"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.

"And so you put up Molly to bail you out." Barclay did not answer and

Hendricks went on bitterly: "Oh, you're a friend, John Barclay, you're

a loyal friend. You've sold me out like a dog, John--like a dog!"

Barclay, sitting at his desk, playing with a paper-weight, snarled

back: "Why don't you get in the market yourself, if you think I've

sold you out? Why don't you lend the old man some money?"

"And take it from the bank you've just got done robbing of everything

but the wall-paper?" Hendricks retorted.

"No," cried Barclay, in a loud voice. "Come off your high horse and

take the profits we'll make on our wheat, pay off old Brownwell and

marry her."

"And let the bank bust and the farmers slide?" asked Hendricks, "and

buy back Molly with stolen money? Is that your idea?"

"Well," Barclay snapped, "you have your choice, so if you think more

of the bank and your old hayseeds than you do of Molly, don't come

blubbering around me about selling her."

"John," sighed Hendricks, after a long wrestle--a final contest with

his demon, "I've gone all over that. And I have decided that if I've

got to swindle seventy-five or a hundred farmers--most of them old

soldiers on their homesteads--out of their little all, and cheat five

hundred depositors out of their money to get Molly, she and I wouldn't

be very happy when we thought of the price, and we'd always think of

the price." His demon was limp in the background of his soul as he

added: "Here are some papers I brought over. Let's get back to the

settlement--fix them up and bring them over to the bank this morning,

will you?" And laying a package carefully on the table, Hendricks

turned and went quickly out of the room.

After Hendricks left the office that May morning, Barclay sat

whistling the air of the song of the "Evening Star," looking blankly

at a picture of Wagner hanging beside a picture of Jay Gould. The tune

seemed to restore his soul. When he had been whistling softly for five

minutes or so, the idea flashed across his mind that flour was the one

thing used in America more than any other food product and that if a

man had his money invested in the manufacture and sale of flour, he

would have an investment that would weather any panic. The idea

overcame him, and he shut his eyes and his ears and gripped his chair

and whistled and saw visions. Molly Culpepper came into the room, and

paused a moment on the threshold as one afraid to interrupt a sleeper.

She saw the dapper little man kicking the chair rounds with his

dangling heels, his flushed face reflecting a brain full of blood, his

eyes shut, his head thrown far back, so that his Adam's apple stuck up

irrelevantly, and she knew only by the persistence of the soft low

whistle that he was awake, clutching at some day-dream. When she

cleared her throat, he was startled and stared at her foolishly for a

moment, with the vision still upon him. His wits came to him, and he

rose to greet her.

"Well--well--why--hello, Molly--I was just figuring on a matter,"

he said as he put her in a chair, and then he added, "Well--I wasn't

expecting you."

Even before she could speak his lips were puckering to pick up the

tune he had dropped. She answered, "No, John, I wanted to see you--so

I just came up."

"Oh, that's all right, Molly--what is it?" he returned.

"Well--" answered the young woman, listlessly, "it's about; father.

You know he's badly in debt, and some way--of course he sells lots of

land and all, but you know father, John, and he just doesn't--oh, he

just keeps in debt."

Barclay had been lapsing back into his revery as she spoke, but he

pulled himself out and replied: "Oh, yes, Molly--I know about father

all right. Can't you make him straighten things out?"

"Well, no. John, that's just it. His money comes in so irregularly,

this month a lot and next month nothing, that it just spoils him. When

he gets a lot he spends it like a prince," she smiled sadly and

interjected: "You know he is forever giving away--and then while he's

waiting he gets in debt again. Then we are as poor as the people for

whom he passes subscription papers, and that's just what I wanted to

see you about."

Barclay took his eyes off Jay Gould's picture long enough to look at

the brown-eyed girl with an oval face and a tip of a chin that just

fitted the hollow of a man's hand; there were the smallest brown

freckles in the world across the bridge of her nose, and under her

eyes there was the faintest suggestion of dark shading. Youth was in

her lips and cheeks, and when she smiled there were dimples. But

John's eyes went back to Jay Gould's solemn black whiskers and he said

from his abstraction, "Well, Molly, I wish I could help you."

"Well, I knew you would, John, some way; and oh, John, I do need help

so badly." She paused a moment and gazed at him piteously and

repeated, "So badly." But his eyes did not move from the sacred

whiskers of his joss. The vision was flaming in his brain, and with

his lips parted, he whistled "The Evening Star" to conjure it back and

keep it with him. The girl went on:--

"About that money Mr. Brownwell loaned father, John." She flushed and

cried, "Can't you find some way for father to borrow the money and pay

Mr. Brownwell--now that your wheat is turning out so well?"

The young man pulled himself out of his day-dream and said,

"Well--why--you see, Molly--I--Well now, to be entirely frank with

you, Molly, I'm going into a business that will take all of my

credit--and every cent of my money."

He paused a moment, and the girl asked, "Tell me, John, will the wheat

straighten things up at the bank?"

"Well, it might if Bob had any sense--but he's got a fool notion of

considering a straight mortgage that those farmers gave on their land

as rent, and isn't going to make them redeem their land,--his share

of it, I mean,--and if he doesn't do that, he'll not have a cent, and

he couldn't lend your father any money." Barclay was anxious to get

back to his "Evening Star" and his dream of power, so he asked, "Why,

Molly, what's wrong?"

"John," she began, "this is a miserable business to talk about; but it

is business, I guess." She stopped and looked at him piteously. "Well,

John, father's debt to Mr. Brownwell--the ten-thousand-dollar loan on

the house--will be due in August." The young man assented. And after

a moment she sighed, "That is why I'm to be married in August." She

stood a moment looking out of the window and cried, "Oh, John, John,

isn't there some way out--isn't there, John?"

Barclay rose and limped to her and answered harshly: "Not so long as

Bob is a fool--no, Molly. If he wants to go mooning around releasing

those farmers from their mortgages--there's no way out. But I

wouldn't care for a man who didn't think more of me than he did of a

lot of old clodhoppers."

The girl looked at the hard-faced youth a moment in silence, and

turned without a word and left the room. Barclay floated away on his

"Evening Star" and spun out his dream as a spider spins his web, and

when Hendricks came into the office for a mislaid paper half an hour

later, Barclay still was figuring up profits, and making his web

stronger. As Hendricks, having finished his errand, was about to go,

Barclay stopped him.

"Bob, Molly's been up here. As nearly as I can get at it, Brownwell

has promised to renew the colonel's mortgage in August. If he and

Molly aren't married by then--no more renewals from him. Don't be a

fool, Bob; let your sod-busters go hang. If you don't get their farms,

some one else will!"

Hendricks looked at his partner a minute steadily, grunted, and strode

out of the room. And the incident slipped from John Barclay's mind,

and the web of the spider grew stronger and stronger in his brain, but

it cast a shadow that was to reach across his life.

After Hendricks went from his office that morning, Barclay bounded

back, like a boy at play, to the vision of controlling the flour

market. He saw the waving wheat of Garrison County coming to the

railroad, and he knew that his railroad rates were so low that the

miller on the Sycamore could not ship a pound of flour profitably, and

Barclay's mind gradually comprehended that through railroad rates he

controlled the mill, and could buy it at his leisure, upon his own

terms. Then the whole scheme unfolded itself before his closed eyes as

he sat with his head tilted back and pillowed in his hands. If his

railroad concession made it possible for him to underbid the miller at

the Ridge, why could he not get other railroad concessions and

underbid every miller along the line of the Corn Belt road, by

dividing profits with the railroad officials? As he spun out his

vision, he could hear the droning voices of General Ward and Colonel

Culpepper in the next room; but he did not heed them.

They were discussing the things of the day,--indeed, the things of a

fortnight before, to be precise,--the reception given by the

Culpeppers to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary. The windows

were open, and Barclay could hear the men's voices, and he knew

vaguely that they were talking of Lige Bemis. For Barclay had

tactfully asked the colonel as a favour to invite Mr. and Mrs. Bemis

to the silver wedding reception. So the Bemises came. Mrs. Bemis, who

was rather stout, even for a woman in her early forties, wore black

satin and jet ornaments, including black jet ear bobs of tremendous

size. And Watts McHurdie was so touched by the way ten years under a

roof had tamed the woman whom he had known of old as "Happy Hallie,"

that he wrote a poem for the _Banner_ about the return of the

"Prodigal Daughter," which may be found in Garrison County scrap-books

of that period. As for Mr. Bemis, he went slinking about the outskirts

of the crowd, showing his teeth considerably, and making it obvious

that he was there.

So as John Barclay rode his "Evening Star" to glory, in the next room

General Ward turned to the colonel, who stood puffing in the doorway

of the general's law-office. "Martin, did John Barclay make you invite

that woman to your house--that Bemis woman?"

The colonel got his breath slowly after climbing the stair, and he did

not reply at once. But he smiled, and stood with his arms akimbo a few

seconds before he spoke. "Well now, General--since you ask it, I may

as well confess it pointedly--I am ashamed to say he did!"

Ward motioned the colonel to a seat and asked impatiently, "Ashamed?"

