A man always likes to be regarded as an authority in financial matters, and the colonel stroked his goatee wisely before replying: "U-h-m-m, let me see--I don't exactly know. Bob and I were talking about it the other day--after I bought John's share in College Heights--last year, to be exact. Of course he's got the mill and it's all paid for--say a hundred thousand dollars--and that old wheat land he got back in the seventies--he's cleaned all of that up. I should say that and the mill were easily worth half a million, and they're both clear. That's all in sight." The colonel ruminated a moment and then continued: "About the rest--it's a guess. Some say a million, some say ten. All I know in point of fact, my dear, to get right down to bed-rock, is that Lycurgus says they are turning out two or three car-loads of the strips a year. I wouldn't believe Lycurgus on a stack of Bibles as high as his head, but little Thayer Ward, who works down there in the shipping department, told the general the same thing, and Bob says he knows John gets ten dollars apiece for them now, so that's a million dollars a year income he's got. He handles grain and flour way up in Minnesota, and back as far as Ohio, and west to California. But what he actually owns,--that is, whether he rents the mills or, to be exact, steals them,--I haven't any idea--not the slightest notion in the world, in point of fact--not the slightest notion." As they passed through Main Street it was deserted, save in the billiard halls, and as no one seemed inclined to talk, the colonel took up the subject of Barclay: "Say we call it five million--five million in round numbers; that's a good deal of money for a man to have and haggle a month over seventy-five dollars the way he did with me when he sold me his share of College Heights. But," added the colonel, "I suppose if I had that much I'd value it more." The women were thinking of other things, and the colonel addressed the night: "Man gets an appetite for money just as he does for liquor--just like the love for whiskey, I may say." He shook his sides as he meditated aloud: "But as for me--I guess I've got so I can take it or let it alone. Eh, ma?" "I didn't catch what you were saying, pa," answered his wife. "I was just thinking whether we had potatoes enough to make hash for breakfast; have we, Molly?" As the women were discussing the breakfast, two men came out of a cross street, and the colonel, who was slightly in advance of his women, hailed the men with, "Hello there, Bob--you and Jake out here carrying on your illicit friendship in the dark?"