the silent 
 haU below ticked away some of the happiest minutes it had 
 ever measured. 
 
 But when he passed out of the sick room, the world — 
 the maddening press of affairs, and the combat in his soul 
 — snapped back on his shoulders with a mental click as 
 though a load had fallen into its old place. He stood 
 before his organ, and could not press the keys. As he 
 sat there in the twilight made by the shaded electric lamps, 
 the struggle rose in his heart against the admission of 
 anything into his scheme of life but material things, and 
 the conflict raged unchecked. What a silliness, he said, 
 to think that the mummery of a woman over a rose could 
 affect a life. Life is what the succession of the days brings. 
 The thing is or is not, he said to himself, and the gibber 
 about prayer and the moral force that moves the universe 
 is for the weak-minded. So he took his hell to bed with 
 him as it went every night, and during the heavy hours 
 when he could not sleep, he tiptoed into the sick room, and 
 looked at the thin face of his wife, sleeping a restless, 
 feverish sleep, and a great fear came into his heart. 
 
390 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Once as the morning dawned he asked the nurse whom 
 he met in the hall, "Is it typhoid?" 
 
 She was a stranger to the town, and she said to him, 
 " What does the doctor tell you ? " 
 
 "That's not the point," he insisted, "What do you 
 think?" 
 
 She looked at him for an undecided moment and replied, 
 "I'm not paid to think, Mr. Barclay," and went past him 
 with her work. But he knew the truth. He went to his 
 bed, and threw himself upon it, a-tremble with remorse and 
 fear, and the sneer in his heart stilled his lips and he could 
 not look outside himself for help. So the morning came, 
 and another day, bringing its thousand cares, faced him, 
 like a jailer with his tortures. 
 
 Time dragged slowly in the sick room and at the mill. 
 One doctor brought another, and the Barclay private car 
 went far east and came flying back with a third. The town 
 knewthat Mrs. John Barclay was dangerously sick. There 
 came hopeful days when the patient's mind was clear; on 
 one of these days Mrs. McHurdie called, and they let her 
 see the sick woman. She brought some flowers. 
 
 " In the flowers, Jane," she said, " you will find some- 
 thing from Watts." Mrs. McHurdie smiled. " You know 
 he sat up till 'way after midnight last night, playing his 
 accordion. Oh, it's been years since he has touched it. 
 And this morning when I got up, I found him sitting by 
 the kitchen table, writing. It's a poem for you." Mrs. 
 McHurdie looked rather sheepish as she said : " You know 
 how Watts is, Jane ; he just made me bring it. You can 
 read it when you get well." 
 
 They hurried Mrs. McHurdie out, and when Jane Bai-- 
 olay went to sleep, they found tears on her pillow, and in 
 her hand the verses, — the limping, awkward verses of an 
 old man, whose music only echoed back from the past. 
 The nurses and the young doctor from Boston had a good 
 laugh at it. Each of the four stanzas began with two 
 lines that asked : " Oh, don't you remember the old river 
 road, that ran through the sweet-scented wood? " To 
 them it was a curious parody on something old and quaint 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN '391 
 
 that they had long since forgotten. But to the woman 
 who lay murmuring of other days, whose lips were parched 
 for the waters of brooks that had surrendered to the 
 plough a score of years ago, the halting verses of Watts 
 McHurdie were laden with odours of grape blossoms, of 
 wild cucumbers and sumach, of elder blossoms, and the 
 fragrance of the crushed leaves of autumn. And the 
 music of distant ripples played in her feverish brain and 
 the sobbing voice of the turtle dove sang out of the past 
 for her as she slept. All through the day and the night 
 and for many nights and days she whispered of the trees 
 and the running water and the wUd grass and the birds. 
 
 And so one morning when it was still gray, she 
 woke and said to John, who bent over her, " Why, dear, 
 we are almost home ; there are the lights across the river; 
 just one more hill, dearie, and then — " And then with 
 the water prattling in her ears at the last ford she turned 
 to the wall and sank to rest. 
 
 Day after day, until the days and nights became a 
 week and the week repeated itself until nearly a month 
 was gone, John Barclay, dry-eyed and aU but dumb, 
 paced the terrace before his house by night, and by day 
 roamed through the noisy mill or wandered through his 
 desolate house, seeking peace that would not come to him. 
 The whole foundation of his scheme of life was crumbling 
 beneath him. He had built thirty -five years of his man- 
 hood upon the theory that the human brain is the god of 
 things as they are and as they must be. The structure of 
 his life was an imposing edifice, and men called it great and 
 successful. Yet as he walked his lonely way in those black 
 days that followed Jane's death, there came into his conscious- 
 ness a strong, overmastering conviction, which he dared not 
 accept, that his house was built on sand. For here were 
 things outside of his plans, outside of his very beliefs, com- 
 ing into his life, bringing calamity, sorrow, and tragedy with 
 them into his own circle of friends, into his own household, 
 into his own heart. As he walked through the dull, lonely 
 hours he could not escape the vague feeling, though he 
 fought it as one mad fights for his delusion, that all the 
 
392 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 tragedies piling up about him came from his own mistakes. 
 Over and over again he threshed the past. Molly Brown- 
 well's cry, " You have sold me into bondage, John 
 Barclay," would not be stilled, though at times he could 
 smile at it ; and the broken body and shamed face of her 
 father haunted him like an obsession. Night after night 
 when he tried to sleep, Robert Hendricks' letter burned 
 in fire before his eyes, and at last so mad was the struggle 
 in his soul that he hugged these things to him that he 
 might escape the greater horror : the dreadful red head- 
 lines in the sensational paper they had sent him from the 
 City office which screamed at him, "John Barclay slays 
 his wife — Aids a water franchise grab that feeds the 
 people typhoid germs and his own wife dies of the fever." 
 He had not replied to the letter from the law department 
 of the Provisions Company which asked if he wished to 
 sue for libel, and begged him to do so. He had burned 
 the paper, but the headlines were seared into his brain. 
 
 Over and over he climbed the fiery ladder of his sins: 
 the death of General Hendricks, the sacrifice of Molly 
 Culpepper, the temptation and fall of her father, the death 
 of his boyhood's friend, and then the headlines. These 
 things were laid at his door, and over and over again, like 
 Sisyphus rolling the stones uphill, he swept them away 
 from his threshold, only to find that they rolled right back 
 again. And with them came at times the suspicion that 
 his daughter's unhappiness was upon him also. And 
 besides these things, a hundred business transactions 
 wherein he had cheated and lied for money rose to disturb 
 him. And through it all, through his anguish and shame, 
 the faith of his life kept battling for its dominion. 
 
 Once he sent for Bemis and tried to talk himself into 
 peace with his friend. He did not speak of the things 
 that were corroding his heart, but he sat by and heard 
 himself chatter his diabolic creed as a drunkard watches 
 his own folly. 
 
 " Lige," he said, " I'm sick of that infernal charities 
 bureau we've got. I'm going to abolish it. These phil- 
 anthropic millionaires make me sick at the stomach, Lige. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 393 
 
 What do they care for the people ? They know what I 
 know, that the damn people are here to be skinned." He 
 laughed viciously and went on : " Sometimes I think we 
 filthy rich are divided into two classes : those of us who 
 keep mistresses, and those of us who have harmless 
 little entanglements with preachers and college presidents. 
 Neither the lemon-haired women nor the college presidents 
 interfere with our business; they don't hamper us — not 
 the slightest. They just take our money, and for a few 
 idle hours amuse us, and make us feel that we are good 
 fellows. As for me, I'll have neither women nor college 
 presidents purring around my ankles. I'm going to cut 
 out the philanthropy appropriation to-day." 
 
 And he was as good as his word. But that did not 
 help. The truth kept wrenching his soul, and his feet 
 blindly kept trying to find a path to peace. 
 
 It was late one night in August, and a dead moon was 
 hanging in the south, when, treading the terrace before his 
 house, he saw a shadow moving down the stairway in the 
 hall. At first his racked nerves quivered, but when he 
 found that it was his mother, he went to meet her, exclaim- 
 ing as he mounted the steps to the veranda, " Why, 
 mother, what is it — is anything wrong?" 
 
 Though it was past midnight, Mary Barclay was dressed 
 for the day. She stood in the doorway with the dimmed 
 light behind her, a tall, strong woman, straight and gaunt 
 as a Nemesis. "No, John — nothing is wrong — in the 
 house." She walked into the veranda and began as she 
 approached a chair, "Sit down, John; I wish to talk with 
 
 you." 
 
 "Well, mother — what is it?" asked the son, as he sat 
 facing her. 
 
 She paused a moment looking earnestly at his face and re- 
 plied, "The time has come when we must talk this thing 
 out, John, soul to soul." 
 
 He shrank from what was coming. His instinct told 
 him to fight away the crisis. He began to palaver, but 
 his mother cut him short, as she exclaimed : — 
 
 " Why don't you let Him in, John ? " 
 
394 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " Let who in ? " asked her son. 
 
 " You know Whom, John Barclay ; that was your grand- 
 father speaking then, the old polly foxer. You know, 
 my boy. Don't you remember me bending over the town 
 wash-tub when you were a child, Johnnie? Don't you 
 remember the old song I used to sing — of course you do, 
 child — as I rubbed the clothes on the board: 'Let Him 
 in. He is your friend, let Him in, He is your friend ; He 
 will keep you to the end — let — Him — in! ' Of course 
 you remember it, boy, and you have been fighting Him with 
 all your might for six months now, and since Jane went, 
 the fight is driving you crazy — can't you see, John ? " 
 
 The son did not reply for a moment, then he said, " Oh, 
 well, mother, that was all right in that day, but — " 
 
 "John Barclay," cried the mother sternly, as she leaned 
 toward him, " the faith that bore your father a martyr to 
 the grave, sustained me in this wilderness, and kept me 
 happy as I scrubbed for your bread, shall not be scoffed in 
 my presence. We are going to have this thing out to-night. 
 I, who bore you, and nursed you, and fed you, and staked 
 my soul on your soul, have some rights to-night. Here 
 you are, fifty-four years old,, and what have you done? 
 You've killed your friend and your friend's father before 
 him — I know that, John. You've wrecked the life of the 
 sister of your first sweetheart, and put fear and disgrace in 
 her father's face forever — forever, John Barclay, as long 
 as he lives. I know that too ; I haven't been wrapped 
 in pink cotton all these years, boy — -I've lived my own 
 life since you left my wing, and made my own way too, 
 as far as that goes. And now you are trying to quench 
 the fires of remorse in your soul because your wife died a 
 victim of your selfish, ruthless, practical scheme of things. 
 More than that, my son — more than that, your child is 
 suffering all the agony that a woman can suffer because 
 of your devilish system of trafl&c in blood for money. 
 You know what I mean, John. That boy told the truth, 
 as you admit, and he could either run or lie, and for 
 being a man you have broken up a God-sent love merely 
 to satisfy your own vanity. Oh, John — John," she 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 395 
 
 cried passionately, "my poor, blind, foolish boy — havsn't 
 you found the ashes in the core of your faith yet — aren't 
 you ready to quit ? " 
 
 He began, " Don't you think, mother, I have suffered — " 
 " Suffered, boy ? Suffered ? Of course you have suf- 
 fered, John," she answered, taking his hands in hers. " I 
 have seen the furnace fires smoking your face, and I know 
 you have suffered, Johnnie ; that's why I am coming to 
 you — to ask you to quit suffering., Look at it, my boy 
 • — what are you suffering for ? Is it material power you 
 want ? Well, you have never had it. The people are 
 going right along running their own affairs in spite of you. 
 All your nicely built card houses are knocked over. In 
 the states and in the federal government, in spite of your 
 years of planning and piecing out your little practical 
 system, at the very first puff of God's breath it goes to 
 pieces. The men whom you bought and paid for don't 
 stay bought — do they, my boy ? Oh, your old mother 
 knows, John. Men who will sell are never worth buying ; 
 and the house that relies on them falls. You have built 
 a sand dam, son — like the dams you used to build in the 
 spring stream when you were a child. It melts under 
 pressure like straw. You have no worldly power. In 
 this practical world you are a failure, and good old Phil 
 Ward, who went out into the field and scattered seeds of 
 discontent at your system — he is seeing his harvest ripen 
 in his old age, John," she cried. " Can't you see your 
 failure ? Look at it from a practical standpoint : what 
 thing in the last thirty years have you advocated, and 
 Philemon Ward opposed, that to-day he has not realized 
 and you lost ? His prescription for the evils may have 
 been wrong many times, but his diagnosis of 'them was 
 always right, and they are being cured, in spite of all 
 your protest that they did not exist. Which of you has 
 won his practical fight in this practical world — his God 
 or your God ; the ideal world or the material world, boy ? 
 Can't you see it ? " The old woman leaned forward and 
 looked in her son's dull, unresponsive face. " Can't you 
 see how you have failed ? " she pleaded. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 They rose together and began to pace the long floor oi 
 the veranda. " Oh, mother," he cried, as he put his arm 
 about her, "I am so lonely — so tired, so sick in the heart 
 of me." 
 
