In five minutes he was working in the crowd, and by night had the required number of the depositors ready to agree to let their money lie a year on deposit, and that matter was closed.

He was a solemn-faced youth in those days, with a serious air about him, and something of that superabundance of dignity little men often think they must assume to hold their own.

The town knew him as a trim little man in a three-buttoned tail-coat, with rather extraordinary neckties, a well-brushed hat, and shiny shoes.

To the country people he was "limping Johnnie," and General Ward, watching Barclay hustle his way down Main Street Saturday afternoons, when the sidewalk and the streets were full of people, used to say, "Busier 'n a tin pedler." And he said to Mrs.Ward, "Lucy, if it's true that old Grandpa Barclay got his start carrying a pack, you can see him cropping out in John, bigger than a wolf." But the general had little time to devote to John, for he was state organizer of a movement that had for its object the abolition of middlemen in trade, and he was travelling most of the time.

The dust gathered on his law-books, and his Sunday suit grew frayed at the edges and shiny at the elbows, but his heart was in the cause, and his blue eyes burned with joy when he talked, and he was happy, and had to travel two days and nights when the fourth baby came, and then was too late to serve on the committee on reception, and had to be satisfied with a minor place on the committee on entertainment and amusements of which Mrs.Culpepper was chairman.