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sold at twenty-eight
cents, and the hogs it fattened in proportion. But his hundred and sixty
acres were clear from debt, four thousand dollars were on deposit
drawing three per cent in The First State Bank--the old Bank of Fallon,
now incorporated with Robinson as its president. In the pasture,
fourteen sows with their seventy-five spring pigs rooted beside the

sleek herd of steers fattening for market; the granary bulged with corn;
two hundred bushels of seed wheat were ready for sowing; his
machinery was in excellent condition; his four Percheron mares
brought him, each, a fine mule colt once a year; and the well never
went dry, even in August. Martin was--if one discounted the harshness
of the life, the dirt, the endless duties and the ever-pressing chores--a
Kansas plutocrat.
One fiery July day, David Robinson drew up before Martin's shack.
The little old box-house was still unpainted without and unpapered
within. Two chairs, a home-made table with a Kansas City Star as a
cloth, a sheetless bed, a rough cupboard, a stove and floors carpeted
with accumulations of untidiness completed the furnishings.
"Chris-to-pher Columbus!" exploded Robinson, "why don't you fix
yourself up a bit, Martin? The Lord knows you're going to be able to
afford it. What you need is a wife--someone to look after you." And as
Martin, observing him calmly, made no response, he added, "I suppose
you know what I want. You've been watching for this day, eh, Martin?
All Fallon County's sitting on its haunches--waiting."
"Oh, I haven't been worrying. A fellow situated like me, with a hundred
and sixty right in the way of a coal company, can afford to be
independent."
"You understand our procedure, Martin," Robinson continued. "We are
frank and aboveboard. We set the price, and if you can't see your way
clear to take it there are no hard feelings. We simply call it off--for
good."
Wade knew how true this was. When the mining first began, several
rebels toward the East had tried profitlessly to buck this irrefragable
game and had found they had battered their unyielding heads against an
equally unyielding stone wall. These men had demanded more and
Robinson's company, true to its threat, had urbanely gone around their
farms, travelled on and left them behind, their coal untouched and
certain to so remain. Such inelastic lessons, given time to soak in, were
sobering.
"Now," said Robinson, in his amiable matter-of-fact manner, "as I
happen to know the history of this quarter, backwards and forwards, we
can do up this deal in short order. You sign this contract, which is
exactly like all the others we use, and I'll hand over your check. We get

the bottom; you keep the top; I give you the sixteen thousand, and the
thing is done."
"Well, Martin," he added, genially, as Wade signed his name, "it's a
long day since you came in with your father to make that first loan to
buy seed corn. Wouldn't he have opened his eyes if any one had
prophesied this? It's a pity your mother couldn't have lived to enjoy
your good fortune. A fine, plucky woman, your mother. They don't
make many like her."
Long after Robinson's buggy was out of sight, Martin stood in his
doorway and stared at the five handsome figures, spelled out the even
more convincing words and admired the excellent reproduction of The
First State Bank.
"This is a whole lot of money," his thoughts ran. "I'm rich. All this land
still mine--practically as much mine as ever--all this stock and twenty
thousand dollars in money--in cash. It's a fact. I, Martin Wade, am
rich."
He remembered how he had exulted, how jubilant, even intoxicated, he
had felt when he had received the ten dollars for the first load of wheat
he had hauled to Fort Scott. Now, with a check for sixteen
thousand--SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!--in his hand, he stood
dumbly, curiously unmoved.
Slowly, the first bitter months on this land, little Benny's death from
lack of nourishment, his father's desperate efforts to establish his family,
the years of his mother's slow crucifixion, his own long struggle --all
floated before him in a fog of reverie. Years of deprivation, of bending
toil and then, suddenly, this had come--this miracle symbolized by this
piece of paper. Martin moistened his lips. Mentally, he realized all the
dramatic significance of what had happened, but it gave him none of
the elation he had expected.
This bewildered and angered him. Sixteen thousand dollars and with it
no thrill. What was lacking? As he pondered, puzzled and disappointed,
it came to him that he needed something by which to measure his
wealth, someone whose appreciation of it would make it real to him,
give him a genuine sense of its possession. What if