"Well," responded Culpepper, as he put his feet in the window ledge,

"she's as good as I am--if you come down to that! Why shouldn't I,

who pretend to be a gentleman,--a Virginia gentleman, I may say,

sir,--why shouldn't I be ashamed, disgraced, sir, disgraced in point

of fact, that I had to be forced to invite any person in all God's

beautiful world to my home?"

Ward looked at the colonel coldly a moment and then blurted out: "Ah,

shucks, sir--stuff and nonsense! You know what she was before the

war--Happy Hally! My gracious, Martin, how could you?"

Martin Culpepper brought his chair down with a bang and turned

squarely to Ward. "General, the war's over now. I knew Happy

Hally--and I knew the Red Legs she trained with. And we're making

senators and governors and state officers and indeed, I may say,

prominent citizens out of them. Why not give Hally her show? You damn

cold-nosed Yankee Brahmins--you have Faith and you have Hope, but you

have no more Charity than a sausage-grinder." The colonel rose, and

cried with some asperity, "General, if you'd preach about the poor

less, and pray with 'em more, you'd know more about your fellow-men,

sir!"

Perhaps this conversation should not have been set down here; for it

has no direct relation to the movement of this narrative. The

narrative at this point should be hurrying along to tell how John

Barclay and Bob Hendricks cleared up a small fortune on their wheat

deal, and how that autumn Barclay bought the mill at Sycamore Ridge by

squeezing its owner out, and then set about to establish four branches

of the Golden Belt Wheat Company's elevator service along the line of

the new railroad, and how he controlled the wheat output of three

counties the next year through his enterprise. These facts carry John

Barclay forward toward his life's goal. And while these two

middle-aged gentlemen--the general and the colonel--were in the next

room wrangling over the youthful love affairs of a middle-aged lady, a

great dream was shaping in Barclay's head, and he did not heed them.

He was dreaming of controlling the wheat market of the Golden Belt

Railroad, through railroad-rate privileges, and his fancy was feeling

its way into flour, and comprehending what might be done with wheat

products.

It was a crude dream, but he was aflame with it, and yet--John

Barclay, aged twenty-five, was a young man with curly hair and

flattered himself that he could sing. And there was always in him that

side of his nature, so the reader must know that when Nellie Logan

came to his office that bright summer morning and found him wrapped in

his day-dream of power, she addressed herself not to the Thane of

Wheat who should be King hereafter, but to the baritone singer in the

Congregational choir, and the wheat king scampered back to the dream

world when John replied to Nellie's question.

"So it's _your_ wedding, is it, Nellie--your wedding," he repeated.

"Well, where does Watts come in?" And then, before she answered, he

went on, "You bet I'll sing at your wedding, and what's more, I'll

bring along my limping Congregational foot, and I'll dance at your

wedding."

"Well, I just knew you would," said the young woman.

"So old Watts thought I wouldn't, did he?" asked Barclay. "The old

skeezicks--Well, well! Nellie, you tell him that the fellow who was

with Watts when he was shot ten miles from Springfield isn't going to

desert him when he gets a mortal wound in the heart." Then Barclay

added: "You get the music and take it down to Jane, and tell her to

teach me, and I'll be there. Jane says you're going to put old Watts

through all the gaits."

He leaned back in his swivel chair and smiled at his visitor. He had a

slow drawl that he used in teasing, and one who heard that voice and

afterward heard the harsh bark of the man in driving a bargain or

browbeating an adversary would have to look twice to realize that the

same man was talking. A little over an hour before in that very room

he had looked at Bob Hendricks from under wrinkled brows with the

vertical line creased between his eyes and snarled, "Well, then, if

you think she's going to marry that fellow because I got him to lend

the colonel some money, why don't you go and lend the colonel some

more money and get her back?"

But there was not a muscle twitching in his face as he talked to

Nellie Logan, not a break in his voice, not a ruffle of a hair, to

tell her that John Barclay had broken with the friend of his boyhood

and the partner of his youth, and that he had closed and bolted the

Door of Hope on Molly Culpepper. He drawled on: "Jane was saying that

you were going to have Bob and Molly for best man and bridesmaid.

Ought you to do that? You know they--"

He did not finish the sentence, but she replied: "Oh, yes, I know

about that. I told Watts he ought to have Mr. Brownwell; but he's as

stubborn as a mule about just that one thing. Everything else--the

flower girls and the procession and the ring service and all--he's so

nice about. And you know I just had to have Molly."

John slapped the arms of his chair and laughed. "As old Daddy Mason

says, 'Now hain't that just like a woman!' Well, Nellie, it's your

wedding, and a woman is generally not married more than once, so it's

all right. Go it while you're young."

And so he teased her out of the room, and when Sycamore Ridge packed

itself into the Congregational Church one June night, to witness the

most gorgeous church wedding the town ever had seen, John opened the

ceremonies by singing the "Voice that breathed o'er Eden" most

effectively, and Sycamore Ridge in its best clothes, rather stuffed

and uncomfortable thereby, was in that unnatural attitude toward the

world where it thought John Barclay's voice, a throaty baritone, with

much affectation in the middle register, a tendency to flat in the

upper register, and thick fuzz below "C," was beautiful, though John

often remembered that night with unalloyed shame. He saw himself as he

stood there, primped to kill, like a prize bull at a fair, bellowing

out a mawkish sentiment in a stilted voice, and he wondered how the

Ridge ever managed to endure him afterwards.

But this is a charitable world, and his temperament was such that he

did not realize that no one paid much attention to him, after the real

ceremony started. When the bride and the bridesmaid came down the

aisle, Nellie Logan radiant in the gown which every woman in the

church knew had come from Chicago and had been bought of the drummer

at wholesale cost, saving the bride over fifteen dollars on the

regular price--what did the guests care for a dapper little man

singing a hymn tune through his nose, even if he was the richest young

man in town? And when Molly Culpepper--dear little Molly

Culpepper--came after the bride, blushing through her powder, and

looking straight at the floor for fear her eyes would wander after her

heart and wondering if the people knew--it was of no consequence that

John Barclay's voice frazzled on "F"; for if the town wished to notice

a man at that wedding, there was Watts McHurdie in a paper collar,

with a white embroidered bow tie and the first starched shirt the town

had ever seen him wear, badly out of step with the procession, while

the best man dragged him like an unwilling victim to the altar; and of

course there was the best man,--and a handsome best man as men

go,--fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed, with a good glow on his

immobile face and rather sad eyes that, being in a man's head, went

boldly where they chose and where all the women in the town could see

them go. So there were other things to remember that night besides

John Barclay's singing and the festive figure he cut at that wedding:

there was the wedding supper at the Wards', and the wedding reception

at the Culpeppers', and after it all the dance in Culpepper Hall. And

all the town remembers these things, but only two people remember a

moment after the reception when every one was hurrying away to the

dance and when the bridesmaid--such a sweet, pretty little

bridesmaid--was standing alone in a deserted room with a tall

groomsman--just for a moment--just for a moment before Adrian

Brownwell came up bustling and bristling, but long enough to say,

"Bob--did you take my gloves there in the carriage as we were coming

home from the church?" and long enough for him to answer, "Why, did

you lose them?" and then to get a good square look into her eyes. It

was only a few seconds in the long evening--less than a second that

their eyes met; but it was enough to be remembered forever; though

why--you say! It was all so commonplace; there was nothing in it that

you would have thought worth remembering for a moment. "Bob, did you

take my gloves?" "Why, did you lose them?" and then a glance of the

eyes. Surely there are more romantic words than these. But when a man

and a woman go in for collecting antiques in their dialogues, Heaven

only knows what old rubbish you will find in their attics, scoured off

and rebuilt and polished with secret tears until the old stuff glows

like embers.

And that is why, when the music was silent in Culpepper Hall, and the

tall young man walked slowly home alone, as he clicked his own gate

behind him, he brought from his pocket two little white gloves,--just

two ordinary white gloves,--and held them to his lips and lifted his

arms in despair once and let them drop as he stood before his

doorstep. And that is why a girl, a little girl with the weariest face

in the town, looked out of her bedroom window that night and whispered

over and over to herself the name she dared not speak. And all this

was going on while the town was turning over in its bed, listening to

the most tumultuous charivari that Sycamore Ridge has ever known.

Night after night that summer faithful Jake Dolan walked the streets

of Sycamore Ridge with Bob Hendricks. By day they lived apart, but at

night the young man often would look up the elder, and they would walk

and walk together, but never once did Hendricks mention Molly's name

nor refer to her in any way; yet Jake Dolan knew why they walked

abroad. How did he know? How do we know so many things in this world

that are neither seen nor heard? And the Irish--they have the drop of

blood that defies mathematics; the Irish are the only people in the

world whom kind Providence permits to add two and two together to make

six. "You say 'tis four," said Dolan, one night, as he and Hendricks

stood on the bridge listening to the roar from the dam. "I say 'tis

six. There is this and there is that and you say they make the other.

Not at all; they make something else entirely different. You take your

two and your two and make your four and try your four on the world,

and it works--yes, it works up to a point; but there is something

left over, something unexplained; you don't know what. I do. It's the

other two. Therefore I say to you, Mr. Robert Hendricks, that two and

two make six, because God loves the Irish, and for no other reason on

earth."

