"I'll tell you later. I wish to show you something before I ask your advice on a question of law; we must hurry. We will finish by nine and you will be a little late for dinner. But if she loves you, you can telephone and she will wait. It will be all right?"

Stuart coloured.

"Of course, it will be all right--besides, she doesn't know yet that I've returned."

The doctor handed the young lawyer a letter which he opened and read hastily.

NO. 60 GRAMERCY PARK.

TO DR. HENRY WOODMAN,

Dear Sir: I must have an answer to the proposition of the American Chemical Company before noon to-morrow. After that hour the matter will be definitely closed.

JNO. C. CALHOUN BIVENS.

April 2, 1898.

Still looking at the letter he asked:

"What does it mean?"

"An ultimatum from the Chemical Trust. I'll explain to you when you've seen something of my work to-night. The first hour I want you to put in with me at the dispensary."

Stuart's eye rested on the embossed heading of the letter, "No. 60 Gramercy Park," and he slowly crushed the paper. It was the Primrose house, Nan's home! Her mother had succeeded.

Bivens, the new sensation in high finance, she had established as her star boarder in his absence! Bivens, his schoolmate at college--Bivens, the little razorback scion of poor white trash from the South who had suddenly become a millionaire!

His blood boiled with rage. He could see the soft, cat-like movements of Mrs. Primrose and hear her purring while she spun the web to entangle him with Nan. As he turned and followed the doctor, he laughed with sudden fierce determination.

CHAPTER II

THINGS BEYOND PRICE

The dispensary was Woodman's hobby. The old-fashioned drug store stood on a corner of the Bowery, and in the rear extension which opened on the side street, he had established what he had laughingly called his "Life Line," a free dispensary where any man needing medicine or a doctor's advice could have it without charge if unable to pay.

For ten years he had maintained the work at his own expense, out of the profits of his store. The happiest hours of his life he had spent here ministering to the wants of his neighbours. He had come to be more than consulting physician at the dispensary. He had become the friend and counsellor of thousands.

The waiting room was crowded, and the line extended into the street. On the doctor's entrance the shadows suddenly lifted. Men and women smiled and called his name. He waved a cheerful salutation and hurried to his place beside the assistant.

For two hours Stuart saw him minister with patience and skill to the friendless and the poor. For each a cheerful word, and the warm grasp of his big hand with the prescription. The young lawyer watched with curious interest the quickened step with which each one left. The medicine had begun to work before the prescription was filled. Waves of healing from a beautiful spirit had entered the soul, and drooping heads were suddenly raised.

When the last applicant had gone, Stuart turned to the doctor:

"And what is the proposition which the distinguished young head of the Chemical Trust has made you?"

"That I sell my business to them at their own valuation and come into the Trust--or get off the earth."

"And you wish my advice?"

"Yes."

"What figure did he name?"

"More than its cash value."

"Then you will accept, of course?"

"I would if there were not some things that can't be reckoned in terms of dollars and cents. If I take stock in the American Chemical Company I am a party to their methods, an heir to their frauds."

"Isn't fraud a rather harsh word, Doctor?"

"No. It's the truth."

Stuart smiled good-naturedly.

"Yet isn't the old regime of the small manufacturer and the retailer doomed? Isn't combination the new order of modern life? Will it pay you to fight a losing battle?"

"The man who fights for the right can't lose."

"Unless they fight trusts!" Stuart said smilingly. "Bivens is not a man of broad culture, but he is a very smooth young gentleman----"

"He's a contemptible little scamp!" snapped the older man. "When I took him into my drug store six years ago, he didn't have a change of clothes. Now he's a millionaire. How did he get it? He stole a formula I had used to relieve nervous headaches, mixed it in water with a little poisonous colouring matter, pushed it into the soda-fountain trade, made his first half-million, organized the American Chemical Company and blossomed into a magnate. And now this little soda-fountain pip threatens me with ruin unless I join his gang and help him rob my neighbours. It happens that I like my neighbours. And the more I see of this city, the more thrilling its life becomes, the more wonderful its opportunities. Opportunity means one thing to me--quite another to Bivens. The world he lives in is a small one. I live in God's big world. I belong to no class. I know them all from the lonely multimillionaire on Murray Hill to his equally lonely brother thief who crawls into his lair by the river. And I don't envy one more than another. My business is to heal the sick, not merely to make money.

Thousands of children die at my very door every summer who could be saved by a single prescription if they could get it. That's the thought that grips me when I begin to figure the profits in this trade. I'm making a fair living. I don't want any more out of my neighbours. I've shown you some of them to-night."

"I'll never forget them," Stuart broke in.

"We used to cry over Uncle Tom's woes," the doctor continued. "And yet there are more than five million white people in America to-day who are the slaves of poverty, cruel and pitiless, who haven't enough clothes to keep warm, enough food to eat, and are utterly helpless and forsaken in illness. The black slave always had food and shelter, clothes and medicine. My business is to heal the sick--mind you! Shall I give it up to exploit them?"

"But could you not use your greater wealth for greater good if you joined the trust?" the lawyer asked.

"No. What we need to-day is not merely more money given to charity. We need more heart and soul, manhood and womanhood, given in heroic service. We need leaders whose voice shall rouse the conscience of the nation that Justice shall be done."

"But the point is, Doctor, are you sure that you are on the side of Justice in this big business battle that's now on between competition and combination?" asked the younger man, quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"Why, that your building over there has an honourable history, but it's old, a little shabby, and, judged by the standards of the new steel structures of the Trust that are rising over the city, out-of-date.

Won't they make drugs more economically than you do and drive you to the wall at last? Isn't this new law of cooperation the law of progress--in brief, the law of God?"

"That remains to be proven. I don't believe it."

"Well, I do, and I think that if you fight, it will be against the stars in their courses----"

"I'm going to fight," was the firm response.