The old man’s words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn.  The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work.

“Miss Herne is the lady,—­my partner’s daughter.  Herne and Holmes they’ll call the firm.  He is here every day, counting future profit.”

Nothing could be read on the cold still face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,—­worse than Orleans slaves.  Margaret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd.  She forgot it in a moment.

Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view.  They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks.

“It’s a good thing for Holmes,” said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool.

“Cheap.  And long credit.  Just half the concern he takes.”

“There is a lady in the case?” suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of “niggahs” in a way to make a Georgian’s hair stand on end.

“A lady in the case?”

“Of course.  Only child of Herne’s. He comes down with the dust as dowry.  Good thing for Holmes.  ‘Stonishin’ how he’s made his way up.  If money’s what he wants in this world, he’s making a long stride now to ’t.”

The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that—­

“Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably!  Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town.”

“Do you think money is what he wants?” said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel,—­a clergyman, whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference.

The wool-buyer hesitated with a puzzled look.

“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 the clergyman, half to himself.

“Great fault of American society, especially in 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.