,
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. Th