As for Adrian P. Brownwell, he went about his daily task, editing the Banner, making it as luscious and effulgent 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 General Ward that a man could take five dollars in to Brownwell 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.

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 Sycamore 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 beanpoles, 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 Effect 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 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 prosperous talker!"



CHAPTER XI

The twenty-fifth of July, 1874, is a memorable day in the life of John Barclay. For on that day the grasshoppers 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, cobweb-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 unwashed windows letting in the merciless afternoon sun to fade the grimy black and white lithograph of William 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 something diabolical in its resistless approach. So he shrank from his impending fate as a child trembles at some unknown 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 deposits, due next October, you know, on the year's agreement. Of the ten thousand cash, four thousand belongs 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?" asked Barclay.

The old man nodded and sighed. Barclay limped carefully 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 guarantee 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! Boy! Boy!—" the old man faltered. "Don't ruin me! 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 reinforcements came. For he rose suddenly, and shaking his haggard fist at the youth, exclaimed in a high, furious, cracking voice as he panted and shook his great hairy head: "No—by God, no, by God, no! You damned young cut-throat—you can break my bank, but you can't bulldoze me. No, by God—no!" 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!" 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, something 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', General," as the two men passed in the hallway.

"Mornin', Johnnie—how does your corporocity sagashiate 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 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 property 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! 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 sunshine 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, absently. 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 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 household." There were tears in his eyes as he waved a grand adieu at the door, and he whistled "Gayly 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 subscription 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 setting 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 Fairview, 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 and things. I want you boys," the colonel saw the clouds gathering and smiled to brush them away, "yes, I want you boys to give me ten dollars apiece."

"Ten dollars!" cried Fernald.

"Ten dollars!" echoed Frye. "My Lord, man, there isn't ten dollars in cash between here and the Missouri River!"

"But the man and his children will 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 paper 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 complacent 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—they 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 women and song, you know—they get us all. But as for 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: "Brownwell 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: "Doubtless some women like that sort of thing, or it would perish, but I don't like to be treated like a woman—a she-creature. 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 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 off 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 Culpepper 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 dollar and a half an acre to plough and plant the land by September 15, and another dollar to cultivate it 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 sentences, 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. Brownwell's going!"

"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!" exclaimed Barclay, with his eyes staring dumbly at nothing on the dingy white wall before him. "Well—don't that beat the Jews? Going to leave town!" 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 literally 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."

In ten minutes Brownwell was running up the stairs to Barclay's office 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. Brown well blinked and sputtered a second or two, scrambling to his equilibrium. Before he 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." Brown well paused a minute and added: "Business is entirely satisfactory, 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 her?" 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. 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." Something 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, behind 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 Brownwell'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 contempt for Brownwell was one of the things he prided himself 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, Molly, can you run up a minute?" And a moment later she 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 almost 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 roan simply can't leave this town and you must bold 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. 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 the 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 business. 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 pleasure 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 of longing 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 the 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 relentless 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 "Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works" called "Fragments" 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 that," said Watts McHurdie, in October, two months after the events recorded in the last chapter had occurred, as he sat astraddle 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 reflections of the poet.

Watts replied, "Oh, just to complete the set!"

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 McHurdie, 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 yellow-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 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 replied, "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, during 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 and howl, and away we go and sigh under our breaths and break our hearts and swing our partners, and it's everybody 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 handclasp 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 him 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 minutes 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 expect," replied Nellie. And to Watts' blank look she replied: "The way that man Brownwell keeps shining 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 veranda the next night but one, said: "Colonel, your harness-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, Bob, 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 chewing 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, 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 veranda," 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 Southern soldier," and as "I was finding it on the whole rather a tiresome business "; those things you might have written, Molly Culpepper, but you did not. And was it a twinge or a prick or a sharp reproachful stab of your conscience 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, looking 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 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 Zillah! 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 Culpepper, 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 National 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 evening 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 campaign 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, 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 addressed 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 proposition, and when the votes were counted Pleasant township 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, before 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 maintain 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, General, look here—what I don't understand is how you expect to accomplish anything without money."

