here was one
aspect and only one in which Tomlinson was really and truly a wizard.
He saw clearly that for himself and his wife the vast fortune that had
fallen to them was of no manner of use. What did it bring them? The
noise and roar of the City in place of the silence of the farm and the
racket of the great rotunda to drown the remembered murmur of the
waters of the creek.

So Tomlinson had decided to rid himself of his new wealth, save only
such as might be needed to make his son a different kind of man from
himself.

"For Fred, of course," he said, "it's different. But out of such a lot
as that it'll be easy to keep enough for him. It'll be a grand thing
for Fred, this money. He won't have to grow up like you and me. He'll
have opportunities we never got." He was getting them already. The
opportunity to wear seven dollar patent leather shoes and a bell-shaped
overcoat with a silk collar, to lounge into moving-picture shows and
eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes--all these opportunities he was
gathering immediately. Presently, when he learned his way round a
little, he would get still bigger ones.

"He's improving fast," said mother. She was thinking of his patent
leather shoes.

"He's popular," said his father. "I notice it downstairs. He sasses any
of them just as he likes; and no matter how busy they are, as soon as
they see it's Fred they're all ready to have a laugh with him."

Certainly they were, as any hotel clerk with plastered hair is ready to
laugh with the son of a multimillionaire. It's a certain sense of
humour that they develop.

"But for us, mother," said the Wizard, "we'll be rid of it. The gold is
there. It's not right to keep it back. But we'll just find a way to
pass it on to folks that need it worse than we do."

For a time they had thought of giving away the fortune. But how? Who
did they know that would take it?

It had crossed their minds--for who could live in the City a month
without observing the imposing buildings of Plutoria University, as
fine as any departmental store in town?--that they might give it to the
college.

But there, it seemed, the way was blocked.

"You see, mother," said the puzzled Wizard, "we're not known. We're
strangers. I'd look fine going up there to the college and saying, 'I
want to give you people a million dollars.' They'd laugh at me!"

"But don't one read it in the papers," his wife had protested, "where
Mr. Carnegie gives ever so much to the