ry 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 wo