for asking, "What is truth?" and then turning away before he had the
answer.

Walking home from the meeting through Mary Barclay Park, Barclay's
mind wandered back to the days when he won his first important
lawsuit--the suit brought by Minneola to prevent the collection of
taxes under the midnight levy to build the court-house. It was that
lawsuit which brought him to the attention of the legal department of
the Fifth Parallel Railroad Company, and his employment by that
company to defeat the bonds of its narrow-gauged competitor, that was
seeking entrance into Garrison County, was the beginning of his
career. And in that fight to defeat the narrow-gauged railroad, the
people of Garrison County learned something of Barclay as well. He and
Bemis went over the county together,--the little fox and the old
coyote, the people called them,--and where men were for sale, Bemis
bought them, and where they were timid, John threatened them, and
where they were neither, both John and Bemis fought with a ferocity
that made men hate but respect the pair. And so though the Fifth
Parallel Railroad never came to the Ridge, its successor, the Corn
Belt Road, did come, and in '74 John spoke in every schoolhouse in the
county, urging the people to vote the bonds for the Corn Belt Road,
and his employment as local attorney for the company marked his first
step into the field of state politics. For it gave him a railroad
pass, and brought him into relations with the men who manipulated
state affairs; also it made him a silent partner of Lige Bemis in
Garrison County politics.

But even when he was county commissioner, less than two dozen years
old, he was a force in Sycamore Ridge, and there were days when he had
four or five thousand dollars to his credit in General Hendricks'