'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 s