"I can't tell you, John—but some way I have faith that I can—can do more real work in this world without bothering 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.

"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, lending 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 doling 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 stumbling 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.

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 cowlish 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 probably 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 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 Brownwell 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 Brownwell 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 Brownwell. Honestly, Phil, the last time I was over Mrs. Culpepper nearly talked her head 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 guess 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 marry him, do you think?" 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 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. Barclay. 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 business?" 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! Isn'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 Hendricks were in Barclay's office going over matters, and seeing where they stood.

"So he says seventy thousand is too much for the company and me to owe?" said John, at the end of half an hour's conference.

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 stockholders,—that will hold this matter up till you 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.

"All 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." Barclay smiled, and added, "And I'll just put Bob in for a few thousand."

"But what'll 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 descriptions of the land, and get the tax receipts; he'll bring the 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 disturbance. 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 say:—

"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, whereupon, 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 it 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."

Then Brownwell put on his hat, twirled his cane effusively, 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 impressive 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 will 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 certain 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, darling, 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 Alabaman 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 Barclay were in some kind of an affair together, feared the truth. And from her heart she wrote to her lover questioning 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 in a wicked world.



CHAPTER XIII

The spring sun of 1875 that tanned John Barclay's face gave it a leathery masklike appearance that the succeeding 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 greatest 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 chair 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 seemed 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 Brownwell'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.

"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 shoulders 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 will say this: three times a week—sometimes 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 Dulangpres came back to his face, and he shook his head. "But otherwise—no. There we stand still. She will 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 admire 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 Barclay—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 the desperate need of this accommodation paper, not especially 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," Barclay 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 letter 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 follow will send him to prison and jeopardize Bob, who has signed a lot of improper notes there to cover our transactions, 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 meditation. 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—

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 clatter 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 Culpepper'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 unsteady, and often he repeated himself in successive letters. 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 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 with 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 envelope, and was addressed by Barclay's hand.

The general fumbled with the pad of blank notes before 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 paralyzed 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 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 in 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 morning 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 presented 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, Barclay 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 inviting 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 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 blundering. 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 farthest 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!"

"Why—why—why! 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 feeling 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 understand?"

And when he had stepped to ward 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!" 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 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 answered, "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 fragrance of the lilacs.

She trembled with some chill of inner grief, and cried vehemently, "Oh, Bob—my boy—my boy—say you 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 here to the veranda, but he stopped on a lower step where 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 Hendricks 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 morning 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 instinctively that he would find there the solution of the puzzle that perplexed him. For he was sure Molly Culpepper had not jilted him wantonly. He worked all the long spring afternoon and into the night, and when he could not sleep he went back to the bank at midnight, following 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 worrying his books as a ferret worries a rat. They were beginning to mean something to him, and he saw that the bank was a worm-eaten shell. When he discovered that Brownwell's notes were not made for bona fide loans, but that they were made to cover Barclay's overdrafts, he began to find the truth, and then when he found that Colonel Culpepper had lent the money back to the bank that he borrowed from Brownwell,—also to save John's overdrafts,—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 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 Hendricks could not put the hate into his hands that was in his breast. John was full of a plan to organize a commission company, buy all of the wheat grown by the Golden Belt Wheat Company and make a profit off the wheat company 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 almost without a word. A devil back in some recess of his soul was thirsting for a quarrel. But Bob's sane consciousness 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 imagining 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."

"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 over to Hendricks 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 bank-book 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 our books had to show the amount of gross cash that the treasurer deposited before Gabe came 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's it, 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 maintenance account and a bond account, and Gabe has been letting us keep the paid-off bonds in the vault and look after their 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 hermetically sealed so far as the treasurer and the bank are concerned."

"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 satisfy 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 before 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 thousand, 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 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 seconds 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 personally—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 farmers 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 Hendricks 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 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 Hendricks 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 awkwardness, 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'll come down town some morning minus a bank."

Then the devil in Bob Hendricks was freed for an exultant 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 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.