"And take it from the bank you've just got done robbing of everything but the wall-paper?" Hendricks retorted. "No," cried Barclay, in a loud voice. "Come off your high horse and take the profits we'll make on our wheat, pay off old Brownwell and marry her." "And let the bank bust and the farmers slide?" asked Hendricks, "and buy back Molly with stolen money? Is that your idea?" "Well," Barclay snapped, "you have your choice, so if you think more of the bank and your old hayseeds than you do of Molly, don't come blubbering around me about selling her." "John," sighed Hendricks, after a long wrestle--a final contest with his demon, "I've gone all over that. And I have decided that if I've got to swindle seventy-five or a hundred farmers--most of them old soldiers on their homesteads--out of their little all, and cheat five hundred depositors out of their money to get Molly, she and I wouldn't be very happy when we thought of the price, and we'd always think of the price." His demon was limp in the background of his soul as he added: "Here are some papers I brought over. Let's get back to the settlement--fix them up and bring them over to the bank this morning, will you?" And laying a package carefully on the table, Hendricks turned and went quickly out of the room. After Hendricks left the office that May morning, Barclay sat whistling the air of the song of the "Evening Star," looking blankly at a picture of Wagner hanging beside a picture of Jay Gould. The tune seemed to restore his soul. When he had been whistling softly for five minutes or so, the idea flashed across his mind that flour was the one thing used in America more than any other food product and that if a man had his money invested in the manufacture and sale of flour, he would have an investment that would weather any panic. The idea overcame him, and he shut his eyes and his ears and gripped his chair and whistled and saw visions. Molly Culpepper came into the room, and paused a moment on the threshold as one afraid to interrupt a sleeper. She saw the dapper little man kicking the chair rounds with his dangling heels, his flushed face reflecting a brain full of blood, his eyes shut, his head thrown far back, so that his Adam's apple stuck up irrelevantly, and she knew only by the persistence of the soft low whistle that he was awake, clutching at some day-dream. When she cleared her throat, he was startled and stared at her foolishly for a moment, with the vision still upon him. His wits came to him, and he rose to greet her. "Well--well--why--hello, Molly--I was just figuring on a matter," he said as he put her in a chair, and then he added, "Well--I wasn't expecting you." Even before she could speak his lips were puckering to pick up the tune he had dropped. She answered, "No, John, I wanted to see you--so I just came up." "Oh, that's all right, Molly--what is it?" he returned.