So much for the dreams of Molly, the memories of Bob, and the vagaries

of Mr. Dolan. They were as light as air. But in John Barclay's life a

vision was rising--a vision that was real, palpable, and vital; a

vision of wealth and power,--and as the days and the months passed,

the shadow of that vision grew big and black and real in a score of

lives.

CHAPTER XV

As June burned itself gloriously into July, Robert Hendricks no longer

counted the weeks until Molly Culpepper should be married, but counted

the days. So three weeks and two days, from the first of July, became

three weeks, then two weeks and six days, and then one week and six

days, and then six days, five days, four days, three days; and then it

became seventy-two hours. And the three threshing machines of the

Golden Belt Wheat Company were pouring their ceaseless stream into the

company's great bins. The railroad was only five miles away, and

Hendricks was sitting in his office in the bank going over and over

his estimates of the year's crop which was still lying in the

field,--save the crop from less than two thousand acres that was

harvested and threshed. From that he judged that there would be enough

to redeem his share of the farmers' mortgages, which in Hendricks'

mind could be nothing but rent for the land, and to pay his share of

the bank's fraudulent loans to the company--and leave nothing more.

The fact that John expected to buy back the mortgages from Eastern

investors who had bought them, and then squeeze the farmers out of

their land by the option to buy hidden in the contract, did not move

Hendricks. He saw his duty in the matter, but as the golden flood rose

higher in the bins, and as hour after hour rolled by bringing him

nearer and nearer to the time when Molly Culpepper should marry Adrian

Brownwell, a temptation came to him, and he dallied with it as he sat

figuring at his desk. The bank was a husk. Its real resources had been

sold, and a lot of bogus notes--accommodation paper, they called

it--had taken the place of real assets. For Hendricks to borrow money

of any other institution as the officer of the Exchange National Bank

of Sycamore Ridge would be a crime. And yet he knew that ten thousand

dollars would save her, and his brain was wrought with a madness. And

so he sat figuring while the hours slipped by, trying to discount his

future income from the wheat to justify himself in taking the money

from the bank's vaults. His figures did not encourage him. They showed

him that to be honest with the farmers he might hope for no profit

from that year's crop, and with two years of failure behind him, he

knew that to discount the next year's crop would be nothing less than

stealing. Then, strong and compelling, came the temptation to let the

farmers fight it out with the Eastern investors. The temptation rocked

the foundations of his soul. He knew it was wrong; he knew he would be

a thief, if he did it, no matter what the law might say, no matter

what the courts might adjudge. To Barclay what was legal was right,

and what the courts had passed upon--that was legal. But Hendricks

sat with his pencil in his hand, going over and over his figures,

trying to silence his conscience.

It was a hot afternoon that he sat there, and idly through his mind

went the computation that he had but sixty-six more hours of hope, and

as he looked at the clock he added, "and thirty-eight minutes and

twenty-seven seconds," when Martin Culpepper came ambling into the

back room of the bank.

"Robert," began the colonel, with his eyes on the floor and his hands

deep in his trousers pockets, "I've just been talking to John." The

colonel rubbed his neck absent-mindedly and went on, "John's a Yankee,

Robert--the blue stripe on his belly is fast blue, sir; it won't

fade, change colour, or crock, in point of fact, not a damned bit,

sir, not till the devil covers it with a griddle stripe, sir, I may

say." The colonel slouched into a chair and looked into Hendricks'

face with a troubled expression and continued, "That John certainly is

Yankee, Robert, and he's too many for me. Yes, sir, certainly he's got

me up in the air, sir--up in the air, and as I may say a mile west,

on that wheat deal." Hendricks leaned forward unconsciously, and the

colonel dropped both hands to his knees and leaned toward Hendricks.

"Robert Hendricks," asked the colonel, as he bored his deep black eyes

into the younger man, "did you know about that option in the wheat

land mortgage? Answer me, sir!"

"Not at the time, Colonel," returned Hendricks, and began, "but I--"

"Well, neither did I. And I got half of those mortgages myself. Lige

and I did it all, sir. And Lige knew--Lige, he says it's legal, but I

say it's just common stealing." Hendricks moistened his lips and sat

with mute face gazing at the colonel. The colonel went on, "And now

the farmers have found it out, and the devil's to pay, sir, with no

pitch hot!"

Hendricks cleared his throat and began, "Well, Colonel--I don't know;

of course I--"

The elder man rose to his full height and glared at the younger, and

cried, "Ah, Robert, Robert, fire in the mountain, snakes in the

grass--you do know--you do know, sir. You know that to hold up the

farmers of this county in the midst of what amounted to a famine, not

to let them borrow a dollar in the county except on a gouging

mortgage, and then to slip into that mortgage a blind option to sell

for ten dollars an acre land that is worth three times that, is

stealing, and so does John Barclay know that, and, worst of all, so

does Martin Culpepper know that, and the farmers are finding it

out--my neighbours and comrades that I helped to swindle, sir--to

rob, I may say--they know what it is."

The colonel's voice was rising, and he stood glaring and puffing

before the young man, shaking his head furiously. Young Hendricks was

engaged in swallowing his Adam's apple and blinking unsteadily, and

just as he started to reply, the colonel, who had caught his temper by

the horn and was shaking it into submission, cried: "Yes, sir, Robert,

that's what I said, sir; those were my very words in point of fact.

And," he began as he sat down and sighed, "what galls me most of all,

Robert, is that John laughs at me. Here you've been gagging and

gulping and sputtering, boy, to keep down your conscience, and so I

know--yes, Robert, I'm dead sure, I may say, that you're all right;

but John giggles--giggles, sir, snickers in point of fact, as though

he had done something smart in getting me to go out among my old

soldier friends and rob 'em of their homesteads. He doesn't care for

my good name any more than for his own."

Hendricks drummed with his fingers on the desk before him. His blue

eyes looked into nothing, and his mind's eye saw the house of cards he

had been dallying with totter and fall. He drew a deep breath before

he looked up at the colonel, and said rather sadly: "Well, Colonel,

you're right. I told John the day after I came home that I wouldn't

stand it." He drummed with his fingers for a moment before continuing,

"I suppose you got about half of those contracts, didn't you?"

The colonel pulled from his pocket a crumpled paper and handed it to

Hendricks, "Here they are, sir--and every one from a soldier or a

soldier's widow, every one a homestead, sir."

Hendricks walked to the window, and stood looking out with his eyes

cast down. He fumbled his Masonic watch-charm a moment, and then

glancing at it, caught the colonel's eye and smiled as he said: "I'm

on the square, Colonel, in this matter. I'll protect you." He went to

the elder man and put his hands on his shoulder as he said: "You go to

your comrades and tell them this, Colonel, that between now and

snowfall every man will have his land clear. But," he added, picking

up the list of the colonel's contracts, "don't mention me in the

matter." He paused and continued, "It might hurt the bank. Just tell

them you'll see that it's taken care of."

The colonel put out his hand as he rose. When their hands met he was

saying: "Blood tells, Robert Hendricks, blood tells. Wasn't your

sainted father a Democrat, boy, a Democrat like me, sir,--a Union

Democrat in point of fact?" The colonel squeezed the younger man's

hand as he cried: "A Union Democrat, sir, who could shoot at his

party, sir, but never could bring himself to vote against it--not

once, sir--not once. And Robert Hendricks, when I see you acting as

you've acted just now, sir, this very minute in point of fact, I may

say, sir, that you're almost honest enough to be a Democrat,

sir--like your sainted father." The colonel held the young man's hand

affectionately for a time and then dropped it, sighing, "Ah, sir--if

it wasn't for your damned Yankee free schools and your damned Yankee

surroundings, what a Democrat you would have made, Robert--what a

grand Democrat!" The colonel waved his silver tobacco box proudly and

made for the door and left Hendricks sitting at his desk, drumming on

the board with one hand, and resting his head in the other, looking

longingly into the abyss from which he had escaped; for the lure of

the danger still fluttered his soul.

Strength had come to him in that hour to resist the temptation. But

the temptation still was there. For he was a young man, giving up for

an intangible thing called justice the dearest thing in his life. He

had opened the door of his life's despair and had walked in, as much

like a man as he could, but he kept looking back with a heavy heart,

hungering with his whole body and most of his soul for all that he had

renounced. And so, staring at the light of other days, and across the

shadow of what might have been, he let ten long minutes tick past

toward the inevitable hour, and then he rose and put his hand to the

plough for the long furrow.

