"And yet, sir," smiled the unruffled Morgan, "we rarely see permanent reforms result from crusading patriots. The ward heelers are usually the victors, because professionals have the advantage of amateurs."
That same evening Boone stood in a small downtown hall, crowded to the doors, and heard Colonel Wallifarro lay the stinging lash of denunciation across the shoulders of the city hall oligarchy. He heard him charge the police and the fire departments with fostering a perpetuation of machine abuses in the hands of machine hirelings—of maintaining a government by intimidation and force, and he too wondered how, if these charges were tinctured with any colour of truth, a free-hearted man could stand aside from the combat. He knew too that Colonel Wallifarro did not indulge in unconsidered libels.
At the door, when the sweltering meeting ended, he noticed close behind him a man talking to a policeman.
"These here silk-stocking guys buttin' in gives me a pain," announced that heated critic. "They spill out an earful of this Sunday-school guff before election day, but when the strong-arm boys get busy they fade away—believe me, the poor boobs fade out!"
"They ain't practical," agreed the patrolman judicially, and Boone made a mental note of his badge number. "They think one and one make two—but we know that if you fix a couple of ones right it's just as easy to make an eleven with 'em."
Boone and Anne had gone horseback riding one afternoon that September, and it was a different sort of excursion from those that they had taken together in the mountains.
The boy was mounted on Colonel Wallifarro's saddle mare, and the girl on a high-headed four-year-old from the same stable. They were not picking their way now through tangled trails that led upward, but were cantering along the level speedway toward the park set on a hill five miles south of the city. There, at the fringe of a line of knobs, was the only approach to be found in this table-flat land to the heights which they both loved.
These hills were only little brothers to the loftier peaks of the Cumberlands—but the air was full of Indian summer softness, and the horses under them were full of mettle—and they themselves were in love.
"Boone," demanded the girl, drawing down to a sedate pace, after a brisk gallop that had lathered the flanks and withers of their mounts, "what is it that interests you so in this campaign? You can't even vote here, can you?"
The young man shook his head, and now the smile of humour which had once been rare upon his face flashed there—because he had reached a point where his development was beginning to take some account of perspectives and balances.