their hats in their
hands and asked permission to name these judges. Now why?" He was
silent awhile and then began chuckling: "But I fixed 'em the other
day. Did you see that article in all the papers briefed out of New
York about how that professor had said that the N.P.C. was an economic
necessity? I did that, Watts: and got it published in the magazines,
too--and our advertising agents made all the newspapers that get our
advertising print it--and they had to." Barclay laughed. After a
moody silence he continued: "And you know what I could do. I could
finance a scheme to buy out the meat trust and the lumber trust, and I
could control every line of advertising that goes into the damn
magazines--and I could buy the paper trust too, and that would fix
'em. The Phil Wards are not running this country yet. The men who make
the wealth and maintain the prosperity have got to run it in spite of
the long-nosed reformers and socialists. You know, Watts, that we men
who do things have a divine responsibility to keep the country off the
rocks. But she's drifting a lot just now, and they're all after me,
because I'm rich. That's all, Watts, just because I've worked hard and
earned a little money--that's why." And so he talked on, until he was
tired, and limped home and sat idly in front of his organ, unable to
touch the keys.

Then he turned toward the City to visit his temporal kingdom. There in
the great Corn Exchange Building his domain was unquestioned. There in
the room with the mahogany walls he could feel his power, and stanch
the flow of his courage. There he was a man. But alas for human
vanity! When he got to the City, he found the morning papers full of a
story of a baby that had died from overeating breakfast food made at
his mills and adulterated with earth from his Missouri clay banks, as
the coroner had attested after an autopsy; and a miserable county
prosecutor was looking for John Barclay. So he hid all the next day in
his offices, and that evening took Neal Ward on a special train in his
private car, on a roundabout way home to Sycamore Ridge.

It was a wretched homecoming for so great and successful a man as
Barclay. Yet he with all his riches, with all his material power, even
he longed for the safety of home, as any hunted thing longs for his
lair. On the way he paced the diagonals of the little office room in
his car, like a caged jackal. The man had lost his anchor; the things
which his life had been bu