n the mill-pond alone, casting minnows for bass, he
could let the melancholy in his heart rage and battle with his sanity,
without let or hindrance. His business was doing well; the lawsuits
against the company in a dozen states were not affecting dividends,
and the department in charge of his charities was forwarding letters
of condolence and consolation from preachers and college presidents,
and men who under the old regime had been in high walks of life.
Occasionally some conservative newspaper or magazine would praise him
and his company highly; but he knew the shallowness of all the patter
of praise. He knew that he paid for it in one way or another, and he
grew cynical; and in his lonely afternoons on the river, often he
laughed at the whole mockery of his career, smiled at the thought of
organized religion, licking his boots for money like a dog for bones,
and then in his heart he said there is no God. Once, to relieve the
pain of his soul's woe, he asked aloud, who is God, anyway, and then
laughed as he thought that the bass nibbling at his minnow would soon
think he, John Barclay, was God. The analogy pleased him, and he
thought that his own god, some devilish fate, had the string through
his gills at that moment and was preparing to cast him into the fire.
Up in the office in the city, they went on making senators and
governors, and slipping a federal judge in where they could, but he
had little hand in it, for his power was a discarded toy. He sat in
his boat alone, rowing for miles and miles, from stump to stump, and
from fallen tree-top to tree-top, hating the thing he called God, and
distrusting men.

But when he appeared in the town, or at home, he was cheerful enough;
he liked to mingle with the people, and it fed his despair to notice
what a hang-dog way they had with him. He knew they had been abusing
him behind his back, and when he found out exactly what a man had
said, he delighted in facing the man down with it.

"So you think John Barclay could have saved Bob Hendricks' life, do
you, Oscar?" asked Barclay, as he overhauled Fernald coming out of the
post-office.

"Who said so?" asked Fernald, turning red.

"Oh," chuckled Barclay, "I got it from the hired girls' wireless news
agency. But you said it all right--you said it, Oscar; you said it
over to Ward's at dinner night before last." And Barclay grinned
maliciously.

Fernald scratched his head, and said, "Well, John, to be frank with
you, t