He laughed as he said: "Mother, I have returned to you poor but honest. My total assets at this minute are seventy-five million dollars' worth of stock of the National Provisions Company, tied up in this bundle on the floor here, and five thousand dollars in the Exchange National Bank of Sycamore Ridge which I have held for thirty years. I sold my State Bank stock last Monday to Gabe Carnine. I have thirty-four dollars and seventy-three cents in my pocketbook, and that is all." The women were puzzled, and their faces showed it. So the little gray cat made short work of the mice. "Well, now, to be brief and plain," said Barclay, pulling himself forward in his chair and thrusting out an arm and hand, as if to grip the attention of his hearers, "I have always owned or directly controlled over half the N.P.C. stock--representing a big pile of money. I am trying to forget how much, and you don't care. But it was only part of my holdings--about half or such a matter, I should say. The rest were railroad bonds on roads necessary to the company, mortgages on mills and elevators whose stock was merged in the company, and all sorts of gilt-edged stuff, bank stock and insurance company stock--all needed to make N.P.C. a dominant factor in the commercial life of the country. You don't care about that, but it was all a sort of commercial blackmail on certain fellows and interests to keep them from fighting N.P.C." Barclay hitched himself forward to the edge of his chair, and still held out his grappling-hook of a hand to hold them as he smiled and went on: "Well, I've been kind of swapping horses here for six months or so--trading my gilt-edged bonds and stuff for cash and buying up N.P.C. stock. I got a lot of it quietly--an awful lot." He grinned. "I guess that was square enough. I paid the price for it--and a little better than the price--because I had to." He was silent a few moments, looking at the fire. He meditated pleasantly: "There was some good in it--a lot of good when you come to think of it--but a fearful lot of bad! Well--I've saved the good. I just reorganized the whole concern from top to bottom--the whole blame rebate hopper. We had some patents, and we had some contracts with mills, and we had some good ideas of organization. And I've kept the good and chucked the bad. I put N.P.C. out of business and have issued stock in the new company to our minority whose stock I couldn't buy and have squeezed the water out of the whole concern. And then I took what balance I had left--every cent of it, went over the books for thirty years, and made what restitution I could." He grinned as he added: "But I found it was nearly whittlety whet. A lot of fellows had been doing me up, while I had been doing others up. But I made what restitution I could and then I got out. I closed up the City office, and moved the whole concern to St. Paul, and turned it over to the real owners--the millers and