t living room
of his home. And see, the footlights have winked at the leader of the
orchestra, to let him know he is playing too long; observe, how
quickly the music dies down--rather too quickly, for the clatter of
cast iron is heard on the stage, and the sound of hurried footsteps is
audible, as of some one moving rapidly about behind the curtain. The
rattling iron you hear is the stove in Watts McHurdie's shop; they
have just set it up, and got it red hot; for it is a cold day, that
fifteenth day of December, 1903, and the footsteps you hear are those
of the members of the harness shop parliament.

Ah! There goes the curtain, and there sits Watts astraddle of his
bench, working with all his might, for he has an order to sew
sleigh-bells on a breast strap, for some festivity or another; and
here sits the colonel, and over there the general, and on his
home-made chair Jacob Dolan is tilted back, warming his toes at the
stove. They are all reading--all except Watts, who is working; on the
floor are the Chicago and St. Louis evening papers, and the Omaha and
Kansas City morning papers. And on the first pages of all of these
papers are pictures of John Barclay. There is John Barclay in the
_Bee_, taken in his Omaha office by the _Bee's_ own photographer--a
new picture of Mr. Barclay, unfamiliar to the readers of most
newspapers. It shows the little man standing by a desk, smiling rather
benignly with his sharp bold eyes fixed on the camera. There is a line
portrait of Mr. Barclay in the _Times_, one of recent date, showing
the crow's-feet about the eyes, the vertical wrinkle above the nose,
and the furtive mouth, hard and naked, and the square mean jaw, that
every cartoonist of Barclay has emphasized for a dozen years. And
there are other pictures of Mr. Barclay in the papers on the floor,
and the first pages of the papers are filled with the news of the
Barclay indictment. All over this land, and in Europe, the news of
that indictment caused a sensation. In the _Times_, there on the
floor, is an editorial comment upon the indictment of Barclay cabled
from London, another from Paris, and a third from Berlin. It was a big
event in the world, an event of more than passing note--this sudden
standing up of one of the richest men of his land, before the front
door of a county jail. Big business, and little business that apes big
business, dropped its jaw. The world is not accustomed to think of
might making wrong, so when a C