xty right in the way of a coal company, can afford to be
independent."

"You understand our procedure, Martin," Robinson continued. "We are
frank and aboveboard. We set the price, and if you can't see your way
clear to take it there are no hard feelings. We simply call it off--for
good."

Wade knew how true this was. When the mining first began, several rebels
toward the East had tried profitlessly to buck this irrefragable game
and had found they had battered their unyielding heads against
an equally unyielding stone wall. These men had demanded more and
Robinson's company, true to its threat, had urbanely gone around their
farms, travelled on and left them behind, their coal untouched and
certain to so remain. Such inelastic lessons, given time to soak in,
were sobering.

"Now," said Robinson, in his amiable matter-of-fact manner, "as I happen
to know the history of this quarter, backwards and forwards, we can do
up this deal in short order. You sign this contract, which is exactly
like all the others we use, and I'll hand over your check. We get the
bottom; you keep the top; I give you the sixteen thousand, and the thing
is done."

"Well, Martin," he added, genially, as Wade signed his name, "it's a
long day since you came in with your father to make that first loan
to buy seed corn. Wouldn't he have opened his eyes if any one had
prophesied this? It's a pity your mother couldn't have lived to enjoy
your good fortune. A fine, plucky woman, your mother. They don't make
many like her."

Long after Robinson's buggy was out of sight, Martin stood in his
doorway and stared at the five handsome figures, spelled out the even
more convincing words and admired the excellent reproduction of The
First State Bank.

"This is a whole lot of money," his thoughts ran. "I'm rich. All this
land still mine--practically as much mine as ever--all this stock and
twenty thousand dollars in money--in cash. It's a fact. I, Martin Wade,
am rich."

He remembered how he had exulted, how jubilant, even intoxicated, he had
felt when he had received the ten dollars for the first load of wheat
he had hauled to Fort Scott. Now, with a check for sixteen
thousand--SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!--in his hand, he stood dumbly,
curiously unmoved.

Slowly, the first bitter months on this land, little Benny's death from
lack of nourishment, his father's desperate efforts to establish
his family, the years of his mother's slow crucifixion, his own
l