a lighthouse on a rocky shore, and was now sweeping
along with the turbulent tide of Mammonism. He still saw the light
ahead, but it was now a phantom of the imagination. He said, "When I
am worth ten thousand I will have reached it"; when he was worth ten
thousand he found the faithless light had moved on to twenty-five
thousand. He said, "When I am worth twenty-five thousand I will have
reached it"; when he was worth twenty-five thousand he saw the glow
still ahead, beckoning him on to fifty thousand. It never occurred to
him to slacken his pace--to allow his mind a rest from its
concentration; if he had paused and looked about he might, even yet,
have recognized the distant lighthouse on the reef about the wreck of
his ideals. But to stop now might mean losing sight of his goal, and
John Harris held nothing in heaven or earth so great as its
attainment.

So, gently enough, he disengaged his daughter's arms and finished his
supper in silence. As soon as it was ended the men started for the
barn, and in a few minutes two wagons rattled noisily down the trail.

Beulah helped with the supper dishes, and then came out with the
milk-pails to the corral where the cows, puffing and chewing,
complacently awaited her arrival. But she had not reached the gate
when the hired man was at her side and had slipped one of the pails
from her arm.

"Now, Jim, I don't think that's fair at all," she said; and there was
a tremor in her voice that vexed her. "Here you're slaving all day
with coal and water, and I think that's enough, without milking cows
at night."

But Jim only smiled and stirred a cow into position.

"Yes, that's like you," she continued. "Pick Daisie first, just
because you know she's tough as rubber. Say, Jim, honest goods," she
demanded, pausing and facing him, milk stool in hand, "why do you let
father put this kind of stuff over on you?"

"Your father doesn't put anything over on me," he answered. "I'm very
fond of milking."

"Yes, you are--not," she said. "You do it on my account, because
you're too big-hearted to quit before I'm through..." There was a
tuneful song of the tin pails as the white streams rattled on their
bottoms.

"Jim," she said, after a while, when the noise of the milking was
drowned in the creamy froth, "I'm getting near the end of this kind
of thing. Father's getting more and more set on money all the time.
He thinks I should slave along too to pile up more beside what he's
got alr