elevator men--and I have organized an industry with a capitalization small enough to make it possible for them to afford to be honest for thirty years--while our patents and contracts last, anyway." He put an elbow in the hollow of his hand, and the knuckles on his knee as he sat cross-legged, and drawled: "I wonder if it will work--" and repeated: "I wonder, I wonder. There's big money in it; she's a dead monopoly as she stands, and they have the key to the whole thing in the Commerce Department at Washington. They can keep her straight if they will." He paused for a while and went on: "But I'm tired of it. The great hulk of a thing has ground the soul out of me. So I ducked. Girls," he cried, as he turned toward them, "here's the way it is; I never did any real good with money. I'm going to see what a man can do to help his fellows with his bare hands. I want to help, not with money, but just to be some account on earth without money. And so yesterday I cleaned up the whole deal forever." He paused to let it sink in. Finally Jeanette asked, "And are we poor, father--poor?" "Well, my dear," he expanded, "your grandmother Barclay has always owned this house. An Omaha syndicate owns the mill. I own $5,000 in bank stock, and the boy who marries you for your money right now is going to get badly left." "You aren't fooling me, are you, John?" asked his mother as she rose from her chair. "No, mother," answered the son, "I've got rid of every dirty dollar I have on earth. The bank stock I bought with the money the Citizens' Committee subscribed to pay me for winning the county-seat lawsuit. As near as I can figure it out, that was about the last clean money I ever earned." The mother walked toward her son, and leaned over and kissed him again and again as she sobbed: "Oh, John, I am so happy to-night--so happy." In a moment he asked, "Well, Jeanette, what do you think of it?" "You know what I think, father--you know very well, don't you?" He sighed and nodded his head. Then he reached for the package on the floor and began cutting the strings. The bundle burst open and the stock of the National Provisions Company, issued only in fifty-thousand-dollar and one-hundred-thousand-dollar shares, littered the floor. "Now," cried Barclay, as he stood looking at the litter, "now, Molly, here's what I want you to do: Burn it up--burn it up," he cried. "It has burned the joy out of your life, Molly--burn it up! I have fought it all out to-day on the river--but I can't quite do that. Burn it up--for God's sake, Molly, burn it up." When the white ashes had risen up the chimney, he put on another log. "This is our last extravagance for some time, girls--but we'll celebrate to-night," he cried. "You haven't a little elderberry wine, have you, mother?" he asked. "Riley says that's the stuff for little boys with curvature of the spine--and I'll tell you it put several kinks in mine to watch that burn."