himself against an accusing conscience, "the old man does all the work
in the bank now, with time to spare."

It was the day of army overcoats, and the hard times had brought
hundreds of them from closets and trunks. General Hendricks,
fluttering down the street in his faded blue, made a rather pathetic
figure. The winter had whitened his hair and withered his ruddy face.
His unequal struggle with the wind seemed some way symbolical of his
life, and the two men watched him out of sight without a word. The
colonel turned toward his own blue overcoat which lay sprawling in a
chair, and Barclay said as he helped the elder man squeeze into it,
"Don't forget to speak to Molly, Colonel," and then ushered him to the
door. For a moment Colonel Culpepper stood at the bottom of the
stairs, partly hesitating to go into the windy street, and partly
trying to think of some way in which he could get the subject on his
mind before his daughter in the right way. Then as he stood on the
threshold with his nose in the storm, he recalled General Ward's
discourse about the different worlds, and he thought of Molly's world
of lovers' madness, and that brought up his own youth and its
day-dreams, and Molly flew out of his mind and her mother came in, and
he saw her blue-eyed and fair as she stood before him on their
wedding-day. With that picture in his heart he breasted the storm and
went home whistling cheerfully, walking through his world like a
prince.

When the colonel left the office of Ward and Barclay, the partners
retired into their respective worlds and went sailing through space,
each world upon its own axis. The general in a desultory way began
writing letters to reformers urging them to prepare for the coming
struggle; but John was head over heels in the business of the Golden
Belt Wheat Company, and in an hour had covered two sheets of foolscap
with figures and had written a dozen letters. The scratch, scratch of
his pen was as regular as the swish of a piston. On the other hand,
the general often stopped and looked off into space, and three times
he got up to mend the fire. At the end of the afternoon Mrs. Ward came
in, her cheeks pink with the cold; she had left the seven-year-old to
care for the one-year-old, and the five-year-old to look after the
three-year-old, and had come scurrying through the streets in a brown
alpaca dress with a waterproof cape over her shoulders. She and the
general spoke for a few moments in th