he trees by the mill.
They clanged the tall iron gate behind them, and stood a moment
watching the moon. For the colonel never grew too old to notice it. He
put his arms about his wife and his daughter tenderly, and said before
they started up the street, "It never grows old--does it?" And he
pressed his wife to him gently and repeated, "Does it, my dear--it's
the same old moon; the one we used to have in Virginia before the war,
isn't it?"

His wife smiled at him placidly and said, "Now, pa--"

Whereupon the colonel squeezed his daughter lustily, and exclaimed,
"Well, Molly still loves me, anyway. Don't you, Molly?" And the
younger woman patted his cheek, and then they started for home.

"Papa, how much money has John?" asked the daughter, as they walked
along.

A man always likes to be regarded as an authority in financial
matters, and the colonel stroked his goatee wisely before replying:
"U-h-m-m, let me see--I don't exactly know. Bob and I were talking
about it the other day--after I bought John's share in College
Heights--last year, to be exact. Of course he's got the mill and it's
all paid for--say a hundred thousand dollars--and that old wheat
land he got back in the seventies--he's cleaned all of that up. I
should say that and the mill were easily worth half a million, and
they're both clear. That's all in sight." The colonel ruminated a
moment and then continued: "About the rest--it's a guess. Some say a
million, some say ten. All I know in point of fact, my dear, to get
right down to bed-rock, is that Lycurgus says they are turning out two
or three car-loads of the strips a year. I wouldn't believe Lycurgus
on a stack of Bibles as high as his head, but little Thayer Ward, who
works down there in the shipping department, told the general the same
thing, and Bob says he knows John gets ten dollars apiece for them
now, so that's a million dollars a year income he's got. He handles
grain and flour way up in Minnesota, and back as far as Ohio, and west
to California. But what he actually owns,--that is, whether he rents
the mills or, to be exact, steals them,--I haven't any idea--not the
slightest notion in the world, in point of fact--not the slightest
notion."

As they passed through Main Street it was deserted, save in the
billiard halls, and as no one seemed inclined to talk, the colonel
took up the subject of Barclay: "Say we call it five million--five
million in round numbers; that's a good deal of mo