Nevertheless, the majority of the hearers only carried home with them the conviction that the Claybanks brick-yard must become one of the great things of the world--otherwise, why did the minister preach about it? XXVII--CONCLUSION "CALEB," said Philip one evening, as the partners and their wives sat in the parlor of the Somerton home and enjoyed the leisure hour that came between store-closing and bed-time, "so much important business has been crowded into the past few months that some smaller ventures have almost escaped my mind. What ever came of that car-load of walnut stumps that I sent East last summer?" "I couldn't have told you much about it if you'd asked me a day earlier," Caleb replied. "I turned it over to a man in the fine-woods business--a Grand Army comrade that I met at my old chum Jim's post. He said at the time that the stumps would undoubtedly pay expenses of diggin' and shipment, an' maybe a lot more, but 'twould depend entirely on the stumps themselves. He'd have each of 'em sawed lengthwise an' a surface section dressed, to show the markings of the grain o' the wood. It seems that they were so water-soaked that 'twas months after sawin' before the wood of any of 'em was dry enough to dress, but he got at some of 'em a few weeks ago, an' though most of 'em wa'n't above the ordinary, there were two or three that made the furniture an' decoration men bid against each other at a lively rate. One of 'em panned out over sixty dollars." "What? One walnut stump? Sixty dollars?" "Oh, that's nothing. To work me up, he told me of one, picked up in the country a few years ago, that brought more than a thousand dollars to the buyer. The markings were so fine that it was sawn into thin veneers that were sold for more than their weight in silver. Still, to come to the point, your entire lot brought about two hundred and seventy dollars net, an' I've got the check in my pocket to prove it." "And the land from which they were taken cost me only two hundred dollars in goods! And there are still hundreds of stumps in it! And I felt so ashamed and babyish when I learned that I'd been tricked into buying cleared land, that I almost resolved to recall you by wire, so that I should be kept from being tricked again in some similar manner! I shall have to drive out to old Weefer's farm, tell him the story, and ask him if he has any more walnut clearings for sale."