story, I will here set it down for you.

But I cannot recount it to you as they told it to me, for to me it was
only a tale that I heard and remembered, thinking to tell it again for
profit, while to them it was a thing that had been, and the threads of it
were interwoven with the woof of their own life. As they talked, faces
that I did not see passed by among the crowd and turned and looked at
them, and voices that I did not hear spoke to them below the clamour of
the street, so that through their thin piping voices there quivered the
deep music of life and death, and my tale must be to theirs but as a
gossip's chatter to the story of him whose breast has felt the press of
battle.

* * * * *

John Ingerfield, oil and tallow refiner, of Lavender Wharf, Limehouse,
comes of a hard-headed, hard-fisted stock. The first of the race that
the eye of Record, piercing the deepening mists upon the centuries behind
her, is able to discern with any clearness is a long-haired, sea-bronzed
personage, whom men call variously Inge or Unger. Out of the wild North
Sea he has come. Record observes him, one of a small, fierce group,
standing on the sands of desolate Northumbria, staring landward, his
worldly wealth upon his back. This consists of a two-handed battle-axe,
value perhaps some forty stycas in the currency of the time. A careful
man, with business capabilities, may, however, manipulate a small capital
to great advantage. In what would appear, to those accustomed to our
slow modern methods, an incredibly short space of time, Inge's two-handed
battle-axe has developed into wide lands and many head of cattle; which
latter continue to multiply with a rapidity beyond the dreams of present-
day breeders. Inge's descendants would seem to have inherited the genius
of their ancestor, for they prosper and their worldly goods increase.
They are a money-making race. In all times, out of all things, by all
means, they make money. They fight for money, marry for money, live for
money, are ready to die for money.

In the days when the most saleable and the highest priced article in the
markets of Europe was a strong arm and a cool head, then each Ingerfield
(as "Inge," long rooted in Yorkshire soil, had grown or been corrupted
to) was a soldier of fortune, and offered his strong arm and his cool
head to the highest bidder. They fought for their price, and they took
good care that they obtained their price; but, the price settled