know that money gotten that way is
tainted money, more or less. To earn what you have and have a little is
better and safer than to have much and get it in such a way. But it's
too late to preach about that now--I guess I didn't tell you that often
enough and hard enough before this, or else you wouldn't have wanted to
buy the stock. It is partly my fault, for I thought some time ago you
talked as though you were getting the money craze, but I thought it
would soon wear off. You did a foolish thing, but there's no use crying
about it. You see you did wrong and are sorry, so that is all there is
to it. I'm not sorry you lost on the stock, for if you made on it the
craze would go deeper. I can live without the few extra things that
money would buy."

"Don't be so forgiving, mother! Scold me! I'd feel less like a criminal.
But here comes Phares; he'll give me the scolding you're saving me."

The preacher crossed the lawn and advanced to the seat under the cherry
tree.

"Aunt Barbara," he began, then noted the troubled look on the face of
David and asked, "What is wrong?"

"Nothing," said David, "except that I have some of Caleb Warner's
stock."

"You do? Whatever made you buy that?"

David spoke as calmly as possible. "I wanted to be rich, that's all. But
I guess I was never intended to be that."

"I'm afraid you are going to be sorry," said the preacher very soberly.
"I just came from town and they say things look bad for the investors.
They said first that Warner was asphyxiated accidentally, but he was so
deep in a hole with investing and re-investing other people's money and
his own and he had lost so much that people think this was the easiest
way out of it all for him. I suppose it will be hushed up and no one
will ever know just how he died. There are at least twenty people in
town and farms near here who are worried about their money since he
died. Did you have much stock?"

"Five hundred dollars' worth."

"If people were as eager to lay up treasures in heaven----" the preacher
said thoughtfully.

"If they were," said David, struggling to keep the wrath from his words
and voice. "I know, Phares, you can't understand why everybody should
not be as good as you. I wish I were--mother should have had a son like
you. I'm the black sheep of the Eby family, I suppose."

"No, no!" cried Mother Bab. "We all make mistakes! You are good and
noble, David. I am proud of you, even if you do err sometimes."

"We m