s a recollection flashed across his mind--"you know I've
made some of our Northwest senators promise to make you a federal
judge. That's one of the things I did last week; I thought maybe
sometime we'd need a federal judge as one of the--what do you call
it--the hereditaments thereunto appertaining of the company." Bemis
opened his eyes in astonishment, and Barclay grunted in disgust as he
went on: "Of course we can't get you appointed from this
state--that's clear--but they think we can work it through in the
City--as soon as there is a vacancy--or make a new district. How
would you like that? Judge Bemis--say, that sounds all right, doesn't
it?"

Barclay rose and stretched his legs and arms. "Well, I must be
going--Mrs. Barclay and my mother want to hear the new organ over in
the Congregational Church. It's a daisy--Colonel Culpepper, amongst
hands, skirmished up three thousand. They let me pick it out, and I
had to put up another thousand myself to get the kind I wanted. Are
you well taken care of at the hotel?" When Bemis explained that he had
the bridal chamber, the two men clambered up the bank of the stream,
crossed the bridge, and at his gate Barclay said: "Now, I'll sleep on
this to-night,--this reorganization,--and then I'll write you a
letter to-morrow, covering all that I've said, and you can fix up a
tentative charter and fire it down--and say, Lige, figure out what a
modest profit on all the grain and grain produce business of the
country would be--say about two and a half per cent, and make the
capitalization of the reorganization fit that. We'll get the real
profits out of the Door Strip, and can fix that up in the books. We'll
show the reformers a trick or two." It was a warm night, and when the
organ recital was over, John and Jane Barclay, after the custom of the
town, sat on a terrace in front of the house talking of the day's
events. Music always made John babble.

"Jane," he asked suddenly, "Jane--when does a man begin to grow old?
Here I am past forty. I used to think when a man was forty he was
middle-aged; every five years I have advanced my idea of what an old
man was; when I was fifteen, I thought a man was getting along when he
was thirty. When I was twenty-five, I regarded forty as the beginning
of the end; when I was thirty, I put the limit of activity at
forty-five; five years ago I moved it up to fifty; and to-day I have
jumped it to sixty. It seems to me, Jane, that I'm as much of a bo