"There's been fortunes lost in Wall Street," said the father. "How can
we tell?"

"We've got a chance to get in on the inside," said Adam. "Such chances
don't happen twice in a lifetime."

"Just read this here circular!" added Dan. "If we let a chance like
this go we'll deserve to break our backs hoeing corn the rest of our
days."

That was the argument. Old Ephraim had never thought of a broken back
in connection with the hoeing of corn. There were four acres in the
field, and every spring he had plowed and harrowed it and planted it
and replanted what the crows had pulled up; and all summer long he had
hoed and tended it, and in the fall he had cut it, stalk by stalk, and
stacked it; and then through October, sitting on the bare bleak
hillside, he had husked it, ear by ear, and gathered it in baskets--if
the season was good, perhaps a hundred dollars' worth of grain. That
was the way one worked to create a hundred dollars' worth of Value;
and Manning had paid as much for the fancy-mounted shotgun which stood
in the corner of his room! And here was the great fourteen-million-
dollar Glass Bottle Trust, with properties said to be worth twenty-
five million, and the control of one of the great industries of the
country--and stock which might easily go to a hundred and fifty in a
single week!

"Boys," said the old man, sadly, "it won't be me that will spend this
money. And I don't want to stand in your way. If you're bent on doing
it--"