 They didn't speak for a time, but walked together in 
 silence. At length the mother began again. " John," she 
 said, as they turned at the end of the porch, " I suppose 
 you are saying that you have your money — that it is 
 material — solid, substantial, and undeniable. But is it? 
 Isn't it all a myth ? Leave it where it is — in the shape 
 of securities and stocks and credits — what will it do? 
 Will it bring Jane back ? Will it give Jeanette her heart's 
 desire, and make her happy all her life ? You know, dear, 
 that it will only make me miserable. Has it made you 
 happy, John ? Turn it into gold and pile it up in the front 
 yard — and what will it buy that poor Phil Ward has not 
 had all of his life — good food, good clothing — good enough, 
 at least — a happy family, useful children, and a good name ? 
 A good name, John, is rather to be chosen than great 
 riches — than all your money, my son — rather to be 
 chosen than all your money. Can you buy that with your 
 millions piled on millions ? " 
 
 They were walking slowly as she spoke, and they turned 
 into the terrace. There they stood looking at the livid 
 moon sinking behind the great house. 
 
 " Is there more joy in this house than in any other house 
 in town, John — answer me squarely, son — answer me," 
 she cried. He shook his head sadly and sighed. "A 
 mother, whose heart bleeds every hour as she sees her son 
 torturing himself with footless remorse ; that is one. A 
 heartbroken, motherless girl, whose lover has been torn 
 away from her by her father's vanity and her own pride, 
 and whose mother has been taken as a pawn in the game 
 her father played with no motive, no benefit, nothing but 
 to win his point in a miserable little game of politics ; that 
 is number two. And a man who should be young for 
 twenty years yet, who should have been useful for thirty 
 years — and now what is he ? powerless, useless, wretched, 
 lonely, who spends his time walking about lighting against 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 397 
 
 God, that lie may prove his own wisdom and nothing 
 more." 
 
 " Mother," cried Barclay, petulantly, " I can't stand 
 this — that you should turn on me — now." He broke 
 away from her, and stood alone. " When I need you most, 
 you reproach me. When I need sympathy, you scorn all 
 that I have done. You can't prove your God. Why 
 should I accept Him ? " 
 
 The gaunt old woman stretched out her arms and cried : 
 " Oh, John Barclay, prove your god. Tell him to come 
 and give you a moment's happiness ^ — set him to work to 
 restore your good name ; command him to make Jeanette 
 happy. These things my God can do I Let your Mam- 
 mon," she cried with all the passion of her soul, "let your 
 Mammon come down and do one single miracle like that." 
 Her voice broke and she sobbed. " What a tower of Ba- 
 bel — an industrial Babel, you are building, John — you 
 and your kith and kind. The last century gave us Scho- 
 penhauers and Kants, all denying God, and this one gives 
 us Railroad Kings and Iron Kings and Wheat Kings, all 
 by their works proclaiming that Mammon has the power 
 and the glory and the Kingdom. O ye workers of iniq^ 
 uityl" she cried, and her voice lifted, "ye wicked and 
 perverse — " 
 
 She did not finish, but broken and trembling, her strength 
 spent and her faith scorned, she sank on her knees by a 
 marble urn on the terrace and sobbed and prayed. When 
 she rose, the dawn was breaking, and she looked for a mo ■ 
 ment at her son, who had been sitting near her, and cried : 
 " Oh, my boy, my little boy that I nursed at my breast — 
 let Him in, He is your friend — and oh, my God, sustain 
 my faith I" 
 
 Her son came to her side and led her into the house. 
 But he went to his room and began the weary round, bat- 
 tling for his own faith. 
 
 As he stood by his open window that day at the mill, he 
 saw Molly Brownwell across the pond, going into his home. 
 He watched her idly and saw Jeanette meet her at the 
 door, and then as his memory went back to the old 
 
398 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 days, he tried to find tears for the woman who had died, 
 but he could only rack his soul. Tears were denied to 
 him. 
 
 He was a rich man — was John Barclay ; some people 
 thought that, taking his wealth as wealth goes, all carefully 
 invested in substantial things — in material things, let us 
 say — he was the richest man in the Mississippi Valley. 
 He bought a railroad that day when he looked through 
 the office window at Molly Brownwell — a railroad three 
 thousand miles long. And he bought a man's soul in a 
 distant city — a man whom he did not know even by name, 
 but the soul was thrown in "to boot" in a bargain; and 
 he bought a woman's body whose face he had never seen, 
 and that went as part of another trade he was making and 
 he did not even know they had thrown it in. And he 
 bought a child's life, and he bought a city's prosperity in 
 another bargain, and bought the homage of a state, and 
 the tribute of a European kingdom, as part of the day's 
 huckstering. But with all his wealth and power, he could 
 not buy one tear — not one little, miserable tear to moisten 
 his grief-dried heart. For tears, just then, were a trifle 
 high. So Mr. Barclay had to do without, though the man 
 whose soul he bought wept, and the woman whose body 
 came with a trade, sobbed, and the dead face of the child 
 was stained with a score of tears. 
 
 They went to Jeanette Barclay's room, — the gray* 
 haired woman and the girl, — and they sat there talking 
 for a time — talking of things that were on their lips and 
 not in their hearts. Each felt that the other understood 
 her. And each felt that something was to be said. For 
 one day before the end Jeanette's mother had said to 
 her: "Jennie, if I am not here always go to Molly — ask 
 her to tell you about her girlhood." The mother had rested 
 for awhile, and then added, "Tell her I said for you to 
 ask her, and she'll know what I mean." 
 
 " Jeanette," said Molly Brownwell, " your mother and 
 I were girls together. Your father saw more of her at 
 our house than he did at her own home, until they married. 
 Did you know that ? " Jeanette nodded assent. " So one 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 399 
 
 day last June she said to me, 'Molly, sometime I wish 
 you would tell Jennie all about you and Bob.' " 
 
 Mrs. Brown well paused, and Jeanette said, " Yes, mother 
 told me to ask you to. Aunt Molly." Tears came into 
 the daughter's eyes, and she added, " I think she knew 
 even then that — " 
 
 And then it all came back, and after a while the elder 
 woman was saying, " Well, once upon a time there lived a 
 princess, my dear. All good stories begin so — don't they ? 
 She was a fat, pudgy little princess who longed to grow 
 up and have hoop-skirts like a real sure-enough woman 
 princess, and there came along a tall prince — the tallest, 
 handsomest prince in all the wide world, I think. And 
 he and the princess fell in love, as princesses and princes 
 will, you know, my dear, — just as they do now, I am 
 told. And the prince had to go away on business and be 
 gone a long, long time, and while he was gone the father 
 of the princess and the friend of the prince got into trouble 
 — and the princess thought it was serious trouble. She 
 thought the father of the prince would have to go to jail 
 and maybe the prince and his friend fail. My, my, Jean- 
 ette, what a big word that word fail seemed to the little fat 
 princess 1 So she let a man make love to her who could 
 lend them all some money and keep the father out of jail 
 and the prince and his friend from the awful fate of failure. 
 So the man lent the money and made love, and made love. 
 And the little princess had to listen ; every one seemed to 
 like to have her listen, so she listened and she listened, 
 and she was a weak little princess. She knew she had 
 wronged the prince by letting the man make love to her, 
 and her soul was smudged and — oh, Jeanette, she was 
 such a foolish, weak, miserable little princess, and they 
 didn't tell her that there is only one prince for every prin- 
 cess, and one princess for every prince — so she took the 
 man, and sent away the prince, and the man made love 
 ever so beautifully — but it was not the real thing, my 
 dear, — not the real thing. And afterwards when she 
 saw the prince — so young and so strong and so handsome, 
 her heart burned for him as with a flame, and she was not 
 
400 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 ashamed; the wicked, wicked princess, she didn't know. 
 And so they walked together one night right up to the 
 brink of the bad place, dearie — right up to the brink; 
 and the princess shuddered back, and saved the prince. 
 Oh, Jeanette, Jeanette, Jeanette," sobbed the woman, in 
 the girl's arms, "right in this room, in this very room,, 
 which was your mother's room in the old house, I came 
 out of the night, as bad a woman as God ever sent away 
 from Him. And your mother and I cried it out, and 
 talked it out, and I fought it out, and won. Oh, I won, 
 Jeanette — I won 1 " 
 
 The two women were silent for a time, and then the 
 elder went on: "That's what your mother wished you to 
 know — that for every princess there is just one real 
 prince, and for every prince there is just one real prin- 
 cess, my dear, and when you have found him, and know 
 he is true, nothing — not money, not friends, not father 
 nor mother — when he is honest, not even pride — should 
 stand between you. That is what your mother sent you, 
 dearie. Do you understand ? " 
 
 " I think I do, Aunt Molly — I think so," repeated the 
 girl. She looked out of the window for a moment, and 
 then cried, " Oh, Aunt Molly — but I can't, I can't. How 
 could he. Aunt Molly — how could he? " The girl buried 
 her face in the woman's lap, and sobbed. 
 
 After a time the elder woman spoke. " You know h& 
 loves you, don't you, dear? " 
 
 The girl shook her head and cried, "But how could 
 he ? " and repeated it again and again. 
 
 " And you still love him — I know that, my dear, or 
 you could not — you would not care, either," she added. 
 
 And so after a time the tears dried, as tears will, and 
 the two women fell back into the pale world of surfaces, 
 and as Molly Brownwell left she took the girl's hand and 
 said : " You won't forget about the little pudgy princess 
 — the dear, foolish^ little weak princess, will you, Jean- 
 ette ? And, dearie," she added as she stood on the lower 
 steps of the porch, " don't — don't always be so proud — 
 act about that, my dear — about everything else in the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 401 
 
 world, but not about that." And so she went back into 
 the world, and ceased to be a fairy godmother, and took 
 up her day's work. 
 
 John Barclay went to the City that night for the first 
 time in two months, and Jeanette and her Grandmother 
 Barclay kept the big house alone. In ten days he came 
 back ; his face was still hard, and the red rims around his 
 eyes were dry, and his voice was sullen, as it had been for 
 many weeks. His soul was still wrestling with a spirit 
 that would not give up the fight. That night his daughter 
 tried to sit with him, as she had tried many nights before. 
 They sat looking at the stars in silence as was their wont. 
 Generally the father had risen and walked away, but that 
 night he turned upon her and said: — 
 
 "Jeanette, don't you like to be rich? I guess you are 
 the richest girl in this country. Doesn't that sound good 
 to you ? " 
 
 "No, father," she answered simply, and continued, 
 " What can I do with all that money ? " 
 
 " Marry some man who's got sense enough to double it, 
 and> double it," cried Barclay, harshly. " Then there'll be 
 no question but that you'll be the richest people in the 
 world." 
 
 " And then what ? " asked the girl. 
 
 " Then — then," he cried, " make the people in this 
 world stand around — that's what." 
 
 " But, father," she said as she put her hand on his arm, 
 " what if I don't want them to stand around ? Why 
 should I have to bother about it ? " 
 
 " Oh," he groaned, " your grandmother has been filling 
 you full of nonsense." He did not speak for a time, and 
 at length she rose to go to bed. "Jeanette," he cried so 
 suddenly that it startled her, " are you still moping after 
 Neal Ward? Do you love him? Do you want me to go 
 and get him for you? " 
 
 The girl stood by her father's chair a moment and then 
 answered colourlessly : " No, father, I don't want you to 
 get him for me. I am not moping for him, as you call 
 it." 
 
 2d 
 
402 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Her desolate tone reached some chord in his very heart, 
 for he caught her hand, and put it to his cheek and said 
 softly, "But she loves him — my poor little girl loves 
 him?" 
 
 She tried to pull away her hand and replied, in the same 
 dead voice : " Oh, well — that doesn't matter much, I sup- 
 pose. It's all over — so far as I am concerned," She 
 turned to leave him, and he cried: — 
 
 " My dear, my dear — why don't you go to him ? " 
 
 She stopped a moment and looked at her father, and 
 even in the starlight she could see his hard mouth and hi 
 ruthless jaw. Then she cried out, " Oh, father, I can't — 
 I can't — " After a moment she turned and looked at 
 him, and asked, "Would you? Would you? " and walked 
 into the house without waiting for an answer. 
 
