furtive mouth, the bold, shrewd eyes, and then sees that forehead full of visions, one sees in it more than John Barclay of Sycamore Ridge, more than America, more than Europe. It is the menace of civilization--the danger to the race from the domination of sheer intellect without moral restraint. General Ward, who was on the committee that received the picture fifteen years after it was painted, stood looking at it the morning it was hung there on the turn of the stairs. As the light fell mercilessly upon it, the general, white-haired, white-necktied, clean-shaven, and lean-faced, gazed at the portrait for a long time, and then said to his son Neal who stood beside him, "And Samson wist not that the Lord had departed from him." It will pay one to stop a day in Sycamore Ridge to see that picture--though he does not know John Barclay, and only understands the era that made him, and gave him that refined, savage, cunning, grasping hand. Barclay stopped a week in Washington on his return from Europe the year that picture was painted, made a draft for fifty thousand dollars on the National Provisions Company to cover "legal expenses," and came straight home to Sycamore Ridge. He was tired of cities, he told Colonel Culpepper, who met Barclay at the post-office the morning he returned, with his arms full of newspapers. "I want to hear the old mill, Colonel," said Barclay, "to smell the grease down in the guts of her, and to get my hair full of flour again." When he had gorged himself for two days, he wired Bemis to come to the Ridge, and Barclay and Bemis sat on the dam one evening until late bedtime, considering many things. As they talked, Barclay found that a plan for the reorganization of the Provisions Company was growing in his mind, and he talked it out as it grew.