They were now driving past Barney and Company’s--a barrack-like structure, towering story on story from a huge base bounded by four streets, where surged a seemingly insane confusion of men, women, children, horses, vans, automobiles, articulate in the demoniac voices of boys shrieking extras and drivers bawling oaths. And the sky blackened suddenly, and from the direction of the lake came a storm, cruelly cold, bitter as hate, seizing the struggling, swearing, shouting mass of men and animals, lashing it with whips of icy rain, and pelting it with bullets of hail. “That’s my little place,” said Barney, pride oozing through his offhand tone. “It’s tremendous,” was all Frothingham could say. The “Emporium” and its surroundings dazed him. He muttered under his breath, “And it’s Hell.” Barney told the story of creation as it read for him. He had been a drummer for a suspender house--eighteen hundred a year for touring the cities and towns of northern Indiana and Illinois; four thousand dollars put by after twelve years of toil; eyes ever alert for a chance to go into business on his own account. One of his towns was Terre Haute--he called it Terry Hut. In it was a dry-goods shop kept by a man named Meakim. Barney found that of all the retailers he visited, Meakim was by far the shrewdest, the most energetic, and, above all, that he had an amazing talent for “dressing” his show windows and show cases. He persuaded Meakim to sell out and adventure Chicago with him. They set up in a small way, and in an obscure corner. But both toiled; Barney was shrewd and almost sleepless, and Meakim “dressed” the windows and displayed the goods on and over the counters. They prospered, spread too rapidly for their capital, failed, gathered themselves together, prospered again. “I’ve built three stores in fourteen years,” said Barney. “This last one was finished only five years ago--the year Meakim died. And already it’s too small--we’re moving our wholesale department to another building.” Presently they were in Michigan Avenue and at Barney’s house. It was a mass of Indiana limestone which he--with the assistance of a builder, audaciously “branched out” as an architect--had fashioned into a fantastic combination of German mediæval fortress and Italian renaissance villa. “Here’s where I live,” said Barney as the carriage stopped before the huge doors studded with enormous bronze nails. “And don’t you dare back up Nelly when she jeers about it. She says she can’t look at it without laughing, or come into it without blushing. I suppose it _is_ no good, in the way of art. But it keeps out the rain, and that’s the main point in a house, ain’t it?” As he was getting out his keys the door was opened by a maid in a black dress, a white apron and cap. “Jessie,” said he, in a tone which suggested that she might be his daughter, “this is the Earl of Frothingham, and I want you to take good care of him, and of the young man who’s coming with his trunks.”