paper, but I won't. I cannot afford to. In their
mire they lie between me and my family's future misery. I don't know
what your ultimate aim is in this life, but I know that you are a
Christian. I don't know what you have done, but it is what a man does
now that makes him a Christian. Well, solemn under the weight of a
renewed obligation, I will return to my own fireside. Before touching
this money again, let me shake your hand."

CHAPTER XXIII.

NOT THE OLD SUMMER.

At no time during the lagging winter did the Professor mention his
renewed obligation, but one night in April he came over with a tune in
his voice, a laugh in his eye, and paid the debt. The bank notes were
not ragged and soiled as if they had been snatched in the dust of a
fierce scuffle; they were new, and as bright as if they had come as a
gracious legacy. And, indeed, they had. A dead "lot," lying in the
neighborhood of a punctured "boom" in Kansas, fluttered with the
returning life of speculative resurrection. A new railway needed the
site for a station. An agent found the Professor, reluctantly offered
him half as much as the property was worth, and he gladly accepted it.
For a day his household was happy in the possession of a set of new
chairs, a rug and a center table, but soon fell to brooding over the
lonesome absence of dining-room linen and new paper on the walls. The
Professor had hoped that he might be able to buy a bookcase for his room
upstairs, but realizing that it was impossible to fill up the rat hole
of want in the floor below, did not dare to speak of his longing. But he
was sharper than his family had suspected. With a wink he told Milford
that he had, in the stealthy hour of midnight, put by enough to enable
him to do a little speculating. Milford had set him an example of
thrift. There was money to be made in buying and selling and he was
going to buy and sell. All that he had needed was an example. A mind
that could weigh a heavy problem could turn a trifle to account. The
ancient philosophers, counseling contentment of the mind, had money
loaned out at interest. It was no wonder that they could be contented.
And, after all, they held the right idea of life, money first and
philosophy afterward. He would go back to first principles; would deal
in cattle, the origin of money. The bicycle might hurt the horse, but it
could not hurt the steer. There was no invention to take the place of a
beefsteak. Some men might argue t