They are all off the stage now, as Bob Hendricks is standing in the

front door of the bank that August night with his watch in his hand

reckoning the minutes--some four thousand three hundred of

them--until Molly Culpepper will pass from him forever, and as the

stage is almost deserted, we may peep under the rear curtain for a

minute. Observe Sycamore Ridge in the eighties, with Hendricks its

moving spirit, controlling its politics, dominating its

business,--for John Barclay's business has moved to the City and Bob

Hendricks has become the material embodiment of the town. And the town

there on the canvas is a busy town of twenty thousand people. Just

back of that scene we find a convention spread on the canvas, a

political convention wherein Robert Hendricks is struggling for good

government and clean politics. Observe him a taciturn, forceful man,

with his hands on the machinery of his party in the state, shaping its

destinies, directing its politics, seeking no office, keeping himself

in the background, desiring only to serve, and not to advertise his

power. So more and more power comes to him, greater and wider

opportunities to serve his state. His business grows and multiplies,

and he becomes a strong man among men; always reserved, always

cautious, a man whose self-poise makes people take him for a cynic,

though his heart is full of hope and of the joy of life to the very

last. Let us lift up one more rag--one more painted rag in the

scenery of his life--and see him a reformer of national fame; see him

with an unflinching hand pull the wires that control a great national

policy of his party, and watch in that scene wherein he names a

president--even against the power and the money and the organization

of rich men, brutally rich men like John Barclay. Hendricks' thin hair

is growing gray in this scene, and his skin is no longer fresh and

white; but his eyes have a twinkle in them, and the ardour of his soul

glows in a glad countenance. And as he sits alone in his room long

after midnight while the bands are roaring and the processions

cheering and the great city is ablaze with excitement, Robert

Hendricks, turning fifty, winds his watch--the same watch that he

holds in his hand here while we pause to peek under the canvas behind

the scenes--and wonders if Molly will be glad that his side won. He

has not seen her for months, nor talked with her for years, and yet as

he sits there winding his watch after his great strategic victory in

national politics, he hopes fondly that perhaps Molly will know that

he played a clean hand and won a fair game.

Now let us crawl out from under this rubbish of the coming years, back

into Sycamore Ridge. And while the street is deserted, let us turn the

film of events forward, letting them flit by unnoticed past the

wedding of Molly Culpepper and Adrian Brownwell until we come to the

August day when the railroad came to Sycamore Ridge.

Jacob Dolan, sheriff in and for Garrison County for four years,

beginning with 1873, remembered the summer of 1875 to his dying day,

as the year when he tore his blue soldier coat, and for twenty-five

years, after the fight in which the coat was torn, Dolan never put it

on for a funeral or a state occasion, that he did not smooth out the

seam that Nellie Logan McHurdie made in mending the rent place, and

recall the exigencies of the public service which made it necessary to

tear one's clothes to keep the peace.

"You may state to the court in your own way," said the judge at the

trial of the sheriff for assault, "just how the difficulty began."

"Well, sir," answered Dolan, "there was a bit of a celebration in

town, on August 30, it being the day the railroad came in, and in

honour of the occasion I put on my regimentals, and along about--say

eleven o'clock--as the crowd began to thicken up around the bank

corner, and in front of the hardware store, I was walking along, kind

of shoving the way clear for the ladies to pass, when some one behind

me says, 'General Hendricks was an old thief, and his son is no

better,' and I turned around and clapt my eye on this gentleman here.

I'd never seen him before in my whole life, but I knew by the bold

free gay way he had with his tongue that he was from Minneola and bent

on trouble. 'Keep still,' says I, calm and dignified like, bent on

preserving the peace, as was my duty. 'I'll not,' says he. 'You will,'

says I. 'Tis a free country,' says he, coming toward me with one

shoulder wiggling. 'But not for cowards who malign the dead,' says I.

'Well, they were thieves,' says he, shaking his fist and getting more

and more into contempt of court every minute. 'You're a liar,' says I,

maintaining the dignity of my office. 'And you're a thief too,' says

he. 'A what?' says I. 'A thief,' says he. 'Whack,' says I, with my

stick across his head, upholding the dignity of the court. 'Biff,'

says he, with a brick that was handy, more and more contemptuous. 'You

dirty, mangy cur,' says I, grabbing him by the ears and pounding his

head against the wall as I spoke, hoping to get some idea of the

dignity of the court into his rebellious head. 'Whoop,' says he, and,

as he tore my coat, 'Yip yip,' says I, and may it please the court it

was shortly thereafter that the real trouble started, though I

misremember just how at this time." And as there were three "E"

Company men on the jury, they acquitted Dolan and advised the court to

assess a fine on the prosecuting witness for contributory negligence

in resisting an officer.

But the coat--the blue coat with brass buttons, with the straps of a

lieutenant on the shoulders, was mended and even in that same summer

did active service many times. For that was a busy summer for Sycamore

Ridge, and holidays came faster than the months. When the supreme

court decided the Minneola suit to enjoin the building of the

court-house, in favour of Syeamore Ridge, there was another holiday,

and men drew John Barclay around in the new hack with the top down,

and there were fireworks in the evening. For it was John Barclay's

lawsuit. Lige Bemis, who was county attorney, did not try to claim

credit for the work, and when the last acre of the great wheat crop of

the Golden Belt Wheat Company was cut, and threshed, there was a big

celebration and the elevator of the Golden Belt Wheat Company was

formally turned over to the company, and John Barclay was the hero of

another happy occasion. For the elevator, standing on a switch by the

railroad track, was his "proposition." And every one in town knew that

the railroad company had made a rate of wheat to Barclay and his

associates, so low that Minneola could not compete, even if she hauled

her wheat to another station on the road, so Minneola teams lined up

at Barclay's elevator. That autumn Minneola, without a railroad,

without a chance for the county-seat, and without a grain market,

began to fag, and during the last of September, the Mason House came

moving out over the hill road, from Minneola to Sycamore Ridge,

surrounded by a great crowd of enthusiastic men from the Ridge. Every

evening, of the two weeks in which the house was moving, people drove

out from Sycamore Ridge to see it, and Lycurgus Mason, sitting on the

back step smoking,--he could not get into the habit of using the

front steps even in his day of triumph,--was a person of considerable

importance.

Money was plentiful, and the Exchange National Bank grew with the

country. The procession of covered wagons, that had straggled and

failed the year before, began to close ranks in the spring; and in

place of "Buck" and "Ball" and "Star," and "Bright" and "Tom" and

"Jerry," who used to groan under the yoke, horses were hitched to the

wagons, and stock followed after them, and thus Garrison County was

settled, and Sycamore Ridge grew from three to five thousand people in

three years. In the spring of '75 the _Banner_ began to publish a

daily edition, and Editor Brownwell went up and down the railroad on

his pass, attending conventions and making himself a familiar figure

in the state. Times were so prosperous that the people lost interest

in the crime of '73, and General Ward had to stay in his law-office,

but he joined the teetotalers and helped to organize the Good Templars

and the state temperance society. Colonel Culpepper in his prosperity

took to fancy vests, cut extremely low, and the Culpepper women became

the nucleus of organized polite society in the Ridge.

The money that John Barclay made in that first wheat transaction was

the foundation of his fortune. For that money gave him two important

things needed in making money--confidence in himself, and prestige.

He was twenty-five years old then, and he had demonstrated to his

community thoroughly that he had courage, that he was crafty, and that

he went to his end and got results, without stopping for overnice

scruples of honour. Sycamore Ridge and Garrison County, excepting a

few men like General Ward, who were known as cranks, regarded John as

the smartest man in the county--smarter even than Lige Bemis. And the

whole community, including some of the injured farmers themselves,

considered Hendricks a sissy for his scruples, and thought Barclay a

shrewd financier for claiming all that he could get. Barclay got hold

of eight thousand acres of wheat land, in adjacent tracts, and went

ahead with his business. In August he ploughed the ground for another

crop. Also he persuaded his mother to let him build a new home on the

site of the Barclay home by the Sycamore tree under the ridge, and

when it was done that winter Mr. and Mrs. John Barclay moved out of

their rooms at the Thayer House and lived with John's mother. The

house they built cost ten thousand dollars when it was finished, and

it may still be seen as part of the great rambling structure that he

built in the nineties. John put five hundred dollars' worth of books

into the new house--sets of books, which strangely enough he forced

himself to wade through laboriously, and thus he cultivated a habit of

reading that always remained with him. In those days the books with

cracked backs in his library were Emerson, Browning, and Tennyson. And

after a hard day's work he would come home to his poets and his piano.

He thought out the whole plan of the Barclay Economy Car Door Strip

about midnight, sitting in his night clothes at the piano after

reading "Abt Vogler," and the central idea for the address on the

"Practical Transcendentalist," which he delivered at the opening of

the state university the next year, came to him one winter night after

he had tried to compose a clanging march as an air to fit Emerson's

"The Sphinx." After almost a quarter of a century that address became

the first chapter of Barclay's famous book, which created such

ribaldry in the newspapers, entitled "The Obligations of Wealth."

It was in 1879 that Barclay patented his Economy Door Strip, and put

it in his grain cars. It saved loss of grain in shipping, and Barclay,

being on terms of business intimacy with the railroad men, sold the

Economy Strip to the railroads to use on every car of grain or flour

he shipped. And Lycurgus Mason, taken from the kitchen of the Mason

House, hired a room over McHurdie's harness shop, and made the strips

there. His first day in his new shop is impressed upon his memory by

an incident that is the seed of a considerable part of this story.

He always remembers that day, because, when he got to the Thayer

House, he found John there in the buggy waiting for him, and a crowd

of men sitting around smoking cigars. In the seat by Barclay was a

cigar-box, and Lycurgus cut in, before John could speak, with, "Well,

which is it?"

And John returned, "A girl--get in; Mother Mason needs you."

Lycurgus fumbled under the box lid for a cigar as he got into the

buggy, and repeated: "Mother needs me, eh? Well, now, ain't that just

like a woman, taking a man from his work in the middle of the day?

