y as
ever; all this talk about my being a man puzzles me. What's this
Provisions Company but a game? And I'm going to play another game; I'm
going to get grain and grain produce organized, and then I'm going to
tackle meat. In ten years I'll have the packing-houses where I have
the mills; but it's just play--and it's a lot of fun."

He was silent a moment. Jane did not disturb his reveries. She
understood, without exactly putting her feeling into language, that
she was being talked at, not talked to.

"Say, Jane," he exclaimed, "wasn't that 'Marche Triomphante to-night
great?" He hummed a bar from the motif, "That's it--my--" he cried,
hitting his chair arm with his fist, "but that's a big thing--almost
good enough for Wagner to have done; big and insistent and strong. I'm
getting to like music with go to it--with bang and brass. Wagner does
it; honest, Jane, when I hear his trombones coming into a theme, I get
ideas enough to give the whole force in the office nervous prostration
for a month. To-night when that thing was swelling up like a great
tidal wave of music rolling in, I worked out a big idea; I'm going to
sell all the mills and factories back to the millers for our stock,
and when I own every dollar of our stock, I'm going to double the
price of it to them and sell it back to them; and if they haggle about
it, I'll build a new mill across the track from every man-jack who
tries to give me any funny business--I'll show 'em. That
reorganization ought to clean up millions for us in the next year.
What a lot of fun it all is! I used to think old Jay Gould was some
pumpkins; but if we get this reorganization through, I'll go down
there and buy the Gould outfit and sell 'em for old iron."

The current of his thoughts struck under language, as a prairie stream
sometimes hides from its surface bed. After a time Jane said: "Grandma
Barclay thought the 'Marche Funebre' was the best thing the man did. I
heard the Wards speaking of it in the vestibule; and Molly, who held
my hand through it, nearly squeezed it off--poor girl; but she looks
real well these days." Jane paused a moment and added: "Did you notice
the colonel? How worn and haggard he looks--he seems broken so. They
say he is in trouble. Couldn't we help him?"

Her husband did not reply at once. Finally he recalled his wandering
wits and answered: "Oh, I don't know, Jane. He'll pull through, I
guess." Then he reverted to the music, which was still in his he