t. Just half the concern he takes."

"There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue
of having spent six months in the South, dropped his _r_-s, and talked
of "niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end.

"A lady in the case?"

"Of course. Only child of Herne's. _He_ comes down with the dust as
dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If
money's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride now to
't."

The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that--

"Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now,
was best catch in town."

"Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting
lazily on a barrel,--a clergyman, whom his clerical brothers shook their
heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon
deference.

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've knowed him
since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet not that, neither,"
he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him out our way, (self-made, you
see,) and would have had him the best office in the State before this,
only he was so cursedly indifferent."

"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in themselves,"
said the clergyman, half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in West," said the young
aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend friend suggests;
impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn such dirty paths,"--with a
mournful remembrance of the last dime in his waistcoat-pocket.

"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do you
understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is in this
mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in the air that
no sane man can comprehend."

"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.

His reverend friend gave him a look,--after which he was silent.

"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it," persisted
the wool-man, earnestly looking at the quiet face of his listener. "We
can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart while he ruins himself. It's
something of a Communist fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know
the thing."

Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the clergyman,
whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.

"There's two ways for 'em to end. If