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THE RAMRODDERS

BY HOLMAN DAY

AUTHOR OF KING SPRUCE, ETC.

1910

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. THE BAITING OF THE ANCIENT LION

II. THE LINE-UP OF THE FIGHT

III. DENNIS KAVANAGH'S GIRL

IV. THE DUKE AT BAY

V. A CAUCUS, AS IT WAS PLANNED

VI. A CAUCUS, AND HOW IT WAS RUN

VII. WITH THE KAVANAGH AT HOME

VIII. THE MANTLE OF THELISMER THORNTON

IX. IN THE CENTRE OF THE BIG STATE WEB

X. A POLITICAL CONVERT

XI. A MAN FROM THE SHADOWS

XII. DEALS AND IDEALS

XIII. THE DUKE'S DOUBLE CAMPAIGN

XIV. THE BEES AND THE WOULD-BES

XV. SITTING IN FOR THE DEAL

XVI. THE HANDS ARE DEALT

XVII. THE ODD TRICK

XVIII. THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP

XIX. THE RAMRODDERS RAMPANT

XX. A GIRL'S HEART

XXI. STARTING A MULE TEAM

XXII. FROM THE MOUTH OF A MAID

XXIII. A TRUCE

XXIV. A GOVERNOR AND A MAID

XXV. WOMEN, AND ONE WOMAN

XXVI. THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAID

XXVII. THE EVERLASTING PROBLEM

XXVIII. ONE PROBLEM SOLVED

THE RAMRODDERS

CHAPTER I

THE BAITING OF THE ANCIENT LION

War and Peace had swapped corners that morning in the village of Fort Canibas. War was muttering at the end where two meeting-houses placidly faced each other across the street. Peace brooded over the ancient blockhouse, relic of the "Bloodless War," and upon the structure that Thelismer Thornton had converted from officers' barracks to his own uses as a dwelling.

At dawn a telegraph messenger jangled the bell in the dim hall of "The Barracks." It was an urgent cry from the chairman of the Republican State Committee. It announced his coming, and warned the autocrat of the North Country of the plot. The chairman knew. The plotters had been betrayed to him, and from his distance he enjoyed a perspective which is helpful in making political estimates. But Thelismer Thornton only chuckled over Luke Presson's fears. He went back to bed for another nap.

When he came down and ate breakfast alone in the big mess-room, which he had not allowed the carpenters to narrow by an inch, he was still amused by the chairman's panic. As a politician older than any of them, a man who had served his district fifty years in the legislature, he refused to believe—intrenched there in his fortress in the north—that there was danger abroad in the State.

"Reformers, eh?" He sneered the word aloud in the big room of echoes.
"Well, I can show them one up here. There's Ivus Niles!"

And at that moment Ivus Niles was marching into the village from the Jo Quacca hills, torch for the tinder that had been prepared. It is said that a cow kicked over a lantern that started the conflagration of its generation. In times when political tinder is dry there have been great men who have underestimated reform torches.

It was a bland June morning. The Hon. Thelismer Thornton was bland, too, in agreement with the weather. A good politician always agrees with what cannot be helped.

He stood in the door of "The Barracks" and gazed out upon the rolling St. John hills—a lofty, ponderous hulk of a man, thatched with white hair, his big, round face cherubic still in spite of its wrinkles. He lighted a cigar, and gazed up into the cloudless sky with the mental endorsement that it was good caucus weather. Then he trudged out across the grass-plot and climbed into his favorite seat. It was an arm-chair set high in the tangle of the roots of an overturned spruce-tree. The politicians of the county called that seat "The Throne," and for a quarter of a century the Hon. Thelismer Thornton had been nicknamed "The Duke of Fort Canibas." Add that the nicknames were not ill bestowed. Such was the Hon. Thelismer Thornton.

He had brought newspapers in his pockets. He set his eyeglasses on his bulging nose, and began to read.

In the highway below him teams went jogging into the village. There were fuzzy Canadian horses pulling buckboards sagging under the weight of all the men who could cling on. There were top carriages and even a hayrack well loaded with men.

