"'Hauling's got nothing to do with it,' said he; 'gravel is only ten cents a load anywhere, and if I choose I could put my factory right in the middle of a gravel pit. Timothy Barker has nothing to complain of.
"'But he knows you are making a lot of money,' said I, 'and it will be a hard job to talk him over. Mr. Spotkirk, it's worth every cent of fifty dollars.'
"'Now look here,' said he; 'if you get Barker to sign a paper that will suit me, I'll give you fifty dollars. I'd rather do that than have him bring a suit. If the matter comes up in the courts those rascally lawyers will be trying to find out what I put into my Boilene, and that sort of thing would be sure to hurt my business. It won't be so hard to get a hold on Barker if you go to work the right way. You can just let him understand that you know all about that robbery at Bonsall's clothing-store, where he kept the stolen goods in his barn, covered up with hay, for nearly a week. It would be a good thing for Timothy Barker to understand that somebody else beside me knows about that business, and if you bring it in right, it will fetch him around, sure.'
"I kept quiet for a minute or two, and then I said:—
"'Mr. Spotkirk, this is an important business. I can't touch it under a hundred dollars.' He looked hard at me, and then he said:—
"'Do it right, and a hundred dollars is yours.'
"After that I went to see Timothy Barker, and had a talk with him. Timothy was boiling over, and considered himself the worst-cheated man in the world. He had only lately found out how Spotkirk made his Boilene, and what a big sale he had for it, and he was determined to have more of the profits.
"'Just look at it!' he shouted; 'when Spotkirk has washed out my gravel it's worth more than it was before, and he sells it for twenty-five cents a load to put on gentlemen's places. Even out of that he makes a hundred and fifty per cent. profit.'
"I talked a good deal more with Timothy Barker, and found out a good many things about Spotkirk's dealings with him, and then in an off-hand manner I mentioned the matter of the stolen goods in his barn, just as if I had known all about it from the very first. At this Timothy stopped shouting, and became as meek as a mouse. He said nobody was as sorry as he was when he found the goods concealed in his barn had been stolen, and that if he had known it before the thieves took them away he should have informed the authorities; and then he went on to tell me how he got so poor and so hard up by giving his whole time to digging and hauling gravel for Spotkirk, and neglecting his little farm, that he did not know what was going to become of him and his family if he couldn't make better terms with Spotkirk for the future, and he asked me very earnestly to help him in this business if I could.
"Now, then, I set myself to work to consider this business. Here was a rich man oppressing a poor one, and here was this rich man offering me one hundred dollars—which in my eyes was a regular fortune—to help him get things so fixed that he could keep on oppressing the poor one. Now, then, here was a chance for me to show my principles. Here was a chance for me to show myself what you, madam, call rigid; and rigid I was. I just set that dazzling one hundred dollars aside, much as I wanted it. Much as I actually needed it, I wouldn't look at it, or think of it. I just said to myself, 'If you can do any good in this matter, do it for the poor man;' and I did do it for Timothy Barker with his poor wife and seven children, only two of them old enough to help him in the gravel pit. I went to Spotkirk and I talked to him, and I let him see that if Timothy Barker showed up the Boilene business, as he threatened to do, it would be a bad day for the Spotkirk family. He tried hard to talk me over to his side, but I was rigid, madam, I was rigid, and the business ended in my getting seven per cent. of the profits of Boilene for that poor man, Timothy Barker, and his large family; and their domestic prosperity is entirely due—I say it without hesitation—to my efforts on their behalf, and to my rigidity in standing up for the poor against the rich."