But it so happened that the damn scoundrel thought better of his intention and took fifty thousand for his first thought, and Neal Ward, being one of the component parts of an engaged couple, went ahead being sensible about it. All engaged couples, of course, resolve to be sensible about it. And for two years and a half--during nineteen one and two and part of nineteen three--Jeanette Barclay and Neal Ward had tried earnestly and succeeded admirably (they believed) in being exceedingly sensible about everything. Jeanette had gone through school and was spending the year in Europe with her mother, and she would be home in May; and in June--in June of 1904--why, the almanac stopped there; the world had no further interest, and no one on earth could imagine anything after that. For then they proposed not to be sensible any longer. In the early years of this century--about 1902, probably--John Barclay paid an accounting company twenty-five thousand dollars--more money than General Ward and Watts McHurdie and Martin Culpepper and Jacob Dolan had saved in all their long, industrious, frugal, and useful lives--to go over his business, install a system of audits and accounts, and tell him just how much money he was worth. After a score of men had been working for six months, the accounting company made its report. It was put in terms of dollars and cents, which are fleeting and illusive terms, and mean much in one country and little in another, signify great wealth at one time and mere affluence in another period. So the sum need not be set down here. But certain interesting details of the report may be set down to illuminate this narrative. For instance, it indicates that John Barclay was a man of some consequence, when one knows that he employed more men in that year than many a sovereign state of this Union employed in its state and county and city governments. It signifies something to learn that he controlled more land growing wheat than any of half a dozen European kings reign over. It means something to realize that in those years of his high tide John Barclay, by a few lines dictated to Neal Ward, could have put bread out of the reach of millions of his fellow-creatures. And these are evidences of material power--these men he hired, these lands he dominated, and this vast store of food that he kept. So it is fair to assume that if this is a material world, John Barclay's fortune was founded upon a rock. He and his National Provisions Company were real. They were able to make laws; they were able to create administrators of the law; and they were able to influence those who interpreted the law. Barclay and his power were substantial, palpable, and translatable into terms of money, of power, of vital force.