Occasionally the old man lifted his gaze from his reading and eyed the dusty wayfarers benignantly. He liked to know that the boys were turning out to the caucus. His perch was a lofty one. He could see that the one long street of Fort Canibas was well gridironed with teams—horses munching at hitching-posts, wagons thrusting their tails into the roadway.

It was quiet at Thornton's end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet that he could hear a tumult at the other end of the village; it was a tumult for calm Fort Canibas. A raucous voice bellowed oratory of some sort, and yells and laughter and cheers punctuated the speech. Thornton knew the voice, even at that distance, for the voice of "War Eagle" Niles. He grinned, reading his paper. The sound of that voice salted the article that he was skimming:

"—and the fight is beginning early this year. The reform leaders say they find the sentiment of the people to be with them, and so the reformers propose to do their effective work at the caucuses instead of waiting to lock horns with a legislature and lobby controlled by the old politicians of the State. There is a contest on even in that impregnable fortress of the old regime, the 'Duchy of Canibas.' It is said that the whole strength of the State reform movement is quietly behind the attempt to destroy Thelismer Thornton's control in the north country. His is one of the earliest caucuses, and the moral effect of the defeat of that ancient autocrat will be incalculable."

Still more broadly did Thornton smile. "War Eagle" Niles, down there, was a reformer. For forty years he had been bellowing against despots and existing order, and, for the Duke of Fort Canibas, he typified "Reform!" Visionary, windy, snarling, impracticable attempts to smash the machine!

Therefore, in his serene confidence—the confidence of an old man who has founded and knows the solidity of the foundations—Thelismer Thornton smoked peacefully at one end of the village of Fort Canibas, and allowed rebellion to roar at its pleasure in the other end.

Then he saw them coming, heard the growing murmur of many voices, the cackle of occasional laughter, and took especial note of "War Eagle" Ivus Niles, who led the parade. A fuzzy and ancient silk hat topped his head, a rusty frock-coat flapped about his legs, and he tugged along at the end of a cord a dirty buck sheep. A big crowd followed; but when they shuffled into the yard of "The Barracks" most of the men were grinning, as though they had come merely to look on at a show. The old man in his aureole of roots gazed at them with composure, and noted no hostility.

Niles and his buck sheep stood forth alone. The others were grouped in a half circle. Even upon the "War Eagle," Thornton gazed tolerantly. There was the glint of fun in his eyes when Niles formally removed his silk hat, balanced it, crown up, in the hook of his elbow, and prepared to deliver his message.

"The dynasty of the house of Thornton must end to-day!" boomed Niles, in his best orotund.

Thornton found eyes in the crowd that blinked appreciation. Quizzical wrinkles deepened in his broad face. He plucked a cigar from his waistcoat-pocket and held it down toward Mr. Niles.

"No, sir!" roared that irreconcilable. "I ain't holding out my porringer to Power—never again!"

"Power," repulsed, lighted the cigar from the one he was smoking, and snapped the butt at the sheep.

"I'm a lover of good oratory, Ivus," he said, placidly, "and I know you've come here loaded. Fire!" He clasped his upcocked knee with his big hands, fingers interlaced, and leaned back.

The crowd exchanged elbow-thrusts and winks. But the ripple of laughter behind did not take the edge off Mr. Niles's earnestness.

"Honorable Thornton, I do not mind your sneers and slurs. When I see my duty I go for it. I'm here before you to-day as Protest walking erect, man-fashion, on two legs, and with a visible emblem that talks plainer than words can talk. The people need visible emblems to remind them. Like I'm leading this sheep, so you have been leading the voters of this legislative district. The ring has been in here"—Mr. Niles savagely pinched the cartilage of his nose—"and you have held the end of the cord. That's the way you've been led, you people!" The orator whirled and included his concourse of listeners as objects of arraignment. "Here's the picture of you as voters right before your eyes. Do you propose to be sheep any longer?" He put his hat on his head, and shook a hairy fist at the Duke of Fort Canibas. "This ain't a dynasty, and you can't make it into one. I call on you to take note of the signs and act accordingly; for the people are awake and arming for the fray. And when the people are once awake they can't any more be bamboozled by a political despot than the war eagle, screaming across the blue dome of the everlasting heavens, will turn tail when he hears the twittering of a pewee!" Mr. Niles closed, as he always closed a speech, with the metaphor that had given him his sobriquet.

