ging in our ears as the night fell.

"It's a good time to think, and there we take different roads," said my
friend. "You will turn into the future and I into the past."

"I've been thinking about your uncle," he said by and by. "He is one of
the greatest men I have ever known. You knew of that foolish gossip
about him--didn't you?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Well, now, he's gone about his business the same as ever and showed by
his life that it couldn't be true. Not a word out of him! But Dave
Ramsey fell sick--down on the flat last winter. By and by his children
were crying for bread and the poor-master was going to take charge of
them. Well, who should turn up there, just in the nick of time, but
Delia and Peabody Baynes. They fed those children all winter and kept
them in clothes so that they could go to school. The strange thing about
it is this: it was Dave Ramsey who really started that story. He got up
in church the other night and confessed his crime. His conscience
wouldn't let him keep it. He said that he had not seen Peabody Baynes on
that road the day the money was lost but had only heard that he was
there. He knew now that he couldn't have been there. Gosh t'almighty!
as your uncle used to say when there was nothing else to be said."

It touched me to the soul--this long-delayed vindication of my beloved
Uncle Peabody.

The Senator ate supper with us and sent his hired man out for his horse
and buggy. When he had put on his overcoat and was about to go he turned
to my uncle and said:

"Peabody Baynes, if I have had any success in the world it is because I
have had the exalted honor and consciousness that I represented men like
you."

He left us and we sat down by the glowing candles. Soon I told them what
Ramsey had done. There was a moment of silence. Uncle Peabody rose and
went to the water-pail for a drink.

"Bart, I believe I'll plant corn on that ten-acre lot next
spring--darned if I don't," he said as he returned to his chair.

None of us ever spoke of the matter again to my knowledge.

CHAPTER XIX

ON THE SUMMIT

My mental assets would give me a poor rating I presume in the commerce
of modern scholarship when I went to Washington that autumn with Senator
and Mrs. Wright. Still it was no smattering that I had, but rather a few
broad areas of knowledge which were firmly in my possession. I had
acquired, quite by myself since leaving the academy, a fairly
serviceable reading knowled