"What! YOU here again?" angrily cried the old man.
"Ay, old man," proudly exclaimed William Barker. "I am here, your daughter's equal and yours?"
The old man's lips curled with scorn. A derisive smile lit up his cold features; when, casting violently upon the marble center table an enormous roll of greenbacks, William Barker cried—
"See! Look on this wealth. And I've tenfold more! Listen, old man! You spurned me from your door. But I did not despair. I secured a contract for furnishing the Army of the — with beef—"
"Yes, yes!" eagerly exclaimed the old man.
"—and I bought up all the disabled cavalry horses I could find—"
"I see! I see!" cried the old man. "And good beef they make, too."
"They do! they do! and the profits are immense."
"I should say so!"
"And now, sir, I claim your daughter's fair hand!"