o banish the question from his mind; but it
returned and returned again so pertinaciously that he was glad to order
his horses and ride to his factory.

Before night it became noised through the village that the great
proprietor had been to the oil regions. The fact was talked over among
the people in the shops, in the street, in social groups that gathered
at evening; and there was great curiosity to know what he had learned,
and what opinions he had formed. Mr. Belcher knew how to play his cards,
and having set the people talking, he filled out and sent to each of the
wives of the five pastors of the village, as a gift, a certificate of
five shares of the stock of the Continental Petroleum Company. Of
course, they were greatly delighted, and, of course, twenty-four hours
had not passed by when every man, woman and child in Sevenoaks was
acquainted with the transaction. People began to revise their judgments
of the man whom they had so severely condemned. After all, it was the
way in which he had done things in former days, and though they had come
to a vivid apprehension of the fact that he had done them for a purpose,
which invariably terminated in himself, they could not see what there
was to be gained by so munificent a gift. Was he not endeavoring, by
self-sacrifice, to win back a portion of the consideration he had
formerly enjoyed? Was it not a confession of wrong-doing, or wrong
judgment? There were men who shook their heads, and "didn't know about
it;" but the preponderance of feeling was on the side of the proprietor,
who sat in his library and imagined just what was in progress around
him,--nay, calculated upon it, as a chemist calculates the results of
certain combinations in his laboratory. He knew the people a great deal
better than they knew him, or even themselves.

Miss Butterworth called at the house of the Rev. Solomon Snow, who,
immediately upon her entrance, took his seat in his arm-chair, and
adjusted his bridge. The little woman was so combative and incisive that
this always seemed a necessary precaution on the part of that gentleman.

"I want to see it!" said Miss Butterworth, without the slightest
indication of the object of her curiosity.

Mrs. Snow rose without hesitation, and, going to a trunk In her bedroom,
brought out her precious certificate of stock, and placed it in the
hands of the tailoress.

It certainly was a certificate of stock, to the amount of five shares,
in the Continent