at nine o'clock, the
two elder ladies gave me their small, transparent hands, while their
polite farewell sounded as final as if it had been uttered on the edge
of an open grave. Only Sally, smiling up at me, with that puzzled yet
determined look still in her eyes, said gayly, "When you go walking at
sunrise, Ben, choose the road-to-what-might-have-been!"

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH I TEST MY STRENGTH

Her words rang in my ears while I went along the crooked pavement under
the burnished sycamore. As I met the General at the corner I was still
hearing them, and they prompted the speech that burst impulsively from
my lips.

"General, I've got to get rich quickly, and I'm finding a way."

"You'd better make sure first that your royal road doesn't end in a
ditch."

"I was talking to a man from West Virginia yesterday about buying out
the National Oil Company, and I dreamed of it all night. He wants me to
go in with him, and start a refining plant. If I can get special
privileges and rebates from the railroads to give us advantages, we may
make a big business of it."

"You may and you mayn't. Who's your man?"

"Sam Brackett. Bob's brother, you know."

"A mighty good fellow, and shrewd, too. But I'd think it over carefully,
if I were you."

I did think it over, and the result of my thoughts was, as I told the
General a fortnight later, the purchase of a refining plant near
Clarksburg, and the beginning of a lively war with the competitors in
the business.

"We're going to sweep the South, General, with the help of the
railroad," I said.

The great man, with his gouty foot in a felt slipper, sat gazing
meditatively over the words of a telegram, which had come on his private
wire.

"Midland stock is selling at 160," he said. "It's a big railroad, my
boy, and I've made it."

Even to-day, with the living presence of Sally still in my eyes, I was
filled again with the old unappeasable desire for the great railroad.
The woman and the road were distinct and yet blended in my thoughts.

At dinner-time, when the General hobbled to his buggy on my arm, I made
again the remark I had blurted out so inopportunely.

"General, I've been to West Virginia and started the plant, and we're
going to give Hail Columbia to our competitors."

He looked at me attentively, and a sly twinkle appeared in his little
watery grey eyes, which were sunk deep in the bluish and swollen
sockets.

"Do you feel yourself getting big,