"He took each man separately, the others watching and listening. First he'd play the part of book agent with his pupil as a reluctant customer. Then he'd reverse, and the pupil as agent would try to sell him the book, he pretending to be an ignorant, obstinate, ill-natured, close-fisted farmer or farmer's wife. It was a liberal education in the art of persuasion. If his pupils had his brains and his personality, Peaks of Progress would be on the center-table in half the farm parlors of Wisconsin and Minnesota by September." "IF they had his personality, and IF they had his brains," said Olivia. "Well, as it is, he'll make the dumbest ass in the lot bray to some purpose." In September, when Scarborough closed his headquarters at Milwaukee and set out for Indianapolis, he found that the average earnings of his agents were two hundred and seventy-five dollars, and that he himself had made forty-three hundred. Mills came and offered him a place in the publishing house at ten thousand a year and a commission. He instantly rejected it. He had already arranged to spend a year with one of the best law firms in Indianapolis before opening an office in Saint X, the largest town in the congressional district in which his farm lay. "But there's no hurry about deciding," said Mills. "Remember we'll make you rich in a few years." "My road happens not to lie in that direction," replied Scarborough, carelessly. "I've no desire to be rich. It's too easy, if one will consent to give money-making his exclusive attention." Mills looked amused--had he not known Scarborough's ability, he would have felt derisive. "Money's power," said he. "And there are only two ambitions for a wide-awake man--money and power." "Money can't buy the kind of power I'd care for," answered Scarborough. "If I were to seek power, it'd be the power that comes through ability to persuade." "Money talks," said Mills, laughing. "Money bellows," retorted Scarborough, "and bribes and browbeats, bully and coward that it is. But it never persuades." "I'll admit it's a coward." "And I hope I can always frighten enough of it into my service to satisfy my needs. But I'm not spending my life in its service--no, thank you!" XII. AFTER EIGHT YEARS. While Scarborough was serving his clerkship at Indianapolis, Dumont was engaging in ever larger and more daring speculations with New York as his base. Thus it came about that when Scarborough established himself at Saint X, Dumont and Pauline were living in New York, in a big house in East Sixty-first Street.