"That is real oratory, Ivus," stated Mr. Thornton, serenely; "I know it is, because a man who is listening to real oratory never understands what the orator is driving at."

The Hon. Thelismer Thornton usually spoke with a slow, dry, half-quizzical drawl. That drawl was effective now. He came down from his chair, carefully stepping on the roots, and loomed above Mr. Niles, amiable, tolerant, serene. His wrinkled crash suit, in whose ample folds his mighty frame bulked, contrasted oddly with the dusty, rusty black in which Mr. Niles defied the heat of the summer day.

"Now I am down where I can talk business, Ivus. What's the matter with you?"

"Look into the depths of your own soul, if you've got the moral eyesight to look through mud," declaimed Mr. Niles, refusing to descend from polemics to plain business, "and you'll see what is the matter. You have made yourself the voice by which this district has spoken in the halls of state for fifty years, and that voice is not the voice of the people!" He stood on tiptoe and roared the charge.

"It is certainly not your voice that I take down to the State House with me," broke in their representative. "Freight charges on it would more than eat up my mileage allowance. Now let's call off this bass-drum solo business. Pull down your kite. To business!" He snapped his fingers under Mr. Niles's nose.

One of those in the throng who had not smiled stepped forth and spoke before the disconcerted "War Eagle" had recovered his voice.

"Since I am no orator, perhaps I can talk business to you, Representative Thornton." He was a grave, repressed, earnest man, whose sunburned face, bowed shoulders, work-stained hands, and general air proclaimed the farmer. "We've come here on a matter of business, sir."

"Led by a buck sheep and a human windmill, eh?"

"Mr. Niles's notions of tactics are his own. I'm sorry to see him handle this thing as he has. It was coming up in the caucus this afternoon in the right way." Thornton was listening with interest, and the man went on with the boldness the humble often display after long and earnest pondering has made duty plain. "When I saw Niles pass through the street and the crowd following, I was afraid that a matter that's very serious to some of us would be turned into horseplay, and so I came along, too. But I am not led by a buck sheep, Mr. Thornton, nor are those who believe with me."

"Believe what?"

"That, after fifty years of honors at our hands, you should be willing to step aside."

The Hon. Thelismer Thornton dragged up his huge figure into the stiffness of resentment. He ran searching eyes over the faces before him. All were grave now, for the sounding of the first note of revolt in a half century makes for gravity. The Duke of Fort Canibas could not distinguish adherents from foes at that moment, when all faces were masked with deep attention. His eyes came back to the stubborn spokesman.

"Walt Davis," he said, "your grandfather put my name before the caucus that nominated me for the legislature fifty years ago, and your father and you have voted for me ever since. You and every other voter in this district know that I do not intend to run again. I have announced it. What do you mean, then, by coming here in this fashion?"

"You have given out that you are going to make your grandson our next representative."

"And this ain't a dynasty!" roared Mr. Niles.

"Is there anything the matter with my grandson?" But Davis did not retreat before the bent brows of the district god.

"The trouble with him is, that he's your grandson."

"And what fault do you find with me after all these years?" There was wrathful wonderment in the tone.

"If you're going to retire from office," returned Mr. Davis, doggedly, "there's no need of raking the thing over to make trouble and hard feelings. I've voted for you, like my folks did before me. You're welcome to all those votes, Representative Thornton, but neither you nor your grandson is going to get any more. And as I say, so say many others in this district."

"No crowned heads, no rings in the noses of the people," declared Niles, yanking the cord and producing a bleat of fury from his emblematic captive.

"I don't stand for Niles and his monkey business," protested Davis. "I'm on a different platform. All is, we propose to be represented from now on; not mis-represented!"

Something like stupefaction succeeded the anger in the countenance of the Duke of Fort Canibas. Again he made careful scrutiny of the faces of his constituents. Then he turned his back on them and climbed up the twisted roots to his chair, sat down, faced them, caught his breath, and ejaculated, "Well, I'll be eternally d——d!"

