dy 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, Vandyke; 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 Vandyke, half to himself.

"Great fault of American society, especially in the 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 attentive 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 they're made out of the top o