f what might have been, he let ten long minutes tick past
toward the inevitable hour, and then he rose and put his hand to the
plough for the long furrow.

They are all off the stage now, as Bob Hendricks is standing in the
front door of the bank that August night with his watch in his hand
reckoning the minutes--some four thousand three hundred of
them--until Molly Culpepper will pass from him forever, and as the
stage is almost deserted, we may peep under the rear curtain for a
minute. Observe Sycamore Ridge in the eighties, with Hendricks its
moving spirit, controlling its politics, dominating its
business,--for John Barclay's business has moved to the City and Bob
Hendricks has become the material embodiment of the town. And the town
there on the canvas is a busy town of twenty thousand people. Just
back of that scene we find a convention spread on the canvas, a
political convention wherein Robert Hendricks is struggling for good
government and clean politics. Observe him a taciturn, forceful man,
with his hands on the machinery of his party in the state, shaping its
destinies, directing its politics, seeking no office, keeping himself
in the background, desiring only to serve, and not to advertise his
power. So more and more power comes to him, greater and wider
opportunities to serve his state. His business grows and multiplies,
and he becomes a strong man among men; always reserved, always
cautious, a man whose self-poise makes people take him for a cynic,
though his heart is full of hope and of the joy of life to the very
last. Let us lift up one more rag--one more painted rag in the
scenery of his life--and see him a reformer of national fame; see him
with an unflinching hand pull the wires that control a great national
policy of his party, and watch in that scene wherein he names a
president--even against the power and the money and the organization
of rich men, brutally rich men like John Barclay. Hendricks' thin hair
is growing gray in this scene, and his skin is no longer fresh and
white; but his eyes have a twinkle in them, and the ardour of his soul
glows in a glad countenance. And as he sits alone in his room long
after midnight while the bands are roaring and the processions
cheering and the great city is ablaze with excitement, Robert
Hendricks, turning fifty, winds his watch--the same watch that he
holds in his hand here while we pause to peek under the canvas behind
the scenes--and wonders if Molly