He studied their faces for some time. But he was too good a politician to put much value on those human documents upraised to him. There were grins, subtle or humorous. There were a few scowls. One or two, tittering while they did it, urged the "War Eagle" on to fresh tirade. It was a mob that hardly knew its own mind, that was plain. But revolt was there. He felt it. It was one of those queer rebellions, starting with a joke for an excuse, but ready to settle into something serious. It was not so much hostility that he saw at that moment as something more dangerous—lack of respect.

"Look here, boys, I've been hearing that some of those cheap suckers from down State have been sneaking around this district. But I've never insulted you by believing you took any stock in that kind of cattle. We're neighbors here together. What's the matter with me? Out with your real grouch!"

"Look at this emblem I've brought," began Niles, oracularly, but Thornton was no longer in the mood that humored cranks. He jumped down, yanked the cord away from Niles, kicked the sheep and sent it scampering off with frightened bleats.

"If you fellows want an emblem, there's one," declared their indignant leader. "I'm all right for a joke—but the joke has got to stop when it has gone far enough."

He had sobered them. His disgusted glance swept their faces, and grins were gone. He went among them.

"Get around me, boys," he invited. "This isn't any stump speech. I'm going to talk business."

They did crowd around him, most of them, but Mr. Niles was still intractable. "You're right, it was your emblem just now! It has always been a kick from you and the rest of the high and mighty ones when you didn't want our wool."

"You're an infernal old liar and meddler, torched on by some one else!" retorted the Duke. "Now, boys, I see into this thing better than you do. Any time when I haven't used my district right, when I've betrayed you, or my word of advice isn't worth anything, I'll step out—and it won't need any bee of this kind to come around and serve notice on me. But I understand just what this shivaree means. Sneaks have come in here and lied behind my back and fooled some of you. Fools need to be saved from themselves. There are men in this State who would peel to their political shirts if they could lick Thelismer Thornton in his own district just now when the legislative caucuses are beginning. But I won't let you be fooled that way!"

"The name of 'Duke' fits you all right," piped Niles from a safe distance. "This is a dynasty and I've said it was, and now you're showing the cloven foot!"

Thornton disdained to reply. He continued to walk about among them. "They're trying to work you, boys," he went on. "I heard they were conniving to do business in this district, but I haven't insulted you by paying any attention to rumors. I want you to go down to that caucus this afternoon and vote for Harlan. You all know him. I'm an old man, and I want to see him started right before I get done. You all know what the Thorntons have done for you—and what they can do. I don't propose to see you swap horses while you're crossing the river."

But they did not rally in the good old way. There was something the matter with them. Those who dared to meet his gaze scowled. Those who looked away from him kept their eyes averted as though they were afraid to show their new faith. They had dared to march up to him behind Niles and his buck sheep, masking revolt under their grins. But Thornton realized that whoever had infected them had used the poison well. They had come to laugh; they remained to sulk. And they who had baited him with the unspeakable Niles understood their business when dealing with such an old lion as he.

"You need a guardian, you fellows," he said, contemptuously. "Your mutton marshal just fits you. But I'm going to keep you from buying the gold brick in politics you're reaching for now."

"Wouldn't it be a good idea, Squire Thornton, to let us run our own business awhile? You've done it for fifty years." It was still another of the rebels that spoke.

"If you had come to me like men, instead of playing hoodlums behind a lunatic and a sheep, I would have talked to you as men. But I say again you need a guardian."

"We won't vote for you nor none you name. We've been woke up."

The old man threw up both his hands and cracked his fingers into his palms. "And you're ready to take pap and paregoric from the first that come along, you infants!"

"You're showing yourself now, Duke Thornton!" shouted Niles. "You've used us like you'd use school-boys for fifty years, but you ain't dared to brag of it till now!"

