ched to a very remunerative
ambition.

If Sybella was not without some astonishment at his proposal to
accompany her, she never gave herself the slightest trouble to explain
the motive. She acceded to his wish from natural courtesy and the desire
to oblige, and that was all. He had been uniformly polite and civil
in all their intercourse; beyond that, he was not a person whose
companionship she would have sought or cared for, and so they rode
along, chatting indifferently of whatever came uppermost,--the scene,
the road, the season, the condition of the few people who formed the
inhabitants of this wild region, and how their condition might possibly
be affected by the great changes then in progress near them.

Guarded and cautious as he was in all he said, Mr. Hankes could not
entirely conceal how completely he separated, in his own mind, the
success of the great scheme and the advantage that might accrue to the
people; nor was she slow to detect this reservation. She took too true
and just a view of her companion's temper and tone to approach this
theme with the scruples that agitated herself, but at once said,--

"Let us suppose this scheme to be as prosperous as its best friends
can wish it, Mr. Hankes; that you all--I mean you great folk, who are
directors, chairmen, secretaries, and so forth--become as rich and
powerful as you desire, see your shares daily increasing in value, your
speculations more and more lucrative, what becomes of the people--the
poor man--all this while?"

"Why, of course he participates in all these successes; he grows rich
too; he sells what he has to sell at a better market, obtains higher
wages for his labor, and shares all our prosperity."

"Granted. But who is to teach him the best use of this newly acquired
prosperity? You, and others like you, have your tastes already formed;
the channels are already made in which your affluence is to run: not so
with him; abundance may--nay, it will--suggest waste, which will beget
worse. Who are to be his guides,--who his examples?"

"Oh, as to that, his increase of fortune will suggest its own
appropriate increase of wants. He will be elevated by the requirements
of his own advancing condition, and even if he were not, it is not
exactly any affair of ours; we do our part when we afford him the means
of a higher civilization."

"I don't think so. I suspect that not alone do you neglect a duty, but
that you inflict a wrong. But come, I will ta