 The father sat crumpled up in his chair, listening to the 
 flames crackling in his heart. The old negation was fight- 
 ing for its own, and he was weary and broken and sick as 
 with a palsy of the soul. For everything in him trembled. 
 There was no solid ground under him. He had visited 
 his material kingdom in the City, and had seen its strong 
 fortresses and had tried all of its locks and doors, and 
 found them firm and fast. But they did not satisfy his 
 soul; something within him kept mocking them; refus- 
 ing to be awed by their power, and the eternal "yes" 
 rushed through his reason like a great wind. 
 
 As he sat there, suddenly, as from some power outside, 
 John Barclay felt a creaking of his resisting timbers, and 
 he quit the struggle. His heart was lead in his breast, 
 and he walked through the house to his pipe organ, that 
 had stood silent in the hall for nearly a year. He stood 
 hesitatingly before it for a second, and then wearily lay 
 him down to rest, on a couch beside it, where, when he had 
 played the last time, Jane lay and listened. He was tired 
 past all telling, but his soul was relaxed. He lay there 
 for hours — until the tall clock above his head chimed two. 
 He could not sleep, but his consciousness was inert and his 
 mind seemed limp and empty, as one who has worked past 
 his limit. The hymn that the clock chimed through the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 403 
 
 quarter hours repeated itself over and over again without 
 meaning in his brain. Something aroused him ; he started 
 up suddenly, and lying half on his elbow and half on his 
 side he stared about him, and was conscious of a great 
 light in the room: it was as though there was a fire near by 
 and he was alarmed, but he could not move. As he looked 
 into space, terrified by the paralysis that held him, he saw 
 across the face of the organ, "Righteousness exalteth a 
 Nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." 
 
 Quick as a flash his mind went back to the time that 
 same motto stared meaninglessly at him from above the 
 pulpit in the chapel at West Point, to which he had been 
 appointed official visitor at Commencement many years 
 before. But that night as he gazed at the text its mean- 
 ing came rushing through his brain. It came so quickly 
 that he could not will it back nor reason it in. Righteous- 
 ness, he knew, was not piety — not wearing your Sunday 
 clothes to church and praying and singing psalms ; it was 
 living honestly and kindly and charitably and dealing 
 decently with every one in every transaction ; and sin — 
 that, he knew — was the cheating, the deceiving, and the 
 malicious greed that had buUt up his company and scores 
 of others like it all over the land. That, he knew — that 
 bribery and corruption and vicarious stealing which he had 
 learned to know as business — that was a reproach to any 
 Npeople, and as it came to him that he was a miserable 
 offender and that the other life, the decent life, was the 
 right life, he was filled with a joy that he could not ex- 
 press, and he let the light fail about him unheeded, and 
 lay for a time in a transport of happiness. He had found 
 the secret. 
 
 The truth had come to him — to him first of all men, 
 and it was his to tell. The joy of it — that he should 
 find out what righteousness was — that it was not crying 
 " Lord, Lord " and playing the hypocrite — thrilled him. 
 And then the sense of his sinning came over him. btA 
 only with joy too, because he felt he could show others 
 how foolish they were. The clock stopped ticking ; the 
 chimes were silent, and he lay unconscious of his body, 
 
404 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Ypith hia spirit bathed in some new essence that he did 
 not understand and did not try to understand. Finally 
 he rose and went to his organ and turned on the motor, 
 and put his hands to the keys. As he played the hymn 
 to the " Evening Star," John Barclay looked up and saw 
 his mother standing upon the stair with her fine old face 
 bathed in tears. And then at last — 
 
 Tears? Tears for Mr. Barclay? All these months there 
 have been no tears for him — none, except miserable little 
 corroding tears of rage and shame. But now there are 
 tears for Mr. Barclay, large, man's size, soul-healing tears 
 — tears of repentance ; not for the rich Mr. Barclay, the 
 proud Mr. Barclay, the powerful, man-hating, God-defying 
 Mr. Barclay of Sycamore Ridge, but for John Barclay, a 
 contrite man, the humblest in all the kingdom. 
 
 And as John Barclay let his soul rise with the swelling 
 music, he felt the solace of a great peace in his heart; he 
 turned his wet face upward and cried, " Oh, mother, 
 mother, I feel like a child ! " Then Mary Barclay knew 
 that her son had let Him in, knew in her own heart all 
 the joy there is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 It is written in the Book that holds the wisdom of otil 
 race that one who is reborn into the Kingdom of God, 
 enters as a little child. It is there in black and white, 
 yet few people get the idea into their consciousnesses. 
 They expect regeneration to produce an upright man. 
 God knows better than that. And we should know bet- 
 ter too when it is written down for us. And so you 
 good people who expect to see John Barclay turn right- 
 about face on the habits of a lifetime are to be disap- 
 pointed. For a little child stumbles and falls and goes 
 the wrong way many times before it learns the way of 
 life. There came days after that summer night of 1904, 
 when John Barclay fell — days when he would sneak into 
 the stenographers' room in his office in the City and tear 
 up some letter he had dictated, when he would send a 
 telegram annulling an order, when he would find himself 
 cheating and gouging his competitors or his business 
 associates, — even days when he had not the moral cour- 
 age to retrace his steps although he knew he was wrong. 
 Shame put her brand on his heart, and his face showed 
 to those who watched it closely — and there were scores 
 of fellow-gamblers at the game with him, whose profits 
 came from watching his face — his face showed forth un- 
 certainty and daze. So men said, " The old man's off his 
 feed," or others said, " Barclay's losing his nerve " ; and 
 still others said, " Can it be possible that the old hypocrite 
 is getting a sort of belated conscience? " 
 
 But slowly, inch by inch, the ( child within him grew ; 
 he gripped his soul with the iron hand of will that had 
 made a man of him, and when the child fell and ached 
 with shame, Barclay's will sustained the weakling. We 
 
 405 
 
406 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 are so hidden by our masks that this struggle in the man's 
 soul, though guessed at by some of those about him, was 
 unknown to the hundreds who saw him every day. But 
 for him the universe had changed. And as a child, 
 amazed, he looked upon the new wonder of God's order 
 about him and went tripping and stumbling and toppling 
 over awkwardly through it all as one learning some new 
 equilibrium. There were times when his heart grew sick, 
 and he would have given it all up. There were hours 
 when he did surrender ; when he did a mean thing and 
 gloried in it, or a cowardly thing and apologized for it. 
 But his will rose and turned him back to his resolve. He 
 found the big things easy, and the little things hard to do. 
 So he kept at the big things until they had pushed him so 
 far toward his goal that the little things were details which 
 he repaired slowly and with anguish of humiliation in 
 secret, and unknown even to those who were nearest to 
 him. 
 
 And all this struggle was behind the hard face, under the 
 broad, high forehead, back of the mean jaw, beneath the 
 cover of the sharp brazen eyes. Even in Sycamore Ridge 
 they did not suspect the truth until Barclay had grown so 
 strong in his new faith that he could look at his yester- 
 days without shuddering. 
 
 The year of our Lord nineteen hundred and six was a 
 slow year politically in Sycamore Ridge, so in the parliament 
 at McHurdie's shop discussion took somewhat wider range 
 than was usual. It may interest metaphysicians in the 
 world at large to know that the McHurdie parliament 
 that August definitely decided that this is not a material 
 world ; that sensation is a delusion, that the whole phan- 
 tasmagoria of the outer and material world is a reaction 
 of some sort upon the individual consciousness. Up to 
 this point the matter is settled, and metaphysicians may 
 as well make a record of the decision ; for Watts McHurdie, 
 Jacob Dolan, Philemon Ward, Martin Culpepper, and 
 sometimes Oscar Fernald, know just exactly as much 
 about it as the ablest logician in the world. It is, how- 
 ever, regrettable that after deciding that the external 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 407 
 
 world is but a divine reaction upon the individual con- 
 gciousness, the parliament was unable to reach any sort of 
 a decision as to whose consciousness received the picture. 
 Mr. Dolan maintained vigorously that his consciousness 
 was the one actually affected, and that the colonel and the 
 general and Watts were mere hallucinations of his. The 
 general held that Jake and the others were accessory 
 phantasms of his own dream, and Watts and the colonel, 
 being of more poetical temperament, held that the whole 
 outfit was a chimera in some larger consciousness, whose 
 entity it is not given us to know. As for Oscar, he 
 claimed the parliament was crazy, and started to prove it, 
 when it was thought best to shift and modify the discus- 
 sion ; and, therefore, early in September, when the upper 
 currents of the national atmosphere were vocal with dis- 
 cordant allegations, denials, accusations, and maledictions, 
 in Watts McHurdie's shop the question before the house 
 was, " How many people are there in the world ? " For 
 ten days, in the desultory debate that had droned through 
 the summer, the general, true to his former contention, in- 
 sisted that there was only one person in the world. Mr. 
 Dolan, with the Celtic elasticity of reason, was willing to 
 admit two. 
 
 "You and me and no more — all the rest is background 
 for us," he proclaimed. " If the you of the moment is the 
 colonel — well and good; then the colonel and I for it; 
 but if it is the general and I — to the trees with your 
 colonel and Watts, and the three billion others — you're 
 merely stage setting, and become third persons." 
 
 "But," asked Mc Hurdle, "if I exist this minute with 
 you, and then you focus your attention on Mart there, the 
 next minute, and he exists, what becomes of me when you 
 turn your head from me ? " 
 
 Dolan did not answer. He dipped into the Times and 
 read awhile, and the colonel and the general got out the 
 checkerboard and plunged into a silent game. At 
 length Dolan, after the fashion of debaters in the parlia- 
 ment, came out of his newspaper and said: — 
 
 " That, Mr. McHurdie, is a problem ranging off the sub 
 
408 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 i'ect, into the theories of the essence of time and space, and 
 '. refuse to answer it." 
 
 McHurdie kept on working, and the hands of the clock 
 slipped around nearly an hour. Then the bell tinkled 
 and Neal Ward came in on his afternoon round for news 
 to print in the next day's issue of the Banner. 
 
 " Anything new ? " he asked. 
 
 " Mrs. Dorman is putting new awnings on the rear win- 
 dows of her store — did you get that ? " asked McHurdie. 
 
 The young man made a note of the fact. 
 
 " Yes," added Dolan, " and you may just say that Hon. 
 Jacob Dolan, former sheriff of Garrison County, and a 
 member of ' C ' Company, well known in this community, 
 who has been custodian of public buildings and grounds 
 in and for Garrison County, state of Kansas, ss., is 
 contemplating resigning his position and removing to the 
 National Soldiers' Home at Leavenworth for the future." 
 
 Young Ward smiled, but did not take the item down in 
 his note-book. 
 
 " It isn't time yet," he said. 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Dolan. 
 
 " Only two months and a half since I printed that the 
 last time. It can't go oftener than four times a year, 
 and it's been in twice this year. Late in December will 
 time it about right." 
 
 " What's the news with you, boy ? " asked Dolan. 
 
 " Well," said the young man, pausing carefully as if to 
 make a selection from a large and tempting assortment, 
 but really swinging his arms for a long jump into the 
 heart of the matter in his mind, "have you heard that 
 John Barclay has given the town his pipe organ ? " 
 
 " You don't say I " exclaimed McHurdie. 
 
 "Tired of it?" asked Dolan, as though twenty-five- 
 thousand-dollar pipe organs were raining in the town every 
 few days. 
 
 " It'U not be that, Jake," said Watts. "John is no man 
 to tire of things." 
 
 " No, it's not that, Mr. Dolan," answered Neal Ward. 
 " He has sent word to the mayor and council that he is 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 409 
 
 going to have the organ installed in Barclay Hall this 
 week at his own expense, and he accomganied the letter 
 with fifty thousand dollars in securities to hire a perma- 
 nent organist and a band-master for the band ; and a band 
 concert and an organ concert will alternate in the hall 
 every week during the year. I gather from reading his 
 letter that Mr. Biarclay believes the organ will do more 
 good in the hall than in his house." 
 
 The general and the colonel kept on at their game. 
 Dolan whistled, and Watts nodded his head. "That's 
 what I would say he did it for," said McHurdie. 
 
 "Are the securities N.P.C. stock?" asked Dolan, ten- 
 tatively. 
 
 " No," replied Neal ; " I saw them ; they are municipal 
 bonds of one sort and another." 
 
 " Well, well — Johnnie at the mill certainly is popping 
 open like a chestnut bur. Generally when he has some 
 scheme on to buy public sentiment he endows something 
 with N.P.C. stock, so that in case of a lawsuit against 
 the company he'd have the people interested in protect- 
 ing the stock. This new tack is certainly queer doings. 
 Certainly queer doings for the dusty miller I " repeated 
 Dolan. 
 