What are you going to name her?"

"How do you like Jeanette?" asked Barclay, as he turned the horse.

"You know we can't have two Janes," he explained.

"Well," asked the elder man, tentatively, "how does mother stand on

Jeanette?"

"Mother Mason," answered Barclay, "is against it."

"All right," replied Lycurgus, "I vote aye. What does she want?" he

asked.

"Susan B.," returned Barclay.

"Susan B. Anthony?" queried the new grandfather.

"Exactly," replied the new father.

The two rode down the street in silence; as they turned into the

Barclay driveway Lycurgus chuckled, "Well--well--Susan B. Wants to

put breeches on that child before she gets her eyes open." Then he

turned on Barclay with a broad grin of fellowship, as he pinched the

young man's leg and laughed, "Say--John--honest, ain't that just

like a woman?"

And so Jeanette Thatcher Barclay came into this world, and what with

her Grandmother Barclay uncovering her to look at the Thatcher nose,

and her Grandmother Mason taking her to the attic so that she could go

upstairs before she went down, that she might never come down in the

world, and what with her Grandfather Mason rubbing her almost raw with

his fuzzy beard before the women could scream at him, and what with

her father trying to jostle her on his knee, and what with all the

different things Mrs. Ward, the mother of six, would have done to her,

and all the things Mrs. Culpepper, mother of three, would have done to

her, and Mrs. McHurdie, mother of none, prevented the others from

doing, Jeanette had rather an exciting birthday. And Jeanette Barclay

as a young woman often looks at the scrap-book with its crinkly leaves

and reads this item from the _Daily Banner_: "The angels visited our

prosperous city again last Thursday, June 12, and left a little one

named Jeanette at the home of our honoured townsman, John Barclay.

Mother and child progressing nicely." But under this item is a long

poem clipped from a paper printed a week later,--Jeanette has counted

the stanzas many times and knows there are seventeen, and each one

ends with "when the angels brought Jeanette." Her father used to read

the verses to her to tease her when she was in her teens, and once

when she was in her twenties, and Jeanette had the lonely poet out to

dinner one Sunday, she sat with him on the sofa in the library,

looking at the old scrap-book. Their eyes fell upon the verses about

the angels bringing Jeanette, and the girl noticed the old man mumming

it over and smiling.

"Tell me, Uncle Watts," she asked, "why did you make such a long poem

about such a short girl?"

The poet ran his fingers through his rough gray beard, and went on

droning off the lines, and grinning as he read. When he had finished,

he took her pretty hand in his gnarly, bony one and patted the white

firm flesh tenderly as he peered back through the years. "U-h-m, that

was years and years ago, Jeanette--years and years ago, and Nellie

had just bought me my rhyming dictionary. It was the first time I had

a chance to use it." The lyrical artist drummed with his fingers on

the mahogany arm of the sofa. "My goodness, child--what a long column

there was of words rhyming with 'ette.'" He laughed to himself as he

mused: "You know, my dear, I had to let 'brevet' and 'fret' and

'roulette' go, because I couldn't think of anything to say about them.

You don't know how that worries a poet." He looked at the verses in

the book before him and then shook his head sadly: "I was young

then--it seems strange to think I could write that. Youth, youth," he

sighed as he patted the fresh young hand beside him, "it is not by

chance you rhyme with truth."

His eyes glistened, and the girl put her cheek against his and

squeezed the thin, trembling hand as she cried, "Oh, Uncle Watts,

Uncle Watts, you're a dear--a regular dear!"

"In his latter days," writes Colonel Culpepper, in the second edition

of the Biography, "those subterranean fires of life that flowed so

fervently in his youth and manhood smouldered, and he did not write

often. But on occasion the flames would rise and burn for a moment

with their old-time ardour. The poem 'After Glow' was penned one night

just following a visit with a young woman, Jeanette, only daughter of

Honourable and Mrs. John Barclay, whose birth is celebrated elsewhere

in this volume under the title 'When the Angels brought Jeanette.' The

day after the poem 'After Glow' was composed I was sitting in the

harness shop with the poet when the conversation turned upon the

compensations of age. I said: 'Sir, do you not think that one of our

compensations is that found in the freedom and the rare intimacy with

which we are treated by the young women? They no longer seem to fear

us. Is it not sweet?' I asked. Our hero turned from his bench with a

smile and a deprecating gesture as he replied softly, 'Ah,

Colonel--that's just it; that's just the trouble.' And then he took

from a box near by this poem, 'The After Glow,' and read it to me. And

I knew the meaning of the line--

"'Oh, drowsy blood that tosses in its sleep.'

"And so we fell to talking of other days. And until the twilight came

we sat together, dreaming of faded moons."

CHAPTER XVI

Colonel Martin Culpepper was standing with, one foot on the window

ledge in the office of Philemon R. Ward one bright spring morning

watching the procession of humanity file into the post-office and out

into the street upon the regular business of life. Mrs. Watts

McHurdie, a bride of five years and obviously proud of it, hurried by,

and Mrs. John Barclay drove down the street in her phaeton; Oscar

Fernald, with a pencil behind his ear, came out of his office licking

an envelope and loped into the post-office and out like a dog looking

for his bone; and then a lank figure sauntered down the street,

stopping here and there to talk with a passerby, stepping into a

stairway to light a cigar, and betimes leaning languidly against an

awning post in the sun and overhauling farmers passing down Main

Street in their wagons.

"He's certainly a gallus-looking slink," ejaculated the colonel.

The general, writing at his desk, asked, "Who?"

"Our old friend and comrade in arms, Lige Bemis." At the blank look on

the general's face the colonel shook his head wearily. "Don't know

what a gallus-looking slink is, do you? General, the more I live with

you damn Yankees and fight for your flag and die for your country,

sir, the more astonished I am at your limited and provincial knowledge

of the United States language. Here you are, a Harvard graduate, with

the Harvard pickle dripping off your ears, confessing such ignorance

of your mother-tongue. General, a gallus-looking slink is four hoss

thieves, three revenue officers, a tin pedler, and a sheep-killing

dog, all rolled into one man. And as I before remarked, our beloved

comrade, Lige Bemis, is certainly a gallus-looking slink."

"Far be it from me," continued the colonel, "residing as I may say in

a rather open and somewhat exposed domicile--a glass house in

fact--to throw stones at Elijah Westlake Bemis,--far be it." The

colonel patted himself heroically on the stomach and laughed.

"Doubtless, while I haven't been a professional horse thief, nor a

cattle rustler, still, probably, if the truth was known, I've done a

number of things equally distasteful--I was going to say

obnoxious--in the sight of Mr. Bemis, so we'll let that pass." The

colonel stretched his suspenders out and let them flap against the

plaits of his immaculate shirt. "But I will say, General, that as I

see it, it will be a heap handier for me to explain to St. Peter at

the gate the things I've done than if he'd ask me about Lige's

record."

The general scratched along, without answering, and the colonel looked

meditatively into the street; then he began to smile, and the smile

glowed into a beam that bespread his countenance and sank into a mood

that set his vest to shaking "like a bowl full of jelly." "I was just

thinking," he said to nobody in particular, "that if Lige was jumped out

of his grave right quick by Gabriel and hauled up before St. Peter and

asked to justify my record, he'd have some trouble too--considerable

difficulty, I may say. I reckon it's all a matter of having to live with

your sins till you get a good excuse thought up."

The general pushed aside his work impatiently and tilted back in his

chair. "Come, Martin Culpepper, come, come! That won't do. You know

better than that. What's the use of your pretending to be as bad as

Lige Bemis? You know better and I know better and the whole town knows

better. He's little, and he's mean, and snooping, and crooked as a

dog's hind leg. Why, he was in here yesterday--actually in here to

see me. Yes, sir--what do you think of that? Wants to be state

senator."

"So I hear," smiled the colonel.

"Well," continued the general, "he came in here yesterday as pious as

a deacon, and he said that his friends were insisting on his running

because his enemies were bringing up that 'old trouble' on him. He

calls his horse stealing and cattle rustling 'that old trouble.'

Honestly, Martin, you'd think he was being persecuted. It was all I

could do to keep from sympathizing with him. He said he couldn't

afford to retreat under fire, and then he told me how he had been

trying to be a better man, and win the respect of the people--and I

couldn't stand it any longer, and I rose up and shook my fist in his

face and said: 'Lige Bemis, you disreputable, horse-stealing cow

thief, what right have you to ask my help? What right have you got to

run for state senator, anyway?' And, Martin, the brazen whelp reared

back and looked me squarely in the eye and answered without blinking,

'Because, Phil Ward, I want the job.' What do you think of that for

brass?"

The colonel slapped his campaign hat on his leg and laughed. There was

always, even to the last, something feminine in Martin Culpepper's

face when he laughed--a kind of alternating personality of the other

sex seemed to tiptoe up to his consciousness and peek out of his kind

eyes. As he laughed with Ward the colonel spoke: "Criminy, but that's

like him. He's over there talking to Gabe Carnine on the corner now. I

know what he's saying. He has only one speech, and he gets it off to

all of us. He's got his cigar chawed down to a rag, stuck in one

corner of his mouth, and he's saying, 'Gabe--this is the fight of my

life. This is the last time I'm going to ask my friends for help.'

