“How you can bring yourself to criticize a simple soul like that is more than I can understand.” “All the same,” says Joe, “he's got God and mammon confused in his mind. Savin's and salvation are pretty much one and the same to him. I don't want to be told how to make twenty-five dollars to start on,—-I know that much,—but I'd be grateful if the old man had told me how to make a million or two.” “Well, he deserves a lot of credit,” I says. “What for?” asks Joe. “For bein' successful and sacrificin' himself to make money,” I says, heated. “Do you respect a hog for taking on fat?” says Joe. “No, I don't,” I says. “That's a hog's nature, to take on fat.” “Well, it's his nature to make money,” says Joe. “He ain't never gone outside of his natural instincts. But where you and me has got various instincts, like bein' careless in our spendin' and lazy, he's never been able to let go a dollar once he's got his hands on it. I bet you the Indian yells with pain when his fingers touch a penny.” Well, Pendagrast stayed ten days in the valley, and then he went away, promisin' to come back the first chance he got. When he left it was just like the sun had gone down for good. We'd been thinkin' in the hundred millions, dreamin' of motor-cars and steam-yachts, and we was suddenly dumped back on the Miller brothers, our richest family, who mebby made two thousand dollars a year sellin' groceries and calicoes, and speculatin' in hoop-poles and shingles. The night after the big yellow tourin'-car had gone hootin' good-by down the valley road, Silas Quinby come to see me. I seen he had something on his mind. Finally he got me out to the woodpile. When a man had something very private to say to his neighbor, he always got him out to the wood-pile. It was an old valley custom. “You're missin' him, Silas?” I says, meanin' Pendagrast. “Yes,” says Silas, sighin', “a wonderful man, simple and genuine, and all his goodness on the surface, where it counts,” he says. “And yet I don't know as it's so much on the surface as underneath,” he adds. “It's all around,” I says. “And yet he's a terribly misjudged man. Have you read them awful libelous attacks on his character in the magazines and newspapers? It makes my heart bleed for him,” says Silas, moved. Then Silas asked me about some wild land I owned. He wanted to know if I'd ever thought of sellin' it. I'd been tryin' to sell it for thirty years, but couldn't. There was six hundred acres all told, mostly broke rock and scrub-timber. I'd been offerin' it for two-fifty an acre. “Yes,” I says. “I'll sell fast enough if I get the chance.” “Well, I've had inquiries,” says Silas. You see, he was a real-estate agent, though he'd never sold any land. But it's easy to be a real-estate agent. You can start with a sign. And Silas had started twenty years before.