where Mrs. Ward was working. "It isn't that he is conceited--the boy isn't that at all. He just seems to have too little faith in God and too much in the ability of John Barclay. He thinks he can beat the game--can take out more happiness for himself than he puts in for others." The wife looked up and put back her sunbonnet as she said, "Yes, I believe his mother thinks something of the kind." One of the things that surprised John when he came home from the university was the prominence of Lige Bemis in the town. When John left Sycamore Ridge to go to school, Bemis was a drunken sign-painter married to a woman who a few years before had been the scandal of half a dozen communities. And now though Mrs. Bemis was still queen only of the miserable unpainted Bemis domicile in the sunflowers at the edge of town, Lige Bemis politically was a potentate of some power. General Hendricks consulted Bemis about politics. Often he was found in the back room of the bank, and Colonel Culpepper, although he was an unterrified Democrat, in his campaign speeches referred to Bemis as "a diamond in the rough." John was sitting on a roll of leather one day in Watts McHurdie's shop talking of old times when Watts recalled the battle of Sycamore Ridge, and the time when Bemis came to town with the Red Legs and frightened Mrs. Barclay. "Yes--and now look at him," exclaimed John, "dressed up like a gambler, and referred to in the _Banner_ as 'Hon. E. W. Bemis'! How did he do it?" McHurdie sewed two or three long stitches in silence. He leaned over from his bench to throw his tobacco quid in the sawdust box under the rusty stove, then the little man scraped his fuzzy jaw reflectively with his blackened hand as if about to speak, but he thought better of it and waxed his thread. He showed his yellow teeth in a smile, and motioned John to come closer. Then he put his head forward, and whispered confidentially:-- "What'd you ruther do or go a-fishing?" "But why?" persisted the young man. "Widder who?" returned Watts, grinning and putting his hand to his ear. When John repeated his question the third time, McHurdie said:-- "I know a way you can get rich mighty quick, sonny." And when the boy refused to "bite," Watts went on: "If any one asks you what Watts McHurdie thinks about politics so long as he is in the harness business, you just take the fellow upstairs, and pull down the curtain, and lock the door, and tell him you don't know, and not to tell a living soul."