General, I've heard that now, off and on, first and last, from old

Lige at every city, state, county, and lodge election since the war

closed, and I can see how Gabe is twisting and wiggling trying to get

away from it. He's heard it too. Now Lige is saying: 'Gabe, I ain't

going to lie to you; you know me, and you know I've made

mistakes--but they were errors of judgment, and I want to get a

chance to live 'em down. I want to show the young men of this state

that Lige Bemis of the Red Legs is a man--even if he was wild as a

young fellow; it'll prove that a man can rise.' Poor old Gabe--Lige

has got him by the coat front, now. That's the third degree. When he

gets him by the neck and begins to whisper, he's giving him the work

in the uniform rank. He's saying: 'Gabe, I've got to have you with me.

I can't win without you, and I would rather lose than win with you

against me. You stand for all that's upright in this county, and if

you'll come to my aid, I can win.' Here, General--look--Lige's got

him by the neck and the hand. Now for the password right from the

grand lodge, 'Gabe, you'd make a fine state treasurer--I can land it

for you. Make me state senator, and with my state acquaintance, added

to the prestige of this office, I can make a deal that will land you.'

Oh, I know his whole speech," laughed the colonel. "Bob Hendricks is

to be secretary of state, John Barclay is to be governor, Oscar

Fernald is to be state auditor, and the boys say that Lycurgus Mason

has the refusal of warden of the Penitentiary." The colonel chuckled

as he added: "So far as the boys have been able to learn, Lige still

has United States senator, president, and five places in the cabinet

to go on, but Minneola township returns ain't all in yet, and they may

change the result. By the way, General, what did you get?"

The general flushed and replied, "Well, to be perfectly honest with

you, Mart--he did promise me to vote for the dram-shop law."

And in the convention that summer Lige Bemis strode with his ragged

cigar sticking from the corner of his mouth, with his black eyes

blazing, and his shock of black hair on end, begging, bulldozing, and

buying delegates to vote for him. He had the river wards behind him to

a man, and he had the upland townships where the farmers needed a

second name on their notes at the bank; and in the gentleman's

ward--the silk-stocking ward--he had Gabriel Carnine, chairman of

the first ward delegation, casting the solid vote of that ward for

Bemis ballot after ballot. And when Bemis got Minneola township for

fifty dollars,--and everybody in the convention knew it,--he was

declared the nominee of the party with a whoop.

But behind Bemis was the sinister figure of young John Barclay working

for his Elevator Company. He needed Bemis in politics, and Bemis

needed Barclay in business. And there the alliance between Barclay and

Bemis was cemented, to last for a quarter of a century. Barclay and

Bemis went into the campaign together and asked the people to rally to

the support of the party that had put down the rebellion, that had

freed four million slaves, and had put the names of Lincoln and of

Grant and Garfield as stars in the world's firmament of heroes. And

the people of Garrison County responded, and State Senator Elijah

Westlake Bemis did for Barclay in the legislature the things that

Barclay would have preferred not to do for himself, and the Golden

Belt Elevator Company throve and waxed fat. And Lige Bemis, its

attorney, put himself in the way of becoming a "general counsel," with

his name on an opaque glass door. For as Barclay rose in the world, he

found the need of Bemis more and more pressing every year. In politics

the favours a man does for others are his capital, and Barclay's

deposit grew large. He was forever helping some one. His standing with

the powers in the state was good. He was a local railroad attorney,

and knew the men who had passes to give, and who were responsible for

the direction which legislation took during the session. Barclay saw

that they put Bemis on the judiciary committee, and by manipulating

the judiciary committee he controlled a dozen votes through Bemis. He

changed a railroad assessment law, secured the passage of a law

permitting his Elevator Company to cheat the farmers by falsely

grading their wheat, and prevented the passage of half a dozen laws

restricting the powers of railroads. So at the close of the

legislative session his name appeared under a wood-cut picture in the

_Commonwealth_ newspaper, and in the article thereunto appended

Barclay was referred to as one of the "money kings of our young

state." That summer he turned his wheat into his elevator early and at

a low price, and borrowed money on it, and bought five new elevators

and strained his credit to the limit, and before the fall closed he

had ten more, and controlled the wheat in twenty counties. Strangers

riding through the state on the Corn Belt Railroad saw the words, "The

Golden Belt Elevator Company" on elevators all along the line. But few

people knew then that the "Company" had become a partnership between

John Barclay of Sycamore Ridge and less than half a dozen railroad

men, with Barclay owning seventy-five per cent of the partnership and

with State Senator Bemis the attorney for the company.

That year the railroad officials who were making money out of the

Golden Belt Elevator Company were obliging, and Barclay made a

contract with them to ship all grain from the Golden Belt Company's

elevators in cars equipped with the Barclay Economy Rubber Strip, and

he sold these strips to the railroads for four dollars apiece and put

them on at the elevators. He shipped ten thousand cars that year, and

Lycurgus Mason hired two men to help him in the strip factory. And

John Barclay, in addition to the regular rebate, made forty thousand

dollars that he did not have to divide. The next year he leased three

large mills and took over a score of elevators and paid Lycurgus

twenty dollars a week, and Lycurgus deposited money in the bank in his

own name for the first time in his life.

As the century clanged noisily into its busy eighties, Adrian P.

Brownwell creaked stiffly into his forties. And while all the world

about him was growing rich,--or thought it was, which is the same

thing,--Brownwell seemed to be struggling to keep barely even with

the score of life. The _Banner_ of course ran as a daily, but it was a

miserable, half-starved little sheet, badly printed, and edited, as

the printers used to say, with a pitchfork. It looked shiftless and

dirty-faced long before Brownwell began to look seedy. Editor

Brownwell was forever going on excursions--editorial excursions,

land-buyers' excursions, corn trains, fruit trains, trade trains,

political junkets, tours of inspection of new towns and new fields,

and for consideration he was forever writing grandiloquent accounts of

his adventures home to the _Banner_. But from the very first he

ostentatiously left Molly, his wife, at home. "The place for a woman,"

said Brownwell to the assembled company on the Barclay veranda one

evening, when Jane had asked him why he did not take Molly to the

opening of the new hotel at Garden City, "the place for woman is in

the sacred precincts of home, 'far from the madding crowd's ignoble

throng.' The madame and I," with a flourish of his cane, "came to that

agreement early, eh, my dear, eh?" he asked, poking her masterfully

with his cane. And Molly Brownwell, wistful-eyed and fading, smiled

and assented, and the incident passed as dozens of other incidents

passed in the Ridge, which made the women wish they had Adrian

Brownwell, to handle for just one day. But the angels in that

department of heaven where the marriages are made are exceedingly

careful not to give to that particular kind of women the Adrian

Brownwell kind of men, so the experiment which every one on earth for

thousands of years has longed to witness, still remains a theory, and

Adrian Brownwell traipsed up and down the earth, in his lavender

gloves, his long coat and mouse-coloured trousers, his high hat, with

his twirling cane, and the everlasting red carnation in his

buttonhole. His absence made it necessary for Molly Brownwell to leave

the sacred precincts of the home many and many a Saturday afternoon,

to go over the books at the _Banner_ office, make out bills, take them

out, and collect the money due upon them and pay off the printers who

got out the paper. But Adrian Brownwell ostentatiously ignored such

services and kept up the fiction about the sacred precincts, and often

wrote scorching editorials about the "encroachment of women" and grew

indignant editorially at the growth of sentiment for woman's suffrage.

On one occasion he left on the copy-hook a fervid appeal for women to

repulse the commercialism which "was sullying the fair rose of

womanhood," and taking "from woman the rare perfume of her chiefest

charm," and then he went away on a ten days' journey, and the foreman

of the _Banner_ had to ask Mrs. Brownwell to collect enough money from

the sheriff and a delinquent livery-stable keeper to pay the freight

charges on the paper stock needed for that week's issue of the paper.

The town came to know these things, and so when Brownwell, who, since

his marriage, had taken up his abode at the Culpeppers', hinted at his

"extravagant family," the town refused to take him seriously. And the

strutting, pompous little man, who referred grandly to "my wife," and

then to "the madame," and finally to "my landlady," in a rather

elaborate attempt at jocularity, laughed alone at his merriment along

this line, and never knew that no one cared for his humour.

So in his early forties Editor Brownwell dried up and grew yellow and

began to dye his mustaches and his eyebrows, and to devote much time

to considering his own importance. "Throw it out," said Brownwell to

the foreman, "not a line of it shall go!" He had just come home from a

trip and had happened to glance over the proof of the article

describing the laying of the corner-stone of Ward University.

"But that's the only thing that happened in town this week, and Mrs.

Brownwell wrote it herself."

"Cut it out, I say," insisted Brownwell, and then threw back his

shoulders and marched to his desk, snapping his eyes, and

demonstrating to the printers that he was a man of consequence. "I'll

teach 'em," he roared. "I'll teach 'em to make up their committees and

leave me out."

He raged about the office, and finally wrote the name of Philemon R.

Ward in large letters on the office blacklist hanging above his desk.

