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24 REQUIEM FOR A NUN

miles from Nashville. Old Alec might start from Carolina. That's fifteen thousand pounds."

'Oh,' Compson said. So he blew in his men by means of a foxhorn which one of the Indians wore on a

thong around his neck, though even then they paused for one last quick conference; again it was Peabody who stopped them.

'Who'll pay for it?' he said. 'It would be just like him to want a dollar a pound for it, even if by Pettigrew's scale he had found it in the ashes of his fireplace.' They Compson anyway-had probably already thought of that; that, as much as Pettigrew's presence, was probably why he was trying to rush them into old Alec's presence with the offer so quickly that none would have the face to renegue on a pro -rata share. But Peabody had torn it now. Compson looked about at them, sweating, grimly enraged.

"That means Peabody will probably pay one dollar,' he said. 'Who pays the other fourteen? Me?' Then Ratcliffe, the trader, the store's proprietor, solved it-a solution so simple, so limitless in retroact; that they didn't even wonder why nobody had thought of it before; which not only solved the problem but abolished it; and not just that one, but all problems, from now on into perpetuity, opening to their vision like the rending of a veil, like a glorious prophecy, the vast splendid limitless panorama of America: that land of boundless opportunity, that bourne, created not by nor of the people, but for the people, as was the heavenly manna of old, with no return demand on man save the chewing and swallowing since out of its own matchless Allgood it would create produce train support and perpetuate a race of labourers