ly--a sum expressed in six figures, even when he put his
securities at their full value. Now it could only be written in seven
figures, "on the most conservative estimate."

Yes, he had reached the top. He could walk up the street now and look
any man in the face, or turn his back on him, just as he chose. The
thought pleased him.

Years ago, a friend--an old friend of his youth, Harry Trelane, had
asked him to come down to the country to visit him and meet his children
and see the peach trees bloom. He had pleaded business, and his friend
had asked him gravely why he kept on working so hard when he was already
so well off. He wanted to be rich, he had replied.

"But you are already rich--you must be worth half a million? and you are
a single man, with no children to leave it to."

"Yes, but I mean to be worth double that."

"Why?"

"Oh!--so that I can tell any man I choose to go to the d---l," he had
said half jestingly, being rather put to it by his friend's earnestness.
His friend had laughed too, he remembered, but not heartily.

"Well, that is not much of a satisfaction after all," he had said; "the
real satisfaction is in helping him the other way;"--and this
Livingstone remembered he had said very earnestly.

Livingstone now had reached this point of his aspiration--he could tell
any man he chose "to go to the devil."

His content over this reflection was shadowed only by a momentary
recollection that Henry Trelane was since dead. He regretted that his
friend could not know of his success.

Another friend suddenly floated into his memory. Catherine Trelane was
his college-mate's sister. Once she had been all the world to
Livingstone, and he had found out afterwards that she had cared for him
too, and would have married him had he spoken at one time. But he had
not known this at first, and when he began to grow he could not bring
himself to it. He could not afford to burden himself with a family that
might interfere with his success. Then later, when he had succeeded and
was well off and had asked Catherine Trelane to be his wife, she had
declined. She said Livingstone had not offered her himself, but his
fortune. It had stung Livingstone deeply, and he had awakened, but too
late, to find for a while that he had really loved her. She was well off
too, having been left a comfortable sum by a relative.

However, Livingstone was glad now, as he reflected on it, that it had
turned out so. Catherine Trelan