 "Well, it's like his buying the waterworks of Bemis 
 last month, and that land at the new pumping station, 
 and giving the council money to build the new dam and 
 power-house. He had no rebate or take back in that — 
 at least no one can see it," said the young man. 
 
 "Nellie says," put in Watts, "that she heard from Mrs. 
 Fernald, who got it from her girl, who got it from the girl 
 who works in the Hub restaurant, who had it from Mrs. 
 Gamine's girl — so it come pretty straight — that Lige 
 made John pay a pretty penny for the waterworks, and 
 they had a great row because John would give up the fight." 
 
 " Yes," replied Dolan, " it come to me from one of the 
 nigger prisoners in the jail, who has a friend who sweeps; 
 out Gabe's bank, that he heard John and Lige dickering,^ 
 and that Lige held John up for a hundred thousand cold.^ 
 dollars for his bargain." 
 
410 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " The Associated Press to-day," said young Ward, •• has 
 a story to the effect that there is a great boom in certain 
 railroad stocks owing to some secret operations of Mr. 
 Barclay. They don't know what he is doing, but things 
 are pretty shaky. He refuses to make a statement." 
 
 "He's a queer canny little man," explained Watts. 
 " You never know where he'll break out next." 
 
 " Well, he's up to some devilment," exclaimed Dolan ; 
 " you can depend on that. Why do you suppose he's lay- 
 ing off the hands at the strip factory ? " 
 
 The young man shook his head. " Give it up. I asked 
 Mr. Mason and the best I could get out of him was a 
 parrot-like statement that 'owing to the oversupplyof our 
 commodity, we have decided to close operations for the 
 present. We have, therefore,' he said pompously, 'given 
 each of our employees unable to find immediate work here, 
 a ticket for himself and family to any point in the United 
 States to which he may desire to go, and have agreed to 
 pay the freight on his household goods also.' That was 
 every word I could g-^t out of him — and you know Mr. 
 Mason is pretty talkative sometimes." 
 
 " Queer doings for the dusty miller," repeated Dolan. 
 
 The group by the bench heard the slap of the checker- 
 board on its shelf, and General Ward cut into the conver- 
 sation as one who had never been out of it. " The boy's 
 got good blood in him ; it will come out some day — he 
 wasn't made a Thatcher and a Barclay and a Winthrop 
 for nothing. Lizzie was over there the other night for 
 tea with them, and she said she hadn't seen John so much 
 like himself for years." 
 
 Young Ward went about his afternoon's work and the 
 parliament continued its debate on miscellaneous public 
 business. The general pulled the Times from- Dolan's 
 pocket and began turning it over. He stopped and read 
 for a few moments and exclaimed: — 
 
 " Boys — see here. Maybe this explains something we 
 were talking about." He began reading a news item sent 
 out from Washington, D.C. The item stated that the 
 Department of Commerce and Labour had scored what 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 411 
 
 eyery one in official circles believed was the most impor- 
 tant victory ever achieved by the government outside of a 
 war. The item continued: — 
 
 "Within the last ten days, the head of one of the largest so-called 
 trusts in this country called at the department, and explained that his 
 organization, -which controls a great staple commodity, was going into 
 voluntary liquidation. The organization in question has been the 
 subject of governmental investigation for nearly two years, and inves- 
 tigators were constantly hampered and annoyed by attempts of politic 
 cians of the very highest caste, outside of the White House, trying to 
 get inspectors removed or discredited, and all along the line of its in- 
 vestigations the government has felt a powerful secret influence 
 shielding the trust. As an evidence of his good faith in the disorgan- 
 ization, the head of the trust, while he was here, promised to send to 
 the White House, what he called his ' political burglar's kit,' consisting 
 of a card index, labelling and ticketing with elaborate cross references 
 and cabinet data, every man in the United States who is in politics 
 far enough to get to his state legislature, or to be a nominee of his 
 party for county attorney. This outfit, shipped in a score of great 
 boxes, was dumped at the White House to-day, and it is said that a 
 number of the cards indicating the reputation of certain so-called 
 conservative senators and congressmen may be framed. There is a 
 great hubbub in Washington, and the newspaper correspondents who 
 called at the White House on their morning rounds were regaled by a 
 confidential glimpse into the cards and the cabinets. It is Ukely that 
 the whole outfit will be filed in the Department of Commerce and 
 Labour, and will constitute the basis of what is called around the White 
 House to-day, a 'National Rogues' Gallery.' The complete details of 
 every senatorial election held in the country during twelve years last 
 past, showing how to reach any Senator susceptible to any influence 
 whatsoever, whether political, social, or religious, are among the tro- 
 phies of the chase in the hands of the Mighty Hunter for Big Game 
 to-day." 
 
 When General Ward had finished reading, he lifted up 
 his glasses and said: " Well, that's it, boys; John has come 
 to his turn of the road. Here's the rest. It says: 'The 
 corporation in question is practically controlled by one 
 man, the man who has placed the information above men- 
 tioned in the hands of the government. It is a corpora- 
 tion owning no physical property whatever, and is 
 organized as a rebate hopper, if one may so style it. The 
 head of the corporation stated when he was here recently 
 that he is preparing to buy in every share of the company's 
 stock at the price for which it was sold and then — ' Jake, 
 
412 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 where is page 3 with the rest of this article on it ?" asked 
 the general. 
 
 " Why, I threw that away coming down here," responded 
 Dolan. 
 
 *' Rather leaves us in the air — doesn't it?" suggested 
 the colonel. 
 
 " Well, it's John. I know enough to know that — from 
 Neal," said the general. 
 
 The afternoon sun was shining in the south window of 
 the shop. Dolan started to go. In the doorway McHurdie 
 halted him. 
 
 " Jake," he cried, pointing a lean, smutty finger at Dolan, 
 " Jake Dolan, if there are only two people in the world, 
 what becomes of me when you begin talking to Mart ? If 
 you knew, you would not dodge. In philosophy no man 
 can stand on his constitutional rights. Turn state's evi- 
 dence, Jake Dolan, and tell the truth— what becomes of 
 me?" 
 
 "'Tis an improper question," replied Dolan, and then 
 drawing himself Up and pulling down the front of his coat, 
 he added, " 'Tis not a matter that may be discussed among 
 gentlemen," and with that he disappeared. 
 
 The front door-bell tinkled, and the parliament prepared 
 to adjourn. The colonel helped the poet close his store 
 and bring in the wooden horse from the sidewalk, and then 
 Molly Brownwell came with her phaeton and drove the 
 two old men home. On the way up Main Street they 
 overhauled Neal Ward. Mrs. Brownwell turned in to the 
 sidewalk and called, "Neal, can you run over to the 
 house a moment this evening ? " And when he answered 
 in the affirmative, she let the old nag amble gently up the 
 street. 
 
 " How pretty you are. Aunt Molly," exclaimed Neal, as 
 the gray-haired woman who could still wear a red ribbon 
 came into the room where he sat waiting for her. The 
 boy's compliment pleased her, and she did not hesitate to 
 eay so. But after that she plunged into the subject that 
 was uppermost in her heart. 
 
 " Neal," she said, as she drew her chair in front of him 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 413 
 
 so that she could see his face and know the truth, no mat- 
 ter what his lips might say, " we're partners now, aren't 
 we, or what amounts to the same thing?" She smiled 
 good-naturedly. "I own the overdraft at the bank and 
 you own the mortgage at the court-house. So I am 
 going to ask you a plain question; and if you say it isn't 
 any of my business, I'll attempt to show you that it is. 
 Neal," she asked, looking earnestly into his face, "why 
 do you write to Jeanette Barclay every day of your life 
 and not mail the letters ? " 
 
 The youth flushed. "Why — Aunt Molly — how did 
 you know ? — I never told — " 
 
 " No, Neal, you never told me ; but this afternoon while 
 you were out I was looking for Adrian's check-book ; I 
 was sure we paid Dorman's bill last April, and that I took 
 the check over myself. I was going through the desk, 
 and I got on your side, thinking I might have left the 
 check-book there by mistake, and I ran into the very 
 midst of those letters, before I knew what I was about. 
 Now, Neal— why?" 
 
 The young man gazed at the woman seriously for a time 
 and then parried her question with, " Why do you care — 
 what difference can it make to you. Aunt Molly?" 
 
 " Because," she answered quickly, " because I wish to 
 see my partner happy. He will do better work so — if 
 you desire to put it on a cold-blooded basis. Oh, Nealie, 
 Nealie — do you love her that much — that you take your 
 heart and your life to her without hope or without sign or 
 answer every day?" 
 
 He dropped his eyes, and turned his face away. " Not 
 every day," he answered, " not every day — but every 
 night, Aunt Molly." 
 
 "Why don't you go to her, Neal, and tell her?" asked 
 the woman. " Is it so hopeless as that?" 
 
 " Oh, there are many reasons — why I don't go to her," 
 he replied. After a minute's silence he went on : " In the 
 first place she is a very rich girl, and that makes a differ- 
 ence — now. When she was just a young girl of eighteen, 
 or such a matter, and I only twenty or twenty-one, we met 
 
414 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 80 naturally, and it all came out so beautifully I But we 
 are older now, Aunt Molly," he said sadly, "and it's 
 different." 
 
 "Yes," admitted Mrs. BrownweU, "it is different now 
 • — you are right about it." 
 
 " Yes," he continued, repeating a patter which he had 
 said to himself a thousand times. " Yes, — and then 
 I can't say I'm sorry — for I'm not. I'd do it again. 
 And I know how Mr. Barclay feels ; he didn't leave me 
 in any doubt about that," smiled the boy, "when I left 
 his office that morning after telling him what I was going 
 to do. So," he sighed and smiled in rather hopeless good 
 humour, " I can't see my way out. Can you ? " 
 
 Molly BrownweU leaned back in her chair, and closed 
 her eyes for a minute, and then shook her head, and said, 
 "No, Neal, not now; but there is a way — somehow — I 
 am sure of that." 
 
 He laughed for want of any words to express his hope- 
 lessness, and the two — the youth in despair, and the 
 woman full of hope — sat in silence. 
 
 " Neal," she asked finally, " what do you put in those 
 letters? Why do you write them at all?" 
 
 The young man with his eyes upon the floor began, 
 "Well — they're just letters, Aunt Molly — just letters — 
 such as I used to write before — don't you know. " His voice 
 was dull and passionless, and he went on: "I can't tell 
 you more about them. They're just letters." He drew 
 in a quick long breath and exclaimed: " Oh, you know 
 what they are — I want to talk to some one and I'm going 
 to. Oh, Aunt Molly," he cried, "I'm not heart-broken, 
 and all that — I'm infinitely happy. Because I still hold 
 it — it doesn't die. Don't you see ? And I know that 
 always it will be with me — whatever may come to her. 
 I don't want to forget — and it is my only joy in the 
 matter, that I never wiU forget. I can be happy this way ; 
 I don't want to give any other woman a warmed-over 
 heart, for this would always be there — I know it — and 
 so I am just going to keep it." He dropped his voice 
 again after a sigh, and went on: "There, that's all there 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 413 
 
 is to it. Do you think I'm a fool ? " he asked, as the colour 
 came into his face. 
 
 "No, Neal, I don't," said M0II7 Brownwell, as she 
 stood beside him. " You are a brave, manly fellow, Neal, 
 and I wish I could help you. I don't see how now — but 
 the way will come — sometime. Now," she added, " tell 
 me about the paper." 
 
 And then they went into business matters which do not 
 concern us; for in this story business conjures up the 
 face of John Barclay — the tanned, hard face of John 
 Barclay, crackled with a hundred wrinkles about the 
 eyes, and scarred with hard lines about the furtive crafty 
 mouth ; and we do not wish to see that face now ; it 
 should be hidden while the new soul that is rising in his 
 body struggles with that tough, bronzed rind, gets a 
 focus from the heart into those glaring brass eyes, and 
 teaches the lying lips to speak the truth, and having 
 spoken it to look it. And so while John Barclay in the 
 City is daily slipping millions of his railroad bonds into 
 the market, — slipping them in quietly yet steadily withal, 
 mixing them into the daily commerce of the country, so 
 gently that they are absorbed before any one knows they 
 have left his long grasping fingers, — while he is trading 
 to his heart's content, let us forget him, and look at this 
 young man, that September night, after he left Molly 
 Brownwell, sitting at his desk in the office with the tele- 
 phone at his elbow, with the smell of the ink from the 
 presses in his nostrils, with the silence of the deserted 
 office becalming his soul, and with his heart — a clean, 
 strong, manly heart — full of the picture of a woman's 
 face, and the vision without a hope.. In his brain are 
 recorded a thousand pictures, and millions of, little fibres 
 run all over this brain, conjuring up those pictures, and 
 if there are blue eyes in the pictures, and lips in the 
 pictures, and the pressure of hands, and the touch of souls 
 in the pictures, — they are Neal Ward's pictures, — they 
 are Mr. Higgin's pictures, and Mrs. Wiggin's pictures, 
 and Mr. Stiggin's pictures, my dears, and alack and alas, 
 they are the pictures of Miss Jones and Miss Lewis and 
 
416 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Miss Thomas and Miss Smith, for that matter ; and so, my 
 dears, if we would be happy we should be careful even u 
 we can't be good, for it is all for eternity, and whatever 
 courts may say, and whatever churches may say, and what- 
 ever comes back with rings and letters and trinkets,-— 
 there is no divorce, and the pictures always stay in the 
 heart, and the sum of the pictures is life. 
 
