sleeping out a week at a time. Frederick remembered the final conference
in the kitchen--Tom, and he, and Eliza Travers, who still cooked and
baked and washed dishes on an estate that carried a hundred and eighty
thousand dollars in mortgages.


"Don't divide," Eliza Travers had pleaded, resting her soap-flecked,
parboiled arms. "Isaac was right. It will be worth millions. The country
is opening up. We must all pull together."

"I don't want the estate," Tom cried. "Let Frederick have it. What I
want...."

He never completed the sentence, but all the vision of the world burned
in his eyes.

"I can't wait," he went on. "You can have the millions when they come.
In the meantime let me have ten thousand. I'll sign off quitclaim to
everything. And give me the old schooner, and some day I'll be back with
a pot of money to help you out."

Frederick could see himself, in that far past day, throwing up his arms
in horror and crying:

"Ten thousand!--when I'm strained to the breaking point to raise this
quarter's interest!"

"There's the block of land next to the court house," Tom had urged. "I
know the bank has a standing offer for ten thousand."