see
home folks suffer," and he presently had them all well out of it, Parson
Tombs among them.

"Thank God!" rumbled March. "And then what?"

Then Ravenel, as trustee for the three counties--Uncle Jimmie Rankin was
the other, but shrewdly let Jeff-Jack speak and act for him--privately
combined with the Construction Company, which, Proudfit pathetically
reminded John, was a loser by the Land Company in the discounts at which
it had sold that Company's second-mortgage bonds. They went on a still
hunt after the first-mortgage bonds, "bought," said Proudfit, "the whole
bilin' faw a song," foreclosed the mortgage, and at the sale of the Land
Company's assets were the only bidders, except Senator Halliday and
Captain Shotwell, whom they easily outbid.

"Right smart of us suspicioned those two gentlemen were bidding faw you,
John."

March, who was staring aside in fierce abstraction, started. "I reckon
not," he said, and stared in the other direction. "So, then, Widewood
and all its costly improvements belong half to the three counties and
half to Garnet's construc----"

"John"--the Colonel lifted his pallid hand with an air of amiable
greatness--"_my_ construc', seel view play! Not Garnet's.
_I_--Proudfit--am still the invisible head of that comp'ny. Garnet
acknowledges it privately to me. He and I have what you may call a
per-perfect und-und-unde'standing!"

"Perfect und'--O me!" interrupted March, with a broken laugh and a
frown. Proudfit liked his air and tried to reproduce it, but got his
features tangled, rubbed his mouth, and closed his eyes. March stared
into vacancy again.

The tippler interposed with moist emotion. "John, we're landless! My
plantation b'longs t' my wife. I can sympathize with you, John. As old
song says, 'we're landless! landless!' _We_ are landless, John. But you
have price--priceless 'dvant'ge over me in one thing, vice-president;
you've still got yo' motheh!"

"O!" groaned March, blazing up and starting away; but Proudfit clung.

"My dea' boy! let me tell you, that tendeh little motheh's been a
perfect hero! When I told her--in--in t-tears--how sorry I--and
Garnet--and all of us--was,--'O Curl Prou'fit,' says she--with that
ca'm, sweet, dizda-ainful smile of hers, you know--'it's no supprise to
me; it's what I've expected from the beginning.'"

LXXVI.

AGAINST OVERWHELMING NUMBERS

During the boom Tom Hersey's Swanee Hotel--repaired, enlarged,
repainted--had become Hotel S