 So that September night Neal Ward went back over the 
 old trail as lovers always will, and then his pen began to 
 write. Now in the nature of things the first three words 
 are not for our eyes, and to-night we must not see the first 
 three lines nor the first thirty, nor the last three words nor 
 the last three lines nor the last thirty lines. But we may 
 watch him write; we may observe how longingly he looks 
 at the telephone, as if tempted to go to it, and teU it 
 what is in his breast. There it sits, all shiny and metallic; 
 and by conjuring it with a number and a word, he could 
 have her with him. Yet he does not take it up; because 
 — the crazy loon thinks in the soul of him, that what he 
 writes, some way, in the great unknown system of receivers 
 and recorders and transmitters of thought that range 
 through this universe, is pouring into her heart, and so he 
 writes and smiles, and smiles and writes — no bigger fool 
 than half the other lovers on the planet who, talking to 
 their sweethearts, holding their hands and looking squarely 
 into their eyes, deceive themselves that what they say is 
 going to the heart, and not going in one ear and out of 
 the other. 
 
 And now let us put on our seven-league boots and walk 
 from September's green and brown, through October's gold 
 and crimson, into that season of the year 1906 when Na- 
 ture is shifting her scenery, making ready for the great 
 spring show. It is bleak, but not cold; barren, but not 
 ugly, — for the stage setting of the hills and woods and 
 streams, even without the coloured wings and flies and the 
 painted trees and grass, has its fine simplicity of form and 
 grouping that are good to look upon. Observe in the 
 picture a small man sitting on a log in a wood, looking at 
 the stencil work of the brown and gray branches, as its 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 417 
 
 shadows waver and shimmer upon the gray earth. He ia 
 poking reflectively in the earth with his cane. His boat 
 is tied to some tree roots, and he doesn't breathe as regularly 
 as a man should breathe who is merely thinking of his next 
 dinner or his last dollar. He delves into himself and al» 
 most forgets to breathe at all, so deep is his abstraction. 
 And so he sits for five minutes — ten minutes — half an 
 hour — and save that he edges into the sun as the shadow 
 of the great walnut tree above catches him, an hour passes 
 and he does not move. Poking, poking, poking his 
 stick into the mould, he has dug up much litter in an hour, 
 and he has seen his whole life thrown up before him. In 
 those leaves yonder is a battle — a bloody battle, and 
 things are blistered into his boyish heart in that battle 
 that never heal over; that tuft of sod is a girl's face — a 
 little girl's face that he loved as a boy; there is his first 
 lawsuit-^ that ragged pile of leaves by the twig at the 
 log's end; and the twig is his first ten thousand dollars. 
 AU of it- lies there before him, his victories and his defeats, 
 his millions come, and his millions going — going? — yes, 
 all but gone. Yonder that deep gash in the sod at the 
 left hides a woman's face — pale, wasted, dead on her pil- 
 low; and that clean black streak on the ebony cane — 
 that is a tear, and in ti >e tear is a girl's face and back of 
 hers shimmers a boy's countenance. All of John Barclay's 
 life and hopes and dreams and visions are spread out be- 
 fore him on the ground. So he closes his eyes, and braces 
 his soul, and then, having risen, whistles ashe limps lightly 
 — for a man past fifty — down to the boat. He rows with 
 a clean manly stroke — even in an old flat-bottomed boat 
 — through the hazy sunset into the dusk. 
 
 " Jeanette," he said to his daughter that evening at din- 
 ner, " I wish you would go to the phone, pretty soon, and 
 tell Molly Culpepper that I want her to come down this 
 evening. I am anxious to see her. The colonel isn't at 
 home, or I'd have him, mother," explained Mr. Barclay. 
 
 And that is why Miss Barclay called, " 876, please — 
 yes, 8-7-6;" and then said: "Hello— hello, is this 876? 
 Yes — is Mrs. Brown well in? Oh, all right." And then, 
 2e 
 
418 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 "54, please ; yes, 5-4. Is this you. Aunt MoUy ? Father is 
 in town — he came in this morning and has spent the after- 
 noon on the river, and he told me at dinner to ask you if 
 you could run down this evening. Oh, any time. I didn't 
 know you worked nights at the office. Oh, is Mr. Ward 
 out of town? — I didn't know. All right, then — about 
 eight o'clock — we'll look for you." 
 
 And that is why at the other end of the telephone, a 
 pretty, gray-haired woman stood, and looked, and looked, 
 and looked at a plain walnut desk, as though it was 
 enchanted, and then slipped guiltily over to that black 
 walnut desk, unlocked a drawer, and pulled out a whole 
 apronful of letters. 
 
 And so the reader may know what Molly Brownwell 
 had in that package which she put in the buggy seat beside 
 her when she drove down to see the Barclays, that beauti- 
 ful starry November night. She put the package with 
 her hat and wraps in Jeanette's room, and then came down 
 to the living room where John Barclay sat by the roaring 
 fire in the wide fireplace, with a bundle beside him also. 
 His mother was there, and his daughter took a seat beside 
 him. 
 
 " Molly," said Barclay, with a deep sigh, " I sent for you, 
 first, because, of all the people in the world, it is but just 
 that you should be here, to witness what I am doing ; and 
 second, because Jane would have had you, and I want you 
 to be with Jeanette when I tell her some things that she 
 must know to-night — she and mother." 
 
 He was sitting in a deep easy chair, with one foot — 
 not his lame foot — curled under him, a wiry-looking little 
 gray cat of a man who nervously drummed on the mahogany 
 chair arm, or kept running his hands over the carving, or 
 folding and unfolding them, and twirled his thumbs in- 
 cessantly as he talked. He smiled as he began : — 
 
 " Well, girls, father got off the chair car at Sycamore 
 Ridge this morning, after having had the best sleep he hats 
 had in twenty years." 
 
 He paused for the effect of his declaration to sink in. 
 Jeanette asked, " Where was the car ? " 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 419 
 
 " What car ? " teased the little gray cat. 
 
 " Why, otir car ? ' ' 
 
 " My dear, we have no car," he smiled, with the cream 
 of mystery on his lips. Then he licked it off. " I sold 
 the car three weeks ago, when I left the Ridge the last 
 time." He dropped into an eloquent silence, and then 
 went on: "I rode in the chair car to save three dollars. 
 I need it in my business." 
 
 His mother's blue eyes were watching him closely. She 
 exclaimed, " John, quit your foolishness. What have you 
 done?" 
 
 He laughed as he said : " Mother, I have returned to 
 you poor but honest. My total assets at this minute are 
 seventy-five million dollars' worth of stock of the National 
 Provisions Company, tied up in this bundle on the floor 
 here, and five thousand dollars in the Exchange National 
 Bank of Sycamore Ridge which I have held for thirty 
 years. I sold my State Bank stock last Monday to Gabe 
 Gamine. I have thirty-four dollars and seventy-three 
 cents in my pocket-book, and that is all." 
 
 The women were puzzled, and their faces showed it. 
 So the little gray cat made short work of the mice. 
 
 " Well, now, to be brief and plain," said Barclay, pulling 
 himself forward in his chair and thrusting out an arm and 
 hand, as if to grip the attention of his hearers, " I have 
 always owned or directly controlled over half the N.P.C. 
 stock — representing a big pile of money. I am trying 
 to forget how much, and you don't care. But it was only 
 part of my holdings — about half or such a matter, I should 
 say. The rest were railroad bonds on roads necessary to 
 the company, mortgages on mills and elevators whose stock 
 was merged in the company, and all sorts of gilt-edged 
 stuff, bank stock and insurance company stock — all needed 
 to make N.P.C. a dominant factor in the commercial life 
 of the country. You don't care about that, but it was aU 
 a sort of commercial blackmaU. on certain fellows and 
 interests to keep them from fighting N.P.C." Barclay 
 hitched himself forward to the edge of his chair, and still 
 held out his grappling-hook of a hand to hold them as be 
 
420 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 smiled and went on : " Well, I've been kind of swapping 
 horses here for six months or so — trading my gilt-edged 
 bonds and stuff for cash and buying up N.P.C. stock. 
 I got a lot of it quietly — an awful lot." He grinned. 
 " I guess that was square enough. I paid the price for it 
 — and a little better than the price — because I had to." 
 He was silent a few moments, looking at the fire. He 
 meditated pleasantly: "There was some good in it— a 
 lot of good when you come to think of it — but a fearful 
 lot of badi Well — I've saved the good. I just reorgan- 
 ized the whole concern from top to bottom — the whole 
 blame rebate hopper. We had some patents, and we had 
 some contracts with mills, and we had some good ideas of 
 organization. And I've kept the good and chucked the 
 bad. I put N.P.C. out of business and have issued 
 stock in the new company to our minority whose stock I 
 couldn't buy and have squeezed the water out of the 
 whole concern. And then I took what balance I had left 
 — every cent of it, went over the books for thirty years, 
 and made what restitution I could." He grinned as he 
 added : " But I found it was nearly whittlety whet. A 
 lot of fellows had been doing me up, while I had been 
 doing others up. But I made what restitution I could 
 and then I got out. I closed up the City office, and 
 moved the whole concern to St. Paul, and turned it over 
 to the real owners — the millers and elevator men — and 
 I have organized an industry with a capitalization small 
 enough to make it possible for them to afford to be honest 
 for thirty years — while our patents and contracts last, 
 anyway." He put an elbow in the hollow of his hand, 
 and the knuckles on his knee as he sat cross-legged, and 
 drawled : " I wonder if it will work — " and repeated: " I 
 wonder, I wonder. There's big money in it ; she's a dead 
 monopoly as she stands, and they have the key to the 
 whole thing in the Commerce Department at Washing- 
 ton. They can keep her straight if they will." He 
 paused for a while and went on: "But I'm tired of it. 
 The great hulk of a thing has ground the soul out of me. 
 So I ducked. Girls," he cried, as he turned toward them. 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 421 
 
 * here's the way it is ; I never did any real good with 
 money. I'm going to see what a man can do to help his 
 fellows with his bare hands. I want to help, not with 
 money, but just to be some account on earth without 
 money. And so yesterday I cleaned up the whole deal 
 forever." 
 
 He paused to let it sink in. Finally Jeanette asked, 
 ■'And are we poor., father — poor?" 
 
 "Well, my dear," he expanded, "your grandmother 
 Barclay has always owned this house. An Omaha syndic 
 cate owns the mill. I own $5,000 in bank stock, and the 
 boy who marries you for your money right now is going 
 to get badly left." 
 
 " You aren't fooling me, are you, John ? " asked his 
 mother as she rose from her chair. 
 
 " No, mother," answered the son, ^ I've got rid of every 
 dirty dollar I have on earth. The bank stock I bought 
 with the money the Citizens' Committee subscribed to 
 pay me for winning the county-seat lawsuit. As near as 
 I can figure it out, that was about the last clean money I 
 ever earned." 
 
 The mother walked toward her son, and leaned over 
 and kissed him again and again as she sobbed : " Oh, John, 
 I am so happy to-night — so happy." 
 
 In a moment he asked, " Well, Jeanette, what do you 
 think of it ? " 
 
 " You know what I think, father — you know very well, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 He sighed and nodded his head. Then he reached for 
 the package on the floor and began cutting the strings. 
 The bundle burst open and the stock of the National Pro- 
 visions Company, issued only in fifty-thousand-dollar and 
 one-hundred-thousand-dollar shares, littered the floor. 
 
 " Now," cried Barclay, as he stood looking at the litter, 
 " now, Molly, here's what I want you to do : Burn it up — 
 burn it up," he cried. " It has burned the joy out of your 
 life, Molly — burn it up I I have fought it all out to-day 
 on the river — but I can't quite do that. Burn it up — 
 for God's sake, Molly, burn it up." 
 
