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76 impress this upon him. The family was an old and noble one, fleeing from France, during a Huguenot persecution, to Protestant England where the true name "de Boncoeur" had been corrupted to "Bunker." At the time of his earliest dissatisfaction with the name he had even essayed writing it in the French manner—"B. de Boncoeur Bien"—supposing "Bien" to be approximate French for "Bean."

What more natural than that the freed soul, striving for another body, should have selected one of distinguished French ancestry? The commoner would inevitably seek to become a patrician.

It was a big thing; a thing to dream and wonder and calculate about. When he was puzzled or disturbed he would resort to the shell—a thing he had clung tenaciously to through all the years—sitting before it a long time, his eyes fixed upon it with hypnotic tensity.

What should it mean to him? How was his life to be modified by it? He did not doubt that changes would now ensue. He was already bolder in the public eye. If people stared superciliously at him, he sometimes stared back. That aggressive stout man could not now have bullied him out of his seat in the car with any mere looks.

The phrase "Napoleon of Finance" had stayed in his mind. Modernly the name seemed briefly to suggest some one who made a lot of money out of nothing but audacity. Certainly it was not being applied to soldiers or statesmen. This was interesting. If he made a lot of money he could