Thornton strode out from among them. He tossed his big arms as though ridding himself of annoying insects. He had been stung out of self-control. It was not that he felt contempt for his people. He had always felt for them that sense of protection one assumes who has taken office from voters' hands for many years, has begged appropriations from the State treasury for them, has taken in hand their public affairs and administered them without bothering to ask advice. He realized all at once that jealousy and ingratitude must have been in their hearts for a long time. Now some influence had made them bold enough to display their feelings. Thornton had seen that sort of revolt many times before in the case of his friends in the public service. He had always felt pride in the belief that his own people were different—that his hold on them was that of the patriarch whom they loved and trusted.

The shock of it! He kept his face from them as he toiled up the steps of the old house. Tears sparkled in his eyes, sudden tears that astonished him. For a moment he felt old and broken and childish, and was not surprised that they had detected the weakness of a failing old man. He would have gone into "The Barracks" without showing them his face, but on the porch he was forced to turn. Some one had arrived, and arrived tempestuously. It was the Hon. Luke Presson, Chairman of the State Committee. He stepped down out of his automobile and walked around the crowd, spatting his gloved hands together, and looking them over critically. So he came to Thelismer Thornton, waiting on the steps, and shook his hand.

Mr. Presson was short and fat and rubicund, and, just now, plainly worried.

"This was the last place I expected to have to jump into, Thelismer," he complained. "I know the bunch has been wanting to get at you, but I didn't believe they'd try. I see that you and your boys here realize that you're up against a fight!"

He shuttled glances from face to face, and the general gloom impressed him. But it was plain that he did not understand that he was facing declared rebels.

"They've slipped five thousand dollars in here, Thelismer," he went on, speaking low. "They'd rather lug off this caucus than any fifty districts in the State."

"I don't believe there's men here that'll take money to vote against me," insisted Thornton. "But they've been lied to—that much I'll admit."

"You've been king here too long, Thelismer. You take too much for granted. They're bunching their hits here, I tell you. There are fifty thousand straddlers in this State ready to jump into the camp of the men that can lick the Duke of Fort Canibas—it gives a h——l of a line on futures! I thought you had your eye out better."

The deeper guile had masked itself behind such characters as Ivus Niles, and now Thornton realized it, and realized, too, to what a pass his trustful serenity, builded on the loyalty of the years, had brought him.

That strained, strange look of grieved surprise went out of his face. He lighted a cigar, gazing at his constituents over his scooped hands that held the match.

They stared at him, for his old poise had returned.

"This is the chairman of our State Committee, boys," he said, "come up to look over the field. He says there's a rumor going that Thornton can't carry his caucus this year." The Duke dropped into his quizzical drawl now. "I was just telling my friend Luke that it's queer how rumors get started." He walked to the porch-rail and leaned over it, his shaggy head dominating them. And then he threw the challenge at them. "The caucus is going to be held in the other end of the village—not here in my front dooryard. You'd better get over there. I don't need any such clutter here. Get there quick. There may be some people that you'll want to warn. Tell 'em old Thornton hasn't lost his grip."

He took Presson by the arm, and swung him hospitably in at the big door of "The Barracks."

CHAPTER II

THE LINE-UP OF THE FIGHT

"That's too rough—too rough, that kind of talk, Thelismer," protested the State chairman.

Thornton swung away from him and went to the window of the living-room and gazed out on his constituents.

"You can't handle voters the way you used to—you've got to hair-oil 'em these days."

Presson was no stranger in "The Barracks." But he walked around the big living-room with the fresh interest he always felt in the quaint place. Thornton stayed at the window, silent. The crowd had not left the yard—an additional insult to him. They were gathering around Niles and his sheep, and Niles was declaiming again.

The broad room was low, its time-stained woods were dark, and the chairman wandered in its shadowy recesses like an uneasy ghost.

"It isn't best to tongue-lash the boys that are for you," advised Presson, fretfully, "not this year, when reformers have got 'em filled up with a lot of skittish notions. Humor those that are for you."

"For me?" snarled "the Duke," over his shoulder, and then he turned on Presson. "That bunch of mangy pups out there for me? Why, Luke, that's opposition. And it's nasty, sneering, insulting opposition. I ought to go out there and blow them full of buckshot."

He shook his fists at the gun-rack beside the moose head which flung its wide antlers above the fireplace.

"Where's the crowd that's backing you—your own boys?"