422 A CERTAIN RICH MAIS 
 
 When the white ashes had risen up the chimney, he put 
 on another log. " This is our last extravagance for some 
 time, girls — but we'll celebrate to-night," he cried. " You 
 haven't a little elderberry wine, have you, mother ? " he 
 asked. "Riley says that's the stuff for little boys with 
 curvature of the spine — and I'U tell you it put several 
 kinks in mine to watch that burn." 
 
 And so they sat for an hour talking of old times while 
 the fire burned. But Molly Brownwell's mind was not in 
 the performance that John Barclay had staged. She could 
 see nothing but the package lying on her cloak in the girl's 
 room upstairs. So she rose to go early, and the circle 
 broke when she left it. She and Jeanette left John stand- 
 ing with his arms about his mother, patting her back while 
 she wept. 
 
 As she closed the door of Jeanette's room behind her, 
 Molly Brownwell knew that she must speak. " Jeanette," 
 she said, "I don't knowjjust how to say it, dear; but, I stole 
 those — I mean what is in that package — I took it and 
 Neal doesn't know I have it. It's for you," she cried, as 
 she broke the string that tied it, and tore off the wrapping. 
 
 The girl stared at her and asked: "Why, Aunt Molly — 
 what is it ? I don't understand." 
 
 The woman in pulling her wrap from the chair, tumbled 
 the letters to the floor. She slipped into her cloak and 
 kissed the bewildered girl, and said as she stood in the 
 doorway: " There they are, my dear — they are yours; do 
 what you please with them." 
 
 She hurried down the stairs, and finding John sitting 
 alone before the fire in the sitting room, would have 
 bidden him good night as she passed through the room, 
 but he stopped her. 
 
 " There is one thing more, Molly," he said, as he 
 motioned to a chair. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, " I wondered if you had forgotten 
 itl" 
 
 He worried the fire, and renewed the blaze, before he 
 spoke. " What about Neal — how does he feel ? " 
 
 " John," replied the woman, turning upon him a radiant 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 423 
 
 face, " it is the most beautiful thing in the world — that 
 boy's love for Jennie 1 Why, every night after his work 
 is done, sitting there in the office alone, Neal writes her a 
 letter, that he never mails; just takes his heart to her, 
 John. I found a great stack of them in his desk the other 
 day." 
 
 Barclay's face crinkled in a spasm of pain, and he ex- 
 claimed, " Poor little kids — poor, poor children." 
 
 "John — " Molly Brownwell hesitated, and then took 
 courage and cried: "Won't you — won't you for Ellen's 
 sake? It is like that — like you and Ellen. And," she 
 stammered, " oh, John, I do want to see one such love affair 
 end happily before I die." 
 
 Barclay's hard jaw trembled, and his eyes were wet as 
 he rose and limped across the great room. At the foot of 
 the stairs he called up, " Don't bother with the phone, 
 Jeanette, I'm going to use it." He explained, " The branch 
 in her room rings when we use this one," and then asked, 
 " Do you know where he is — at home or at the office ? " 
 
 " If the ten o'clock train is in, he's at the office. If not, 
 he's not in town." 
 
 But Barclay went to the hall, and when he returned he 
 said, " Well, I got him; he'll be right out." 
 
 Molly was standing by the fire. " What are you going to 
 say, John ? " she asked. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. There'U be enough for me to say, I 
 suppose," he replied, as he looked at the floor. 
 
 She gave him her hand, and they stood for a minute 
 looking back into their lives. They walked together 
 toward the door, but at the threshold their eyes met and 
 each saw tears, and they parted without words. 
 
 Neal Ward found Barclay prodding the fire, and the 
 gray little man, red-faced from his task, limped toward the 
 tall, handsome youth, and led him to a chair. Barclay 
 stood for a time with his back to the fire, and his head 
 down, and in the silence he seemed to try to speak several 
 times before the right words came. Then he exclaimed: 
 
 " Neal, I was wrong — dead wrong — and I've been too 
 proud and mean all this time — to say so." 
 
424 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 Neal stared open-eyed at Barclay and moistened his lips 
 before language came to him. Finally he said : *' Well, 
 Mr. Barclay — that's all right. I never blamed you. You 
 needn't have bothered about — that is, to tell me." 
 
 Barclay gazed at the young man abstractedly for a min- 
 ute that seemed interminable, and then broke out, " Damn 
 it, Neal, I can't propose to you — but that's about what 
 I've got you out here to-night for." 
 
 He laughed nervously, but the young face showed his ob- 
 tuseness, and John Barclay having broken the ice in his 
 own heart put his hands in his pockets and threw back his 
 head and roared, and then cried merrily : " All we need 
 now is a chorus in fluffy skirts and an orchestra with me 
 coming down in front singing, ' Will you be my son-in- 
 law ? ' for it to be real comic opera." 
 
 The young man's heart gave such a bound of joy that it 
 flashed in his face, and the father, seeing it, was thrilled 
 with happiness. So he limped over to Neal's chair and 
 stood beaming down upon the embarrassed young fellow. 
 
 " But, Mr. Barclay — " the boy found voice, " I don't 
 know — the money — it bothers me." 
 
 And John Barclay again threw his head back and roared, 
 and then they talked it all out. He told Neal the story 
 of his year's work. It was midnight when they heard the 
 telephone ringing, and Barclay, curled up like an old gray 
 cat in his chair before the fire, said for old times' sake, 
 " Neal, go see who is ringing up at this unholy hour." 
 
 And while Neal Ward steps to the telephone, let us go 
 upstairs on one last journey with our astral bodies and 
 discover what Jeanette is doing. After Molly's departure, 
 Jeanette stooped to pick up what Molly had left. She 
 saw her own name, " Jeanette Barclay," and her address 
 written on an envelope. She picked it up. It was dated : 
 " Written December 28," and she saw that the package 
 was filled with letters in envelopes similarly addressed in 
 Neal Ward's handwriting. She dropped the letter on her 
 dressing-table and began to undo her hair. In a f e^ min- 
 utes she stopped and picked up another, and laid it down 
 unopened. But in half an hour she was sitting on the 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 425 
 
 floor reading the letters through her tears. The flood of 
 joy that came over her drowned her pride. For an hour 
 she sat reading the letters, and they brought her so near 
 to her lover that it seemed that she must reach out and 
 touch him. She was drawn by an irresistible impulse to 
 her telephone that sat on her desk. It seemed crazy to 
 expect to reach Neal Ward at midnight, but as she rose 
 from the floor with the letters slipping from her lap and 
 with the impulse like a cord drawing her, she saw, or 
 thought she saw, standing by the desk, a part of the flutter- 
 ing shadows, a girl — a quaint, old-fashioned girl in her 
 teens, with — but then she remembered the dream girl her 
 lover had described in the letter she had just been reading, 
 and she understood the source of her delusion. And yet 
 there the vision moved by the telephone, smiling and 
 beckoning ; then it faded, and there came rushing back to 
 her memory a host of recollections of her childhood, and 
 of some one she could not place, and then a memory of 
 danger, — and then it was all gone and there stood the 
 desk and the telephone and the room as it was. 
 
 She shuddered slightly, and then remembered that she 
 had just been through two great nervous experiences — the 
 story of her father's changed life, and the return of her 
 lover. And she was a level-headed, strong-nerved girl. 
 So the joy of love in her heart was not dampened, and the 
 cord drawing her to the desk in the window did not loosen, 
 and she did not resist. With a gulp of nervous fear she 
 rang the telephone bell and called, " 54, please ! " She 
 heard a buzzing, and then a faint stir in the receiver, and 
 then she got the answer. She sat a-tremble, afraid to 
 reply. The call was repeated in her ear, and then she 
 said so faintly that she could not believe it would be 
 heard, "Oh, Neal — Neal — I have come back." 
 
 The young man standing in the dimly lighted hall was 
 startled. He cried, "Is it really you, Jeanette — is it 
 
 you? " 
 
 And then stronger than before the voice said, "Yes, 
 Neal, it is I — I have come back ! " 
 " Oh, Jeanette — Jeanette," he cried. 
 
426 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 But she stopped him with, "We must not talk any more 
 — now, don't you know — but I had to tell you that I 
 had come back, Neal." And then she said, " Good night." 
 So there they stood, the only two people in the universe, 
 reunited lovers, each with the voice of the other sounding 
 in his ears. For Mr. Dolan was right. There are only 
 two people in the world, and for these two lovers earth 
 and the stars and the systems of suns that make up this 
 universe were only background for the play of their 
 happiness. 
 
 As Neal Ward came back to John Barclay from the 
 telephone, the young man's face was burning with joy. 
 
 " Who was it? " asked Barclay. 
 
 The youth smiled bashfully as he said, " Well, it was 
 Jeanette — she was calling up another number and I cut 
 in." 
 
 " What did she say ? " asked her father. 
 
 " Oh, nothing — in particular," replied Neal. 
 
 Barclay looked up quickly, caught the young man's 
 abashed smile, and asked, "Does she know you're here?" 
 
 "No, she thinks I'm at the oflBce." 
 
 Barclay rose from his chair, and limped across the room, 
 calling back as he mounted the stair, " Wait a minute." 
 
 It was more than a minute that Neal Ward stood by the 
 fire waiting. 
 
 And now, gentle people, observe the leader of the or- 
 chestra fumbling with his music. There is a faint stir 
 among the musicians under the footlights. And you, too, 
 are getting restless ; you are feeling for your hat instinc- 
 tively, and you for your hat-pins, and you for your rub- 
 bers, while Neal Ward stands there waiting, and the great 
 clock ticks in the long silence. There is a rustle on the 
 stairs, at the right, and do you see that foot peeping down, 
 that skirt, that slender girlish figure coming down, that 
 young face tear-stained, happy, laughing and sobbing, 
 with the arms outstretched as she nears the last turn of 
 the stairs ? And the lover — he has started toward her. 
 The orchestra leader is standing up. And the youth, 
 with God's holiest glory in his face, has almost reached 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 427 
 
 hsT. And there for an instant stand Neal and Jeanette, 
 mingling tears in their kisses, for the curtain, the miser- 
 able, unemotional, awkward curtain — it has stuck, and 
 so they must stand apart, hand in hand, devouring each 
 other's faces a moment, and then as the curtain falls, we 
 see four feet close together again, and then — and then 
 the world comes in upon us, and we smile and sigh, and 
 sigh and smile, for the journey of those four feet is 
 ended, the story is done. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 Being Somewhat in the Nature of an Epilogue 
 
 And now that the performance is finished and the cur- 
 tain has been rung down, we desire to thank you, one and 
 all, for your kind attention, and to express the hope that in 
 this highly moral show you may have found some pleasure 
 as well as profit. But though the play is ended, and you 
 are already reaching for your hats and coats, the lights are 
 still dim; and as you see a great white square of light 
 appear against the curtain, you know that the entertain- 
 ment is to conclude with a brief exhibition of the wonders 
 of that great modern invention, the cinematograph of 
 Time. 
 
 The first flickering shadows show you the interior of 
 Watts McHurdie's shop, and as your eyes take in the 
 dancing shapes, you discern the parliament in session. 
 Colonel Martin F. Culpepper is sitting there with Watts 
 McHurdie, reading and re-reading for the fourth and fifth 
 time, in the peculiar pride that authorship has in listening 
 to the reverberation of its own eloquence, the brand-new 
 copy of the second edition of " The Complete Poetical and 
 Philosophical Works of Watts McHurdie, with Notes and 
 a Biographical Appreciation by Martin F. Culpepper, ' C ' 
 Company, Second Regiment K.V." The colonel, with 
 his thumb in the book, pokes the fire in the stove, and sits 
 down again to drink his joy unalloyed. Watts is working 
 on a saddle, but his arms and his hands are not what they 
 were in the old days when his saddlery won first prize 
 year after year at the Kansas City Fair. So he puffs and 
 fusses and sighs his way through his morning's work. 
 Sometimes the colonel reads aloud a line from a verse, or 
 a phrase from the Biography — more frequently from the 
 Biography — and exclaims, " Genius, Watts, genius, gen- 
 
 428 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 429 
 
 ius! " But Watts McHurdie makes no reply. As his old 
 eyes — quicker than his old fingers — see the sad work 
 they are making, his heart sinks within him. 
 
 " Listen, Watts," cries the colonel. " How do you like 
 this, you old skeezicks ? " and the colonel reads a stanza full 
 of " lips " and " slips," " eyes " and " tries," " desires " and 
 " fires," and " darts " and " hearts." 
 
 The little white-haired old man leans forward eagerly 
 to catch it all. But his shoulders slump, and he draws a 
 long, tired breath when the colonel has finished. 
 
 " Man — man," he cries, "what a saddle I could make 
 when I wrote that! " And he turns wearily to his task 
 again. 
 
