went to
his room and began the weary round, battling for his own faith.

As he stood by his open window that day at the mill, he saw Molly
Brownwell across the pond, going into his home. He watched her idly
and saw Jeanette meet her at the door, and then as his memory went
back to the old days, he tried to find tears for the woman who had
died, but he could only rack his soul. Tears were denied to him.

He was a rich man--was John Barclay; some people thought that, taking
his wealth as wealth goes, all carefully invested in substantial
things--in material things, let us say--he was the richest man in
the Mississippi Valley. He bought a railroad that day when he looked
through the office window at Molly Brownwell--a railroad three
thousand miles long. And he bought a man's soul in a distant city--a
man whom he did not know even by name, but the soul was thrown in "to
boot" in a bargain; and he bought a woman's body whose face he had
never seen, and that went as part of another trade he was making and
he did not even know they had thrown it in. And he bought a child's
life, and he bought a city's prosperity in another bargain, and bought
the homage of a state, and the tribute of a European kingdom, as part
of the day's huckstering. But with all his wealth and power, he could
not buy one tear--not one little, miserable tear to moisten his
grief-dried heart. For tears, just then, were a trifle high. So Mr.
Barclay had to do without, though the man whose soul he bought wept,
and the woman whose body came with a trade, sobbed, and the dead face
of the child was stained with a score of tears.

They went to Jeanette Barclay's room,--the gray-haired woman and the
girl,--and they sat there talking for a time--talking of things that
were on their lips and not in their hearts. Each felt that the other
understood her. And each felt that something was to be said. For one
day before the end Jeanette's mother had said to her: "Jennie, if I am
not here always go to Molly--ask her to tell you about her girlhood."
The mother had rested for a while, and then added, "Tell her I said
for you to ask her, and she'll know what I mean."

"Jeanette," said Molly Brownwell, "your mother and I were girls
together. Your father saw more of her at our house than he did at her
own home, until they married. Did you know that?" Jeanette nodded
assent. "So one day last June she said to me, 'Molly, sometime I wish
you would tell Jennie all about you an