"No," he said, slowly; "Stephen Holmes is not miserly. I've
knowed him since a boy. To buy place, power, perhaps, eh? Yet
not that, neither," he added, hastily. "We think a sight of him
out our way, (self-made, you see,) and would have had him the
best office in the State before this, only he was so cursedly
indifferent."
"Indifferent, yes. No man cares much for stepping-stones in
themselves," said Vandyke, half to himself.
"Great fault of American society, especially in the West," said
the young aristocrat. "Stepping-stones lie low, as my reverend
friend suggests; impudence ascends; merit and refinement scorn
such dirty paths,"--with a mournful remembrance of the last dime
in his waistcoat-pocket.
"But do you," exclaimed the farmer, with sudden solemnity, "do
you understand this scheme of Knowles's? Every dollar he owns is
in this mill, and every dollar of it is going into some castle in
the air that no sane man can comprehend."
"Mad as a March hare," contemptuously muttered the doctor.
His reverend friend gave him a look,--after which he was silent.
"I wish to the Lord some one would persuade him out of it,"
persisted the wool-man, earnestly looking at the attentive face
of his listener. "We can't spare old Knowles's brain or heart
while he ruins himself. It's something of a Communist
fraternity: I don't know the name, but I know the thing."
Very hard common-sense shone out of his eyes just then at the
clergyman, whom he suspected of being one of Knowles's abettors.
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