Marley was not surprised by the result of his visit to Selah Dudley. He made an effort to convince himself that there was truth in what Dudley had said to him, even if he could not remember exactly what it was that Dudley had said. He tried to put down the instinctive feeling of dislike he had for the old banker; he told himself that such a feeling was unworthy of him, if not unworthy of Dudley, and in thinking the matter over he tried to clear himself of all suspicion of envy or jealousy of Dudley's success. The whole town considered Dudley its leading man, and Marley tried so to consider him; and he tried to consider him in this light because he was a good man and not because he was a rich man, just as the town pretended to do. He wanted to talk about Dudley with some one, but he did not want to talk about him with Lavinia, because he felt a shame in his failure with Dudley that he feared Lavinia might share. He did talk with his father about him, but his father did not seem to be interested; he smiled his tolerant smile, but made no comment. And when Marley pressed him for an opinion of Dudley his father said: "They make broad their phylacteries." And that was all. However, Marley found Wade Powell willing to talk of Selah Dudley, as he was willing to talk of almost anything. Marley did not tell Powell that he had been to Dudley to ask for a position; he merely let it be understood that he had met the old man in the course of the day and talked with him casually. "By the way," he asked, as if the thought had just come to him, "how did Selah Dudley make his money?" "He didn't make it," Powell answered. "He didn't? Did he inherit it?" "No." "Then how did he get it?" "He gathered it." "Gathered it? I don't know what you mean." Powell laughed. "You don't? Well, there's a difference." "He wasn't in the army, was he?" "In the army! Great God!" Powell threw into his voice the contempt he could not find the word to express. "You think he'd risk his hide in the army? Well, I should say not! Though he would have been perfectly safe--" Powell said it as a parenthetical afterthought--"no bullet could ever have pierced his hide, and he had no blood to shed." Powell bit the end from his cigar and spat out the damp little pieces of tobacco viciously. "No, I'll tell you, Glenn," he said, "he stayed at home and got his start, as he calls it, by skinning the poor. Widows were his big game and he gathered a little pile that has been growing ever since. To-day he owns Gordon County." "He seems to be a prominent man in the church," ventured Marley. "He'll be a prominent man in hell," said Powell, angrily. And then he added thoughtfully: "My one regret in going there myself is that I'll have to see him every day."