pon it. The Grand Army man sat down
behind the stove and tilted his chair back comfortably against the wall,
fishing his quill toothpick from his waistcoat pocket. The two bankers,
Phelps and Elder, sat off in a corner behind the dinner-table, where they
could finish their discussion of the new usury law and its effect on
chattel security loans. The real estate agent, an old man with a smiling,
hypocritical face, soon joined them. The coal and lumber dealer and the
cattle shipper sat on opposite sides of the hard coal-burner, their feet
on the nickel-work. Steavens took a book from his pocket and began to
read. The talk around him ranged through various topics of local interest
while the house was quieting down. When it was clear that the members of
the family were in bed, the Grand Army man hitched his shoulders and,
untangling his long legs, caught his heels on the rounds of his chair.

"S'pose there'll be a will, Phelps?" he queried in his weak falsetto.

The banker laughed disagreeably, and began trimming his nails with a
pearl-handled pocket-knife.

"There'll scarcely be any need for one, will there?" he queried in his
turn.

The restless Grand Army man shifted his position again, getting his knees
still nearer his chin. "Why, the ole man says Harve's done right well
lately," he chirped.

The other banker spoke up. "I reckon he means by that Harve ain't asked
him to mortgage any more farms lately, so as he could go on with his
education."

"Seems like my mind don't reach back to a time when Harve wasn't bein'
edycated," tittered the Grand Army man.

There was a general chuckle. The minister took out his handkerchief and
blew his nose sonorously. Banker Phelps closed his knife with a snap.
"It's too bad the old man's sons didn't turn out better," he remarked
with reflective authority. "They never hung together. He spent money
enough on Harve to stock a dozen cattle-farms, and he might as well have
poured it into Sand Creek. If Harve had stayed at home and helped nurse
what little they had, and gone into stock on the old man's bottom farm,
they might all have been well fixed. But the old man had to trust
everything to tenants and was cheated right and left."

"Harve never could have handled stock none," interposed the cattleman.
"He hadn't it in him to be sharp. Do you remember when he bought Sander's
mules for eight-year olds, when everybody in town knew that Sander's
father-in-law give 'em to his wife for