 Oscar Fernald paces in busily, and in half an hour 
 Lycurgus Mason, who has been thrown out of the current 
 of life, drifts into his place in the back-water, and the 
 parliament is ready for business. They see Gabriel Car- 
 nine totter by, chasing after pennies to add to his little 
 pile. The bell tinkles, and the postman brings a letter. 
 McHurdie opens it and says, as he looks at the heading: 
 
 " It's from old Jake. It is to all of us," he adds as he 
 looks at the top of the sheet of letter paper. He takes off his 
 apron and ceremoniously puts on his coat; then seats him- 
 self, and unfolding the sheet, begins at the very top to 
 read: — 
 
 "National Soldiers' Home, 
 
 " Leavenworth, Kansas, 
 
 "March 11, 1909. 
 
 "To THE Members of McHurdie's Parliament, 
 
 " Gents and Comrades : I take my pen in hand this bright spring 
 morning to tell you that I arrived here safe, this side up with care, 
 glass, be careful, Saturday morning, and I am willing to compromise 
 my chances for heaven, which Father Van Saudt being a Dutchman 
 always regarded as slim, for a couple of geological ages of this. I hope 
 you are the same, but you are not. Given a few hundred white 
 nighties for us to wear by day, and a dozen or two dagoes playing on 
 harps, and this would be my idea of Heaven. The meals that we do 
 have — tell Oscar that when I realize what eating is, what roast beef 
 can be, cut thin and rare and dripping with gravy — it makes me wonder 
 if the days when I boarded at the Thayer House might not be counted 
 as part of the time I must do in the fireworks. And the porcelean 
 
430 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 bath tubs, and the white clean beds, and the music of the band, and 
 the free tobacco — here I raise my Ebenezer, as the Colonel sings 
 down in his heretic church ; here I put my standard down. 
 
 " Well, Watts, I hear the news about Nelly. We've known it was 
 coming for a year, but that doesn't make it easier. Why don't yon 
 come up here. Comrade — we are all lonesome up here, and it doesn't 
 make the difference. Well, John Barclay, the reformed pirate. Presi- 
 dent of the Exchange National Bank, and general all-round municipal 
 reformer, was over in Leavenworth last week attending the Bankers' 
 Convention, or something, and he came to see me, as though he hadn't 
 bid me good-by at the train two days before. But he said things were 
 going on at the Ridge about the same, and being away from home, he 
 grew confidential, and he told me Lige Bemis had lost all his money 
 bucking the board of trade — did you know that? If not, it isn't so, 
 and I never told you. John showed me the picture of little John B. 
 Ward — as likely a looking yearling as I ever saw. Well, I must close. 
 Remember me to all inquiring friends and tell them Comrade Dolan 
 is lying down by the still waters." 
 
 And now the screen is darkened for a moment to mark 
 the' passage of months before we are given another peep 
 into the parliament. It is May — a May morning that 
 every one of these old men will remember to his death. 
 The spring rise of the Sycamore has flooded the lowlands. 
 The odour of spring is in the air. In the parliament are 
 lilacs in a sprinkling pot — a great armful of lilacs, sent by 
 Molly Culpepper. The members who are present are 
 talking of the way John Barclay has sloughed off his years, 
 and Watts is saying : — 
 
 " Boys will be boys ; I knew him forty years ago when 
 he was at least a hundred years older, and twice as wise." 
 
 " He hasn't missed a ball game — either foot-ball or base- 
 ball — for nearly two years now," ventures Fernald. " And 
 yell ! Say, it's something terrible." 
 
 McHurdie turns on the group with his glasses on his 
 forehead. " Don't you know what's a-happening to John ? " 
 he asks. " Well, I know. Whoever wrote the Bible was 
 a pretty smart man. I've found that out in seventy-five 
 years — especially the Proverbs, and I've been thinking 
 some of the Testament." He smiles. "There's something 
 in it. It says, ' Except ye come as a little child, ye shall 
 in no wise enter the Kingdom.' That's it — that's it. I 
 don't claim to know rightly what the kingdom may be, 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 431 
 
 but John's entering it. And I'll say this : John's been a 
 long time getting in, but now that he's there, he's having 
 the de'el of a fine time." 
 
 And on the very words General Ward comes bursting 
 into the room, forgetful of his years, with tragedy in his 
 face. The bustle and clatter of that morning in the town 
 have passed over the men in the parliament. They have 
 not heard the shouts of voices in the street, nor the sound 
 of footsteps running towards the river. But even their 
 dim eyes see the horror in the general's face as he gasps 
 for breath. 
 
 " Boys, boys," he exclaims. " My God, boys, haven't you 
 heard — haven't you heard ? " And as their old lips are 
 slow to answer, he cries out, "John's dead — John Bar- 
 clay's drowned — drowned — gave his life trying to save 
 Trixie Lee out there on a tree caught in the dam." 
 
 The news is so sudden, so stunning, that the old men 
 sit there for a moment, staring wide-eyed at the general. 
 McHurdie is the first to find his voice. 
 
 " How did it happen ? " he says. 
 
 " I don't know — no one seems to know exactly," replies 
 the general. And then in broken phrases he gives them 
 the confused report that he has gathered: how some one 
 had found Trixie Lee clinging to a tree caught in the cur- 
 rent of the swollen river just above the dam, and calling 
 for help, frantic with fear; how a crowd gathered, as 
 crowds gather, and the outcry brought John Barclay run- 
 ning from his house near by; how he arrived to find men 
 discussing ways of reaching the woman in the swift cur- 
 rent, while her grip was loosening and her cries were 
 becoming fainter. Then the old spirit in John Barclay, 
 that had saved the county-seat for Sycamore Ridge, came 
 out for the last time. His skiff was tied to a tree on the 
 bank close at hand. A boy was sent running to the 
 nearest house for a clothes-line. When he returned, John 
 was in the skiff, with the oars in hand. He passed an 
 end of the line to the men, and without a word in 
 answer to their protests, began to pull out against the 
 current. It was too strong for him, and was sweeping 
 
432 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 him past the woman, when he stood up, measured the dis- 
 tance with his eye, and threw the line so it fell squarely 
 across her shoulders. Some one said that as the skiff shot 
 over the dam, John, still standing up, had a smile on his 
 face, and that he waved his hand to the crowd with a 
 touch of his old bravado. 
 
 The general paused before going on with the story. 
 
 " They sent me to tell his mother — the woman who 
 had borne him, suckled him, reared him, lost him, and 
 found him again." 
 
 " And what did she say ? " asked Watts, as the general 
 hesitated. 
 
 The general moistened his lips and went on. " She 
 stood staring at me for one dreadful minute, and then she 
 asked, 'How did he die, Philemon? ' ' He died saving a 
 woman from drowning,' I told her. ' Did he save her ? ' 
 — that was what she asked, still standing stiff and motion- 
 less. ' Yes,' I said. ' She was only Trixie Lee — a bad 
 woman — a bad woman, Mrs. Barclay.' And Mary Bar- 
 clay lifted her long, gaunt arms halfway above her head 
 and cried : ' Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming 
 of the Lord. I must have an hour with God now, Phile- 
 mon,' she said over her shoulder as she left me; 'don't let 
 them bother me.' Then she walked unbent and unshaken 
 up the stairs." 
 
 So John Barclay, who tried for four years and more to 
 live by his faith, was given the opportunity to die for it, 
 and went to his duty with a glad heart. 
 
 We will give our cinematograph one more whirl. A 
 day, a week, a month, have gone, and we may glimpse the 
 parliament for the last time. Watts McHurdie is reading 
 aloud, slowly and rather painfully, a news item from the 
 Banner. Two vacant chairs are formally backed to the 
 wall, and in a third sits General Ward. At the end of a 
 column-long article Watts drones out : — 
 
 " And there was considerable adverse comment in the 
 eity over the fact that the deceased was sent here for 
 burial from the National Soldiers' Home at Leavenworth, 
 
A CERTAIN RICH MAN 433 
 
 in a shabby, faded blue army uniform of most anfcient 
 vintage. Surely this great government can afford better 
 shrouds than that for its soldier dead." 
 
 Watts lays down the paper and wipes his spectacles, and 
 finally he says: — 
 
 " And Neal wrote that ? " 
 
 " And Neal wrote that," replies the general. 
 
 "And was born and bred in the Ridge," complains 
 McHurdie. 
 
 " Born and bred in the Ridge," responds the general. 
 
 Watts puts on his glasses and fumbles for some piece of 
 his work on the bench. Then he shakes his head sadly 
 and says, after drawing a deep breath, " Well, it's a new 
 generation, General, a new generation." 
 
 There follows a silence, during which Watts works on 
 mending some bit of harness, and the general reads the 
 evening paper. The late afternoon sun is slanting into 
 the shop. At length the general speaks. 
 
 " Yes," he says, " but it's a fine town after all. It was 
 worth doing. I wake up early these days, and often of a 
 fine spring morning I go out to call on the people on the 
 Hill." 
 
 McHurdie nods his comprehension. 
 
 " Yes," continues the general, " and I tell them all 
 about the new improvements. There are more of us out 
 on the Hill now than in town, Watts ; I spent some time 
 with David Frye and Henry Schnitzler and Jim Lord Lee 
 this morning, and called on General Hendricks for a little 
 while." 
 
 " Did you find him sociable ? " asks the poet, grinning 
 up from his bench. 
 
 " Oh, so-so — about as usual," answers the general. 
 
 "He was always a proud one," comments Watts. 
 " Will Henry Schnitzler be stiff-necked about his monu- 
 ment there by the gate ? " asks the little Scotchman. 
 
 " Inordinately, Watts, inordinately ! The pride of that 
 man is something terrible." 
 
 The two old men chuckle at the foolery of the moment. 
 The general folds away the evening paper and rises to go. 
 2f 
 
434 A CERTAIN RICH MAN 
 
 " Watts," he says, " I have lived seventy -eight years to 
 find out just one thing," 
 
 "And what will that be? " asks the harness maker. 
 
 " This," beams the old man, as he puts his spectacle case 
 in his black silk coat ; " that the more we give in this 
 world, the more we take from it ; and the more we keep 
 for ourselves, the less we take." And smiling at his para- 
 dox, he goes through the shop into the sunset. 
 
 The air is vocal with the home-bound traffic of the day. 
 Cars are crowded ; delivery wagons rattle home ; buggies 
 clatter by on the pavements ; one hears the whisper of a 
 thousand feet treading the hot, crowded street. But Watts 
 works on. So let us go in to bid him a formal good-by. 
 The tinkling door-bell will bring out a bent little old man, 
 with grimy fingers, who will put up his glasses to peer at 
 our faces, and who will pause a moment to try to recoUect 
 us. He will talk about John Barclay. 
 
 " Yes, yes, I knew him well," says McHurdie ; " there 
 by the door hangs a whip he made as a boy. We used to 
 play on that accordion in the case there. Oh, yes, yes, 
 he was well thought of ; we are a neighbourly people — 
 maybe too much so. Yes, yes, he died a brave death, and 
 the papers seemed to think his act of sacrifice showed the 
 world a real man — and he was that, — he was surely that, 
 was John ; yes, he was a real man. You ask about his 
 funeral ? It was a fine one — a grand funeral — every 
 hack in town out — every high-stepping horse out ; and 
 the flowers — from all over the world they came — the 
 flowers were most beautiful. But there are funerals and 
 funerals. There was Martin Culpepper's — not so many 
 hacks, not so many high-stepping horses, but the old bug- 
 gies, and the farm wagons, and the little nigger carts — 
 and man, man alive, the tears, the tears I " 
 
THE NOVELS OF 
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 
 
 Skillnil in plot, dramatic in episode, powerful and original in climax. 
 
 MR. CREWE'S CAREER. lUus. by A.I. Keller and Kinneys. 
 
 A New England state is under the political domination 
 of a railway and Mr. Crewe, a millionaire, seizes the moment 
 when the cause of the people against corporation greed is 
 bein^ espoused by an ardent young attorney, to further his 
 own interest in a political way, by taking up this cause. 
 
 The daughter of the railway president, with the sunny 
 humor and shrewd common sense of the New England girl, 
 plays no small part in the situation as well as in the life of the 
 young attorney who stands so unflinchingly for clean politics. 
 THE CROSSING . lUus. by S. Adamson and L. Baylis. 
 
 Describing the battle of Fort Moultrie and the British 
 fleet in the harbor of Charleston, the blazing of the Kentucky 
 wilderness, the expedition of Clark and his handful of daunt- 
 less followers in Illinois, the beginning of civilization along 
 the Ohio and Mississippi, and the treasonable schemes builded 
 against Washington and the Federal Government. 
 CONISTON. Illustrated by Florence Scovel Shinn. 
 
