quiet for a minute or two, and then I said:--

"'Mr. Spotkirk, this is an important business. I can't touch it under a
hundred dollars.' He looked hard at me, and then he said:--

"'Do it right, and a hundred dollars is yours.'

"After that I went to see Timothy Barker, and had a talk with him.
Timothy was boiling over, and considered himself the worst-cheated man
in the world. He had only lately found out how Spotkirk made his
Boilene, and what a big sale he had for it, and he was determined to
have more of the profits.

"'Just look at it!' he shouted; 'when Spotkirk has washed out my gravel
it's worth more than it was before, and he sells it for twenty-five
cents a load to put on gentlemen's places. Even out of that he makes a
hundred and fifty per cent. profit.'

"I talked a good deal more with Timothy Barker, and found out a good
many things about Spotkirk's dealings with him, and then in an off-hand
manner I mentioned the matter of the stolen goods in his barn, just as
if I had known all about it from the very first. At this Timothy stopped
shouting, and became as meek as a mouse. He said nobody was as sorry as
he was when he found the goods concealed in his barn had been stolen,
and that if he had known it before the thieves took them away he should
have informed the authorities; and then he went on to tell me how he got
so poor and so hard up by giving his whole time to digging and hauling
gravel for Spotkirk, and neglecting his little farm, that he did not
know what was going to become of him and his family if he couldn't make
better terms with Spotkirk for the future, and he asked me very
earnestly to help him in this business if I could.

"Now, then, I set myself to work to consider this business. Here was a
rich man oppressing a poor one, and here was this rich man offering me
one hundred dollars--which in my eyes was a regular fortune--to help him
get things so fixed that he could keep on oppressing the poor one. Now,
then, here was a chance for me to show my principles. Here was a chance
for me to show myself what you, madam, call rigid; and rigid I was. I
just set that dazzling one hundred dollars aside, much as I wanted it.
Much as I actually needed it, I wouldn't look at it, or think of it. I
just said to myself, 'If you can do any good in this matter, do it for
the poor man;' and I did do it for Timothy Barker with his poor wife and
seven children, only two of them old enough to help him in the gra