seeking notoriety, and his standing in the financial world was so old and
solid that it would have to listen to him. I remember-how emphatically
father said: 'I tell you, John, _even the discussion_ of such a
proposition as that scoundrel Reinhart makes is degrading to an American's
honour.' He said it didn't make the least difference if Reinhart counted
his millions by the score, and was director in thirty or forty great
institutions, and gave a fortune every year for charity and to the
church--that he was a blackleg just the same. And so is any man, he said,
who dares to say he will take the stock of a transportation company, which
represents a certain amount of money invested, and double or multiply it
by five and ten, simply because he can compel the people to pay exorbitant
fares and freight-rates and so get profits on this fraudulently increased
capital.

"It was the decision arrived at by father and the Wilsons at this meeting,
a decision to refuse in any circumstances to allow our Southern people to
be bled by the Wall Street 'System,' that started Reinhart and his
dollar-fiends on the war-path. You can see from what I tell you of my
father the terrible condition he is in now. At night, when I get to
thinking of him, hoping against hope, with no one to help him, no one with
whom he can talk over his affairs, when I think of his nobleness in
devoting his time to mother and by sheer will-power concealing from her
his awful suffering, it nearly drives me mad."

"Miss Sands, why will you not let me lend you the money necessary to tide
your father over for a while?" I asked.

"You are so good, Mr. Randolph, but you don't quite understand my father
in spite of what I have said. He would not relieve his suffering at the
expense of another, not if it were a hundred times more acute. You cannot