l you wish. And suppose you had taken out all the gold you say is
there, and you were rich. What would you do?"

"What I do?" Bird struck the table with his fist. "Leave Haha Bay
to-morrow morning!"

"And where would you go?"

"Go? To Quebec, to London, to Paris, to Rome, to the devil! Keep going!"

The young father laughed a laugh as innocent as his looks, and turned
with a sudden appeal to Northwick. "Tell me a little about the rich men
in your land of millionnaires! How do they find their happiness? In
what? What is the secret of joy that they have bought with their money?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Northwick, with a recoil deeper into
himself after the first flush of alarm at being addressed.

"Where do they live?"

Northwick hesitated, and the priest laid his hand on Bird's shoulder, as
if to restrain a burst of information from him.

"I suppose most of them live in New York."

"All the time?"

"No. They generally have a house at the seaside, at Newport or Bar
Harbor, for the summer, and one at Lenox or Tuxedo for the fall; and
they go to Florida for the winter, or Nice. Then they have their
yachts."

"The land is not large enough for their restlessness; they roam the sea.
My son," said the young priest to the old hunter, "you can have all the
advantage of riches at the expense of a gypsies' van!" He laughed again
in friendly delight at Bird's supposed discomfiture; and touched him
lightly, delicately, as before. "It is the same in Europe; I have seen
it there, too." Bird was going to speak, but the priest stayed him a
moment. "But how did your rich people get their millions? Not like those
rich people in Europe, by inheritance?"

"Very few," said Northwick, sensible of a remnant of the pride he used
to feel in the fact, hidden about somewhere in his consciousness. "They
made it."

"How? Excuse me!"

"By manufacturing, by speculating in railroad stocks, by mining, by the
rise in land-values."

"What causes the land to rise in value?"

"The demand for it. The necessity."

"Oh! The need of others. And when a man gains in stocks, some other man
loses. No? Do the manufacturers pay the operatives all they earn? Are
the miners very well paid and comfortable? I have read that they are
miserable. Is it so?"

Northwick was aware that there were good and valid answers to all these
questions which the priest seemed to be asking rather for the confusion
of Bird than as an expression of his own