lars.

"I sold some lambs to Slivers Martin," was the succinct reply, "and I
got ten dollars for 'em."

"Some lambs?" Paul's face puckered with perplexity. "But, Ham, you
haven't got any lambs."

Ham laughed with a debonair indulgence. "Sure I haven't," he cheerfully
acquiesced, "but I've got the ten."

Paul shook his head, baffled. "I don't see," he persisted, "how you
could sell something you didn't have." They were drawing near the house
now, and Ham stopped him in the road.

"Who sells more wheat than all us farmers, Paul? Men in Wall street,
don't they? And how much wheat do you suppose those fellers have got
amongst the lot of them? Not enough to feed a sick pigeon with. I sold
these lambs first--for ten dollars. Then I bought them off of Bill
Heffers, an' Henry Berry an' Ben Best--for seven dollars."

He paused a moment, then added, while a grin of satisfaction spread over
his face: "What's more, Slivers Martin had to go an' get 'em, an' he had
to go in three directions. If he'd had sense enough, he could have got
'em himself in the first place for seven instead of ten. The three
dollars I got clear was my margin of profit, Paul, an' a margin of
profit is what a feller gets by turnin' his margin of brain into money."

The younger lad looked up with a mist of perplexity in his deep eyes. He
realized vaguely that Ham had accomplished a feat somehow savoring of
business acumen, which was a matter he could not hope to comprehend. Yet
some comment seemed expected of him, so out of a slack interest he
inquired, "Were they good lambs, Ham? What were they like?"

The embryonic speculator favored his brother with an indulgent laugh. "I
guess they were all right," he enlightened casually. "As for me, I
didn't see 'em--any more than the Wall-street men see the wheat they buy
an' sell."

"Oh!" The little boy with the cameo face found himself still more at
sea. For a while they trudged along in silence; then, with an
impulsive, almost impassioned gesture, Ham clapped his hand on the
other's shoulder and halted. Paul, too, stopped, and, looking up, was
startled to behold features set in a rapt expression and dominated by
eyes glowing with an inward ardor.

"Listen to me, Paul," began Ham in a voice which carried an electric
thrill into the dreamy soul of the listener. "You love music and you
live in a place where they don't know the difference between Tannhaeuser
and a tom-tom. Mary would like to be pretty and she