This list contained the names which under no circumstances were to

appear in the paper. But it was a flexible list. The next day John

Barclay, who desired to have his speech on the laying of the

corner-stone printed in full, gave Brownwell twenty dollars, and a

most glowing account of the event in question appeared in the

_Banner_, and eloquence staggered under the burden of praise which

Brownwell's language loaded upon the shoulders of General Ward.

It is now nearly a generation since that corner-stone was laid. Boys and

girls who then were children have children in the university, and its

alumni include a brigadier in the army, a poet, a preacher of national

renown, two college presidents, an authority upon the dynamics of living

matter, and two men who died in the American mission at Foo Chow during

the uprising in 1900. When General Ward was running for President of the

United States on one of the various seceding branches of the prohibition

party, while Jeanette Barclay was a little girl, he found the money for

it; two maiden great-aunts on his mother's side of the family had half a

million dollars to leave to something, and the general got it. They

willed it to him to hold in trust during his lifetime, but the day after

the check came for it, he had transferred the money to a university

fund, and had borrowed fifty dollars of Bob Hendricks to clean up his

grocery bills and tide him over until his pension came. But he was a

practical old fox. He announced that he would give the money to a

college only if the town would give a similar sum, and what with John

Barclay's hundred-thousand-dollar donation, and Bob Hendricks' ten

thousand, and what with the subscription paper carried around by Colonel

Culpepper, who proudly headed it with five thousand dollars, and after

the figure wrote in red ink "in real estate," much to the town's

merriment, and what with public meetings and exhortations in the

churches, and what with voting one hundred thousand dollars in bonds by

Garrison County for the privilege of sending students to the college

without tuition, the amount was raised; and as the procession wheeled

out of Main Street to attend the ceremonies incident to laying the

corner-stone that beautiful October day, it is doubtful which was the

prouder man--Martin Culpepper, the master of ceremonies, in his plumed

hat, flashing sword, and red sash, or General Philemon Ward, who for the

first time in a dozen years heard the crowd cheer his name when the

governor in his speech pointed at the general's picture--his campaign

picture that had been hooted with derision and spattered with filth on

so many different occasions in the town. The governor's remarks were of

course perfunctory; he devoted five or ten minutes to the praise of

General Ward, of Sycamore Ridge, of John Barclay, and of education in

general, and then made his regular speech that he used for college

commencements, for addresses of welcome to church conferences, synods,

and assemblies, and for conclaves of the grand lodge. General Ward spoke

poorly, which was to his credit, considering the occasion, and Watts

McHurdie's poem got entangled with Juno and Hermes and Minerva and a

number of scandalous heathen gods,--who were no friends of Watts,--and

the crowd tired before he finished the second canto. But many

discriminating persons think that John Barclay's address, "The Time of

True Romance," was the best thing he ever wrote. It may be found in his

book as Chapter XI. "The Goths," he said, "came out of the woods, pulled

the beards of the senators, destroyed the Roman state, murdered and

pillaged the Roman people, and left the world the Gothic arch; the

Vikings came over the sea, roaring their sagas of rapine and slaughter;

the conquerors came to Europe with spear and sword and torch and left

the outlines of the map, the boundaries of states. Luther married his

nun, and set Christendom to fighting over it for a hundred years, but he

left a free conscience. Cromwell thrust his pikes into the noble heads

of England, snapped his fingers at law, and left civil liberty.

Organized murder reached its sublimity in the war that Lincoln waged,

and in that murdering and pillage true romance came to mankind in its

flower. Murder for the moment in these piping times has become impolite.

But true romance is here. Our heroes rob and plunder, and build cities,

and swing gayly around the curves of the railroads they have stolen, and

swagger through the cities they have levied upon the people to build. Do

we care to-day whether Charlemagne murdered his enemies with a sword or

an axe; do we ask if King Arthur used painless assassination or burned

his foes at the stake? Who cares to know that Cæsar was a rake, and that

William the Conqueror was a robber? They did their work and did it well,

and are snugly sitting on their monuments where no moralist can reach

them. So those searching for true romance to-day, who regard the

decalogue as mere persiflage, and the moral code as a thing of archaic

interest, will get their day's work done and strut into posterity in

bronze and marble. They will cheat and rob and oppress and grind the

faces off the poor, and do their work and follow their visions, and live

the romance in their hearts. To-morrow we will take their work,

disinfect it, and dedicate it to God's uses."

There was more of it--four thousand words more, to be exact, and when

General Ward went home that night he prayed his Unitarian God to

forgive John Barclay for his blasphemy. And for years the general

shuddered when his memory brought back the picture of the little man,

with his hard tanned face, his glaring green eyes, his brazen voice

trumpeting the doctrine of materialism to the people.

"John," said the general, the next day, as he sat in the mill, going

over the plans of the college buildings with Barclay, who was chairman

of the board of directors, "John, why are you so crass, so gross a

materialist? You have enough money--why don't you stop getting it and

do something with it worth while?"

"Because, General, I'm not making money--that's only an incident of

my day's work. I'm organizing the grain industry of this country as it

is organized in no other country on this planet." Barclay rose as he

spoke and began limping the length of the room. It was his habit to

walk when he talked, and he knew the general had come to catechize

him.

"Yes, but then, John--what then?"

"What then?" repeated Barclay, with his hands in his pockets and his

eyes on the floor. "Coffee, maybe--perhaps sugar, or tobacco. Or why

not the whole food supply of the people--let me have meat and sugar

where I will have flour and grain, and in ten years no man in America

can open his grocery store in the morning until he has asked John

Barclay for the key." He snapped his eyes good-naturedly at the

general, challenging the man's approval.

The general smiled and replied: "No, John, you'll get the social bug

and go around in knee-breeches, riding a horse after a scared fox, or

keeping a lot of hussies on a yacht. They all get that way sooner or

later."

Barclay leaned over Ward, stuck out his hard jaw and growled: "Well, I

won't. I'm going to be a tourist-sleeper millionaire. I stick to

Sycamore Ridge; Jeanette goes to the public schools; Jane buys her

clothes at Bob Hendricks' or Dorman's, or at the most of Marshall

Field in Chicago; I go fishing down at Minneola when I want rest."

Ward started to protest, but Barclay headed him off. "I made a million

last year. What did I do with it? See any yachts on the Sycamore?

Observe any understudies for Jane around the place? Have you heard of

any villas for the Barclays in Newport? No--no, you haven't, but you

may like to know that I have control of a railroad that handles more

wheat than any other hundred miles in the world, and it is the key to

the lake situation. And I've put the price of my Economy Door Strip up

to ten dollars, and they don't dare refuse it. What's more, I'm going

to hire a high-priced New York sculptor to make a monument for old

Henry Schnitzler, who fell at Wilson's Creek, and put it in the

cemetery. But I am giving none of my hard-earned cash to cooks and

florists and chorus ladies. So if I want to steal a mill or so every

season, and gut a railroad, I'm going to do it, but no one can rise up

and say I am squandering my substance on riotous living."

Barclay shook his head as he spoke and gesticulated with his hands,

and the general, seeing that he could not get the younger man to talk

of serious things, brought out the plans for the college buildings,

and the men fell to the work in hand with a will.

Barclay's spirit was the spirit of his times--growing out of a

condition which, as Barclay said in his speech, was like Emersonian

optimism set to Wagnerian music. In Sycamore Ridge factories rose in

the bottoms near the creek, and shop hands appeared on the streets at

night; new people invaded Lincoln Avenue, and the Culpeppers, to

maintain their social supremacy, had to hire a coloured man to open

the door for an afternoon party, and for an evening reception it took

two, one for the door and one to stand at the top of the stairs.

Those were the palmy days of the colonel's life. Money came easily,

and went easily. The Culpepper Mortgage Company employed fifty men,

who handled money all over the West, and one of the coloured men who

opened the door at the annual social affair at the Culpepper home also

took care of the horses, and drove the colonel down to his office in

the Barclay block every morning, and drove him home in the evening.

"Well," said Watts McHurdie to Gabriel Carnine as the two walked down

the hill into the business section of the town, a few days after the

corner-stone of Ward College was laid, "old Phil has got his college

started and Mart's got his church a-going."

"You mean the East End Mission? Yes, and I don't know which, of 'em is

happier over his work," replied Carnine.

"Well, Mart certainly is proud; he's been too busy to loaf in the shop

for six months," said McHurdie.

Carnine smiled, and stroked his chestnut beard reflectively before he

added: "Probably that's why he hasn't been in to renew his last two

notes. But I guess he does a lot of good to the poor people over there

along the river. Though I shouldn't wonder if he was encouraging them

to be paupers." Carnine paused a moment and then added, "Good old

Mart--he's got a heart just like a woman's."

They were passing the court-house square, and Bailiff Jacob Dolan,

with a fist full of legal papers, caught step with Carnine and

McHurdie. "We were talking about Mart Culpepper and his Mission

Church," said Carnine. "Don't you suppose, Jake, that Mart, by

circulating down there with his basket so much, encourages the people

to be shiftless? We were just wondering."

