beauty; that was her dowry to her daughter.

"The girl went to school here at sixteen. I was a student then, six or
seven years older than she, and I remember there were about six of us
who used to stand around the schoolhouse door to carry her books for
her; but she just walked past us all without a turn of the head. She
didn't seem to know what ailed us. She was one of these girls born all
brains, some way. I never saw her face flushed in my life, and her big
eyes always made me shiver when she turned them on me."

"Wheat falls to ninety-three and a fourth. There is a break in the
market. New York is still hammering," called the operator, his mouth
full of pie.

Cargill was distinctly talking to himself, almost as much as to
Bradley. The hardness had gone out of his eyes, and his voice had a
touch of unconscious sadness in it.

"Does Miss Wilbur live here?" Bradley asked, to start him off again.

"Yes, she went into the Grange when she was eighteen, just after she
graduated from our university here. Had a good deal of your enthusiasm,
I should judge. Expected to revolutionize things some way. I don't take
very much interest in her public work, but I thoroughly appreciate her
literary perception." He had got back to his usual humor.

"Chris, when does the club meet next?"

"Friday night, I believe."

"All right. I'll take you up, and introduce you into the charmed
circle. They pride themselves on being modern up there, though I don't
see much glory in being modern."

Bradley stood for a moment at the door, looking at this strange scene.
It appealed to him with its strangeness, and its suggestion of the
great battles on the street which he had read of in the papers. The
telegraph machine clicked out every important movement in Chicago and
New York. The manager called up his customers, and bawled into the
telephone the condition of the market and the significant gossip of the
far-off exchange halls. It was so strange, and yet so familiar, that he
went away with his head full of those cabalistic sentences--

"New York still hammering away. Partridge quietly buying to cover on
the decline."

XX.

AT THE STATE HOUSE.

That the invitation to attend the Square Table Club over-shadowed the
importance and significance of Bradley's entrance into public life, was
an excellent commentary upon his real character. The State House,
however, appealed to his imagination very strongly as he walked up its
unfinis