 A deft blending of love and politics distinguishes this 
 book. The author has taken for his hero a New Englander, 
 a crude man of the tannery, who rose to political prominence 
 by his own powers, and then surrenderea all for the love of a 
 woman. 
 
 It is a sermon on civic righteousness, and a love story of a 
 deep motive. 
 THE CELEBRITY. An Episode. 
 
 An inimitable bit of comedy describing an interchange of 
 personalities between a celebrated author and a bicycle sales- 
 man of the most blatant type. The story is adorned with 
 some character sketches more living than pen work. It is the 
 purest, keenest fun — no such piece of humor has appeared for 
 years : it is American to the core. 
 THE CRISIS. lUus. by Howard Chandler Christy. 
 
 A book that presents the great crisis in our national life 
 with si3lendid power and with a sympathy, a sincerity, and a 
 patriotism that are inspiring. The several scenes in the book 
 in which Abraham Lincoln figures must be read in their en- 
 tirety for they give a picture of that great, magnetic, lovable 
 man, which has been drawn with evident affection and excep- 
 tional success. 
 
 Grosset & DuNLAP, 526 West 26th St. , New York 
 
THE NOVELS OF 
 
 GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON 
 
 GRAUSTARK. 
 
 A story of love behind a throne, telling how a young 
 American met p. lovely girl and followed her to a new and 
 strange country. A thrilling, dasWng narrative. 
 BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK. 
 
 Beverly is a bewitching American girl who has gone to 
 that stirring little principality — Graustark — to visit her friend 
 the princess, and there has a romantic affair of her own. 
 BREWSTER'S MILLIONS. 
 
 A young man is required to spend one million dollars in 
 one year in order to inherit seven. How he does it forms the 
 basis of a lively story. 
 CASTLE CRANEYCROW. 
 
 The story revolves round the abduction of a young Amer- 
 ican woman, her imprisonment in an old castle and the adven- 
 tures created through her rescue. 
 COWARDICE COURT. 
 
 An amusing social feud in the Adirondacks in which an 
 English girl is tempted into being a traitor by a romantic 
 young American, forms the plot. 
 THE DAUGHTER OF ANDERSON CROW. 
 
 The story centers about the adopted daughter of the town 
 mnrshal in a western village. Her parentage is shrouded in 
 mystery, and the story concerns the secret that deviously 
 works to the surface. 
 THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S. 
 
 The hero meets a princess in a far-away island among 
 fanatically hostile Musselmen. Romantic love making amid 
 amusing situations and exciting adventures. 
 NEDRA. 
 
 A young couple elope from Chicage to go to London 
 traveling as brother and sister. They are shipwrecked and a 
 strange mix-up occurs on account of it. 
 THE SHERRODS. 
 
 The scene is the Middle West and centers around a man 
 who leads a double life. A most enthralling novel. 
 TRUXTON KING. 
 
 A handsome good natured young fellow ranges on the 
 earth looking for romantic adventures and is finally enmeshed 
 in most complicated intrigues in Graustark. 
 
 Grosset & DuNLAP, 526 West 26th St. , New York 
 
A FEW OF 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP'S 
 Great Books at Little Prices 
 
 HAPPY HAWKINS. By Robert Alexander Wason. Illus- 
 trated by Howard Giles. 
 A ranch and cowboy novel. Happy Hawkins tells his own stoiy 
 with such a fine capacity for knowing how to do it and with so much 
 humor that the reader's interest is held in surprise, then admiration 
 and at last in positive affection. 
 
 COMRADES. By Thomas Dixon, Jr. Illustrated by C. D. 
 Williams. 
 
 The locale of this story is in California, where a few socialists 
 establish a little community. 
 
 The author leads the little band alone the path of disillusion- 
 ment, and gives some brilliant flashes oi light on one side of an 
 important question. 
 
 TONO-BUNGAY. By Herbert George Wells. 
 
 The hero of this novel is a young man who, through hard work, 
 earns a scholarship and goes to London. 
 
 Written with a frankness verging on Rousseau's, Mr. Wells still 
 uses rare discrimination and the border line of propriety is never 
 crossed. An entertaining book with both a story and a moral, and 
 without a dull page — Mr. Wells's most notable achievement. 
 A HUSBAND BY PROXY. By Jack Steele. 
 
 A young criminologist, but recently arrived in New York city, 
 is drawn into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly 
 through his interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the 
 simplest child and again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A bafiling 
 detective story. 
 
 LIKE ANOTHER HELEN. By George Horton. Illus- 
 trated by C. M. Relyea. 
 
 Mr. Horton s powerful romance stands in a new field and brings 
 an almost unknown world in reality before the reader — the world 
 of conflict between Greek and Turk on the Island of Crete. The 
 " Helen " of the story is a Greek, beautiful, desolate, defiant — ^pure 
 as snow. 
 
 There is a certain new force about the story, a kind of master- 
 craftsmanship and mental dominance that holds the reader. 
 THE MASTER OF APPLEBY. By Francis Lynde. 
 Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup. 
 
 "A novel tale concerning itself in part with the great struggle in 
 the two Carolinas, but chiefly with the adventures therein of two 
 gentlemen who loved one and the same lady, 
 
 A strong, masculine and persuasive story. 
 
 A MODERN MADONNA. By Caroline Abbot Stanley. 
 A story of American life, founded on facts as they existed some 
 
 J rears ago in the District of Columbia. The theme is the maternal 
 ove and splendid courage of a woman. 
 
 Grosset & DuNLAP, 526 West 26th St. , New York 
 
A FEW OF 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP'S 
 Great Books at Little Prices 
 
 WHEN A MAN MARRIES. By Mary Roberts Rinehart. 
 Illustrated by Harrison Fisher and Mayo Bunker. 
 
 A young artist, whose wife had recently divorced him, finds that 
 a visit is due from his Aunt SeUna, an elderly lady having ideas 
 about things quite apart from the Bohemian set in which her 
 nephew is a shining light. The way in which matters are tempo- 
 rarily adjusted forms the motif of the story. 
 
 A farcical extravaganza, dramatized under the title of "Seven Days" 
 
 THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA 
 CRAIG. By David Graham Phillips. Illustrated. 
 
 A young westerner, uncouth and unconventional, appears in 
 political and social life in Washivigton. He attains power in poli- 
 tics, and a young woman of the exclusive set becomes his wife, un- 
 dertaking his education in social amenities. 
 " DOC." GORDON. By Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman. Illus- 
 trated by Frank T. Merrill. 
 
 Against the familiar background of American town life, the 
 author portrays a group of people strangely involved in a mystery. 
 "Doc. Gordon, the one physician of the place. Dr. Elliot, his 
 assistant, a beautiful woman and her altogether charming daughter 
 are all involved in the plot. A novel of great interest. 
 
 HOLY ORDERS. By Marie Corelli. 
 
 A dramatic story, in which is pictured a clergyman in touch with 
 society people, stage favorites, simple village folk, powerful finan- 
 ciers and others, each presenting vital problems to this man " in 
 holy orders " — problems that we are now struggling with in America. 
 
 KATRINE. By Elinor Macartney Lane. With frontispiece. 
 
 Katrine, the heroine of this story, is a lovely Irish girl, of lowly 
 birth, but gifted with a beautiful voice. 
 
 The narrative is based on the facts of an actual singer's career, 
 and the viewpoint throughout is a most exalted one. 
 
 THE FORTUNES OF FIFI. By Molly Elliot SeaweU. 
 Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup. 
 A story of life in France at the time of the first Napoleon. Fifi, 
 a glad, mad little actress of eighteen, is the star performer in a third 
 rate Parisian theatre. A story as d^nty as a Watteau painting. 
 
 SHE THAT HESITATES. By Harris Dickson. lUus- 
 trated by C. W. Relyea. 
 
 The scene of this dashmg romance shifts from Dresden to St. 
 Petersburg in the reign of Peter the Great, and then to New Orleans. 
 
 The hero is a French Soldier of Fortune, and the princess, who 
 hesitates — ^but you must read the story to know how she that hesitates 
 may be lost and yet saved. 
 
 Grosset & DuNLAp, 526 West 26th St. , New York 
 
TITLES SELECTED FROM 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST 
 
 REAUSTIC. ENGAGING PICTURES OF LIFE 
 
 THE GARDEN OF FATE. By Roy Norton. Illustrated 
 
 by Joseph Clement Coll. 
 
 The colorful romance of an American girl in Morocco, and 
 
 of a beautiful garden, whose beauty and traditions of strange 
 
 subtle happenings were closed to the world by a Sultan's seal. 
 
 THE MAN HIGHER UP. By Henry Russell Miller. 
 Full page vignette illustrations by M. Leone Bracker. 
 The story of a tenement waif who rose by his own ingenuity 
 to the office of mayor of his native city. His experiences 
 while "climbing," make a most interestmg example of the 
 possibilities of human nature to rise above circumstances. 
 
 THE KEY TO YESTERDAY. By Charles Neville 
 Buck. Illustrated by R. Schabelitz. 
 
 Robert Saxon, a prominent artist, has an accident, while in 
 Paris, which obliterates his memory, and the only clue he has 
 to his former life is a rusty key. What door in Paris will it 
 unlock ? He must know that before he woes the girl he loves. 
 
 THE DANGER TRAIL. By James Oliver Curwood. 
 Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull. 
 The danger trail is over the snow-smothered North. A 
 young Chicago engineerj who is building a road through the 
 Hudson Bay region, is mvolved in mystery, and is led into 
 ambush by a young woman. 
 
 THE GAY LORD WARING. By Houghton Townley. 
 Illustrated by Will Grefe. 
 A story of the smart hunting set in ^ngland. A gay young 
 lord wins in love against his selfish and cowardly brother and 
 apparently against fate itself. 
 
 BY INHERITANCE. By Octave Thanet. Illustrated 
 by Thomas Fogarty. Elaborate wrapper in colors. 
 
 A wealthy New England spinster with the most elaborate 
 plans for the education of the negro goes to visit her nephew 
 m Arkansas, where she learns the needs of the colored! race 
 first hand and begins to lose her theories. 
 
 Grosset & DuNLAP, 526 West 26th St., New York 
 
A FEW OF 
 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP'S 
 Great Books at Little Prices 
 
 THE MUSIC MASTER. By Charles Klein. lUustrated 
 by John Rae. 
 This marvelously vivid narrative turns upon the search of a Ger- 
 man musician in Mew York for his little daughter. Mr. Klein has 
 well portrayed his pathetic struggle with poverty, his varied expe- 
 riences in endeavoring to meet tbe demands of a public not trained 
 to an appreciation of the classic, and his final great hour when, in 
 the rapidly shifting events of a big city, bis little daughter, now a 
 beautifnl young woman, is brought to his very door. A superb bit 
 of fiction, palpitating with the life of the great metropolis. -. The 
 play in which David Warfield scored his highest success. 
 
 DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE. Bv Margaret Deland. 
 Illustrated by Lucius Hitchcock. 
 Mrs. Deland won so many friends through Old Chester Tales 
 that this volume needs no introduction beyond its title. The lova- 
 ble doctor is more ripened in this later book, and the simple come- 
 dies and tragedies of the old village are told with dramatic charm. 
 
 OLD CHESTER TALES. By Margaret Deland. Illustrated 
 by Howard Pyle. 
 
 Stories portraying with delightful humor and pathos a quaint peo- 
 ple in a sleepy old town. Dr. Lavendar, a very human and lovable 
 "preacher," is the connecting link between these dramatic stories 
 from life. 
 
 HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE. By E. P. Roe. 
 With frontispiece. 
 
 The hero is a farmer — a man with honest, sincere views of life. 
 Beieft of his wife, his home is cared for by a succession of domes- 
 tics of varying degrees of inefficiency until, from a most unpromis- 
 ing source, comes a young woman who not only becomes his wife 
 but commands his respect and eventually wins his love. A bright 
 and delicate romance, revealing on both sides a love that surmounts 
 all difficulties and survives the censure of friends as well as the bit- 
 terness of enemies. 
 THE YOKE. By Elizabeth Miller. 
 
 Against the historical background of the days when the children 
 of Israel were delivered from the bondage of Egypt, the author has 
 sketched a romance of compelling charm. A biblical novel as great 
 as any since " Ben Hur." 
 
 SAUL OF TARSUS. By Elizabeth Miller. Illustrated by 
 Andrd Castaigne. 
 
 The scenes of this story are laid in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome 
 and Damascus. The Apostle Paul, the Martyr Stephen, Herod 
 Agrippaand the Emperors Tiberius and Caligula are among the 
 mighty figures that move through the pages. Wonderful descrip- 
 tions, andr a love story of the purest and noblest type mark this 
 most remarkable religious romance. 
 
 Grosset & DuNLAP, 526 West 26th St., New York