ice to the
world. Did he realize it himself? He was twenty-four, and had a good
position as things went; and Dr. Maverick had heard the women of the
house were prudent and thrifty, and had a nice home. Was Darcy bounded
in by conservatism, or afraid of losing? or was he honest when he said
he did not know just what to do? Yet he did not look like the kind of
man to go plodding all his days.

"Darcy, you puzzle me!" he began abruptly. "With that great body of
yours, those strong arms and hands that look as if they could wrest
Nature's secrets from her mighty soul, with that brow, and the resolute
mouth, it seems as if you ought to be in better business than making
cloth: pardon me. You don't use up half your energy. You ought to be
planning a ship-canal across Darien, or tunnelling mountains. You're the
square man; and how upon earth did you ever get fitted so smoothly to a
round hole?"

Jack laughed, and told his story very simply. To him there was neither
romance nor heroism in it, just a plain every-day sort of compulsion.
The tunnelling would have been much more to his mind.

"Go on with the problem," said Dr. Maverick abruptly. "In the next five
years I think we will all have use for our wits. We are going to see
another change in matters, that will require more wisdom than is needed
in mere money-making. See here, I'm interested in the thing. Let us go
out, and hear what the men say about it."

Maverick rose, and put on his great-coat, and lighted another cigar.
Then the two started together.

Maverick had been in the town just six months. He had studied medicine
in Philadelphia and Paris, taken a three-years ramble over Europe, when
a college friend begged him to come to Yerbury, and step into a vacant
place. And he had what he fancied an excellent reason for it.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE men were, for the most part, in sullen earnest. From their narrower
outlook they could not see that capital was on the eve of a great
revulsion; that credit had been stretched to its utmost. They had their
own pet plans, their own indolences and careless habits; and, as was
natural, their own desires were the sweetest to them.

There were labor-meetings and harangues. There was a good deal of talk
about the rights of labor and the tyranny of capital; of the rich mill
and factory owners living in palaces, and the men in hovels; of what
England had done, and of what we surely were coming to,--the rich
growing richer, an