knows, and the bar knows it was forged; it belonged to his dead
brother back in Hornellsville, New York. But Hendricks downstairs said
we needed Lige in the county-seat case, so he is a member of the bar,
taking one hundred per cent for collecting accounts for Eastern
people, and giving the country a black eye. A man told me he was on
over fifty notes for people at the bank; he signs with every one, and
Hendricks never bothers him. He managed to get into all the lodges,
right after the war when they were reorganized, and he sits up with
the sick, and is pall-bearer--regular professional pall-bearer, and I
don't doubt gets a commission for selling coffins from Livingston."
Ward rose from the table his full six feet and put his hands in his
pocket and stretched his legs as he added, "And when you think how
many Bemises in the first, second, or third degree there are in this
government, you wonder if the Democrats weren't right when they
declared the war was a failure."

The general spoke as he did to John partly in anger and partly because
he thought the youth needed the lesson he was trying to implant. "You
know, Martin," explained the general, a few days later, to Colonel
Culpepper, "John has come home a Barclay--not a Barclay of his
father's stripe. He has taken back, as they say. It's old
Abijah--with the mouth and jaw of a wolf. I caught him palavering
with a juror the other day while we had a case trying."

The colonel rested his hands on his knees a moment in meditation and
smiled as he replied: "Still, there's his mother, General. Don't ever
forget that the boy's mother is Mary Barclay; she has bred most of the
wolf out of him. And in the end her blood will tell."

And now observe John Barclay laying the footing stones of his fortune.