"Oh, you were, were you?" snapped Dolan. "There you go, Gabe Carnine;

since you've moved to town and got to be president of a bank, you're

mighty damn scared about making paupers. When Christ told the young

man to sell his goods and give them to the poor, He didn't tell him to

be careful about making them paupers. And Mr. Gabriel Carnine,

Esquire, having the aroma of one large morning's drink on my breath

emboldens me to say, that if you rich men will do your part in giving,

the Lord will manage to keep His side of the traces from scraping on

the wheel. And if I had one more good nip, I'd say, which Heaven

forbid, that you fellows are asking more of the Lord by expecting Him

to save your shrivelled selfish little souls from hell-fire because of

your squeeze-penny charities, than you would be asking by expecting

Him to keep the poor from becoming paupers by the dribs you give them.

And if Mart Culpepper can give his time and his money every day

helping them poor devils down by the track, niggers and whites, good

and bad, male and female, I guess the Lord will put in lick for lick

with Mart and see that his helping doesn't hurt them." Dolan shook his

head at the banker, and then smiled at him good-naturedly as he

finished, "Put that in your knapsack, you son of a gun, and chew on it

till I see you again." Whereupon he turned a corner and went his way.

Carnine laughed rather unnaturally and said to McHurdie, "That's why

he's never got on like the other boys. Whiskey's a bad partner."

McHurdie agreed, and went chuckling to his work, when Carnine turned

into the bank. Later in the forenoon Bailiff Dolan came in grinning,

and took a seat by the stove in McHurdie's shop and said as he reached

into the waste-basket for a scrap of harness leather, and began

whittling it, "What did Gabe say when I left you this morning?" and

without waiting for a reply, went on, "I've thought for some time Gabe

needed a little something for what ails him, and I gave it to him, out

of the goodness of my heart."

McHurdie looked at Dolan over his glasses and replied, "Speech is

silver, but silence is golden."

"The same," answered Dolan, "the same it is, and by the same authority

apples of gold in pictures of silver is a word fitly spoken to a man

like Gabe Gamine." He whittled for a few minutes while the harness

maker worked, and then sticking his pocket-knife into the chair

between his legs, said: "But what I came in to tell you was about Lige

Bemis; did you know he's in town? Well, he is. Johnnie Barclay wired

him to leave the dump up in the City and come down here, and what for,

do you think? 'Tis this. The council was going to change the name of

Ellen Avenue out by the college to Garfield, and because it was named

for that little girl of Mart's that died right after the war, don't

you think Johnnie's out raising hell about it, and brought Lige down

here to beat the game. He'll be spending a lot of money if he has to.

Now you wouldn't think he'd do that for old Mart, would you? He's too

many for me--that Johnny boy is. I can't make him out." The Irishman

played with his knife, sticking it in the chair and pulling it out for

a while, and then continued: "Oh, yes, what I was going to tell you

was the little spat me and Lige had over Johnnie. Lige was in my room

in the court-house waiting to see a man in the court, and was bragging

to me about how smart John was, and says Lige, 'He's found some earth

over in Missouri--yellow clay,' he says, 'that's just as good as

oatmeal, and he ships it all over the country to his oatmeal mills and

mixes it with the real stuff and sells it.' I says: 'He does, does he?

Sells mud mixed with oatmeal?' and Lige says, 'Yes, sir, he's got a

whole mountain of it, and he's getting ten dollars a ton net for it,

which is better than a gold mine.' 'And you call that smart?' says I.

'Yes,' says he, 'yes, sir, that's commercial instinct; it's perfectly

clean mud, and our chemist says it won't harm any one,' says he. 'And

him president of the Golden Belt Elevator Co.?' says I. 'He is,' says

Lige. 'And don't need the money at all?' says I. 'Not a penny of it,'

says he. 'Well,' says I, 'Lige Bemis,' says I, 'when Johnnie gets to

hell,--and he'll get there as sure as it doesn't freeze over,' says

I, 'may the devil put him under that mountain of mud and keep his

railroad running night and day dumping more mud on while he eats his

way out as a penance,' says I. And you orto heard 'em laugh." Dolan

went on cutting curly-cues from the leather, and McHurdie kept on

sewing at his bench. "It is a queer world--a queer world; and that

Johnnie Barclay is a queer duck. Bringing Lige Bemis clear down here

to help old Mart out of a little trouble there ain't a dollar in; and

then turning around and feeding the American people a mountain of mud.

Giving the town a park with his mother's name on it, and selling

little tin strips for ten dollars apiece to pay for it. He's a queer

duck. I'll bet it will keep the recording angel busy keeping books on

Johnnie Barclay."

"Oh, well, Jake," replied McHurdie, after a silence, "maybe the angels

will just drop a tear and wipe much of the evil off."

"Maybe so, Watts McHurdie, maybe so," returned Dolan, "but there won't

be a dry eye in the house, as the papers say, if they keep up with

him." And after delivering himself of this, Dolan rose and yawned, and

went out of the shop singing an old tune which recited the fact that

he had "a job to do down in the boulevard."

Looking over the years that have passed since John Barclay and

Sycamore Ridge were coming out of raw adolescence into maturity, one

sees that there was a miracle of change in them both, but where it was

and just how it came, one may not say. The town had no special

advantages. It might have been one of a thousand dreary brown

unpainted villages that dot the wind-swept plain to-day, instead of

the bright, prosperous, elm-shaded town that it is. John Barclay in

those days of his early thirties might have become a penny-pinching

dull-witted "prominent citizen" of the Ridge, with no wider sphere of

influence than the Sycamore Valley, or at most the Corn Belt Railroad.

But he and the town grew, and whether it was destiny that guided them,

or whether they made their own destiny, one cannot say. The town

seemed to be struggling and fighting its way to supremacy in the

Sycamore Valley; and the colonel and the general and Watts McHurdie,

sitting in the harness shop a score of years after those days of the

seventies, used to try to remember some episode or event that would

tell them how John fought his way up. But they could not do so. It was

a fight in his soul. Every time his hand reached out to steal a mill

or crush an opponent with the weapon of his secret railroad rebates,

something caught his hand and held it for a moment, and he had to

fight his way free. At first he had to learn to hate the man he was

about to ruin, and to pretend that he thought the man was about to

ruin him. Then he could justify himself in his greedy game. But at

last he worked almost merrily. He came to enjoy the combat for its own

sake. And sometimes he would play with a victim cat-wise, and after a

victory in which the mouse fought well, John would lick his chops with

some satisfaction at his business prowess. Mill after mill along the

valley and through the West came under his control. And his skin grew

leathery, and the brass lustre in his eyes grew hard and metallic.

When he knew that he was the richest man in Garrison County, he saw

that there were richer men in the state, and in after years when he

was the richest man in the state, and in the Missouri Valley, the rich

men in other states moved him by their wealth to work harder. But

before he was thirty, his laugh had become a cackle, and Colonel

Martin Culpepper, who would saunter along when Barclay would limp by

on Main Street, would call out after him, "Slow down, Johnnie, slow

down, boy, or you'll bust a biler." And then the colonel would pause

and gaze benignly after the limping figure bobbing along in the next

block, and if there was a bystander to address, the colonel would say,

"For a flat-wheel he does certainly make good time." And then if the

bystander looked worth the while, the colonel, in seven cases out of

ten, would pull out a subscription paper for some new church building,

or for some charitable purpose, and proceed to solicit the needed

funds.

BOOK II

BEING NO CHAPTER AT ALL, BUT AN INTERLUDE FOR THE ORCHESTRA

And so the years slipped by--monotonous years they seem now, so far

as this story goes. Because little happened worth the telling; for

growth is so still and so dull and so undramatic that it escapes

interest and climax; yet it is all there is in life. For the roots of

events in the ground of the past are like the crowded moments of our

passing lives that are recorded only in our under-consciousnesses, to

rise in other years in character formed, in traits established, in

events fructified. And in the years when the evil days came not, John

Barclay's tragedy was stirring in the soil of his soul.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the management, let us

thank you for your kind attention, during the tedious act which has

closed. We have done our best to please you with the puppets and have

cracked their heads together in fine fashion, and they have danced and

cried and crackled, while we pulled the strings as our mummers

mumbled. But now they must have new clothes on. Time, the great

costumer, must change their make-up. So we will fold down the curtain.

John Barclay, a Gentleman, must be painted yellow with gold. Philemon

Ward, a Patriot, must be sprinkled with gray. Martin Culpepper's Large

White Plumes must be towsled. Watts McHurdie, a Poet, must be bent a

little at the hips and shoulders. Adrian Brownwell, a Gallant, must

creak as he struts. Neal Dow Ward, an Infant, must put on long

trousers. E. W. Bemis, a Lawyer, must be dignified; Jacob Dolan, an

Irishman and a Soldier, must grow unkempt and frowsy. Robert

Hendricks, Fellow Fine, must have his blond hair rubbed off at the

temples, and his face marked with maturity. Lycurgus Mason, a Woman

Tamer, must get used to wearing white shirts. Gabriel Carnine, a Money

Changer, must feel his importance; and Oscar Fernald, a Tavern Keeper,

must be hobbled by the years. All but the shades must be refurbished.

General Hendricks and Elmer, his son, must fade farther into the mists

of the past, while Henry Schnitzler settles comfortably down in

storied urn and animated bust.