man found that Barclay
had one curious vanity--he liked to seem composed. Hence the big
smooth mahogany table before him, with the single paper tablet on it,
and the rose--the one rose in the green vase in the centre of the
table. Visitors always found him thus accoutred. But to see him
limping about from room to room, giving orders in the great offices,
dictating notes for the heads of the various departments, to see him
in the room where the mail was received, worrying it like a pup, was
to see another man revealed. He liked to have people from Sycamore
Ridge call upon him, and the man who kept door in the outer office--a
fine gray-haired person, who had the manners of a brigadier--knew so
many people in Sycamore Ridge that Neal used to call him the City
Directory. One day Molly Brownwell called. She was the only person who
ever quelled the brigadier; but when a woman has been a social leader
in a country town all of her life, she has a social poise that may not
be impressed by a mere brigadier. Mrs. Brownwell realized that her
call was unusual, but she refused to acknowledge it to him. Barclay
seemed glad to see her, and as he was in one of his mellow moods he
talked of old times, and drew from a desk near the wall, which he
rarely opened, an envelope containing a tintype picture of Ellen.
Culpepper. He showed it to her sister, and they both sat silent for a
time, and then the woman spoke.

"Well, John," she said, "that was a long time ago."

"Forty years, Molly--forty years."

When they came back to the world she said: "John, I am up here looking
for a publisher. Father has written a Biography of Watts, and
collected all of his poems and things in it, and we thought it might
sell--Watts is so well known. But the publishers won't take it. I
want your advice about it."

Barclay listened to her story, and then wheeled in his chair and
exclaimed, "Can Adrian publish that book?"

"Yes," she answered tentatively; "that is, he could if it didn't take
such an awful lot of money."

After discussing details with her, Barclay called Neal Ward and
said:--

"Get up a letter to Adrian Brownwell asking him to print for me three
thousand copies of the colonel's book, at one dollar and fifty cents a
copy, and give seventy-five per cent of the profits to Colonel
Culpepper. We'll put that book in every public library in this
country. How's that?" And he looked at the tintype and said, "Bless
her dear little heart."

"Neal,