been worth only--a sum expressed in six figures, even when he put his
securities at their full value. Now it could only be written in seven
figures, "on the most conservative estimate."

Yes, he had reached the top. He could walk up the street now and look
any man in the face, or turn his back on him, just as he chose. The
thought pleased him.

Years ago, a friend--an old friend of his youth, Harry Trelane, had
asked him to come down to the country to visit him and meet his children
and see the peach trees bloom. He had pleaded business, and his friend
had asked him gravely why he kept on working so hard when he was already
so well off. He wanted to be rich, he had replied.

"But you are already rich--you must be worth half a million? and you are
a single man, with no children to leave it to."

"Yes, but I mean to be worth double that."

"Why?"

"Oh!--so that I can tell any man I choose to go to the d---l," he had
said half jestingly, being rather put to it by his friend's earnestness.
His friend had laughed too, he remembered, but not heartily.

"Well, that is not much of a satisfaction after all," he had said; "the
real satisfaction is in helping him the other way;"--and this
Livingstone remembered he had said very earnestly.

Livingstone now had reached this point of his aspiration--he could tell