"Luke, I swear I don't know. I knew there was some growling in this district—there always is in a district. A man like Ivus Niles would growl about John the Baptist, if he came back to earth and went in for politics. But this thing, here, gets me!" He turned to the window once more. "There's men out there I thought I could reckon on like I'd tie to my own grandson, and they're standing with their mouths open, whooping on that old blatherskite."

Chairman Presson went and stood with him at the window, hands in trousers pockets, chinking loose silver and staring gloomily through the dusty panes.

"It's hell to pave this State, and no hot pitch ready," he observed. "I've known it was bad. I knew they meant you. I warned you they were going to get in early and hit hard in this district—but I didn't realize it was as bad as this. They're calling it reform, but I tell you, Thelismer, there's big money and big men sitting back in the dark and rubbing the ears of these prohibition pussies and tom-cats. It's a State overturn that they're playing for!"

He began to stride around the big room. In two of the corners stuffed black bears reared and grinned at each other. In opposite corners loup-cerviers stared with unwinking eyes of glass, lips drawn over their teeth. "I'm running across something just as savage-looking in every political corner of this State," he muttered, "and the trouble is those outside of here are pretty blame much alive."

Niles was shouting without, and men were cheering his harangue.

"There used to be some sensible politics in this State," went on the disgusted chairman. "But it's got so now that a State committee is called on to consult a lot of cranks before drawing up the convention platform. Even a fellow in the legislature can't do what he wants to for the boys; cranks howling at him from home all the time. Candidates pumped for ante-election pledges, petitions rammed in ahead of every roll-call, lobby committees from the farmers' associations tramping around the State House in their cowhide boots, and a good government angel peeking in at every committee-room keyhole! Jeemsrollickins! Jim Blaine, himself, couldn't play the game these days."

If Thornton listened, he gave no sign. He had his elbows on the window-sill and was glowering on his constituents. They seemed determined to keep up the hateful serenade. It was hard for the old man to understand. But he did understand human nature—how dependence breeds resentment, how favors bestowed hatch sullen ingratitude, how jealousy turns and rends as soon as Democracy hisses, "At him!"

There was a dingy wall map beside him between the windows. A red line surrounded a section of it: two towns, a dozen plantations, and a score of unorganized townships—a thousand square miles of territory that composed his political barony. And on that section double red lines marked off half a million acres of timber-land, mountain, plain, and lake that Thelismer Thornton owned.

Chairman Presson, walking off his indignation, came and stood in front of the map.

"Between you and me, Thelismer, they've got quite a lot to grumble about, the farmers have. You wild-land fellows have grabbed a good deal, and you don't pay much taxes on it. You ought to have loosened a little earlier."

"You feel the cold water on your feet and you lay it to me rocking the boat, hey?" returned the Duke. "This is no time to begin to call names, Luke. But I want to tell you that where there's one man in this State grumbling about wild-land taxes, there are a hundred up and howling against you and the rest of the gilt-edged hotel-keepers that are selling rum and running bars just as though there wasn't any prohibitory law in our constitution." He had turned from the window. "You're looking at that map, eh? You think I've stolen land, do you? Look here! I came down that river out there on a raft—just married—my wife and a few poor little housekeeping traps on it. We never had a comfort till we got to the age where most folks die. I've had to live to be eighty-five to get a little something out of life. And she worked herself to death in spite of all I could say to stop her. Why, when the bill of sale fell due on the first pair of oxen I owned, she gave me the three hundred old-fashioned cents that she—don't get me to talking, Presson! But, by the Jehovah, I've earned that land up there! Dollars don't pay up a man and a woman for being pioneers. I'm not twitting you nor some of the rest of the men in this State in regard to how you got your money—but you know how you did get it!"

"We've stood by you on the tax question."

"And I've stood by you against the prohibition ramrodders, who were foolish enough to think that rumshops ought to be shut up because the law said so; and I've stood with the corporations and I've stood with the politicians, and played the game according to the rules. From the minute you came into my dooryard to-day you've acted as though you thought I'd stirred this whole uproar in the State."

"Did you ever know a man to get anywhere in politics if he didn't play the game—honesty or no honesty?"

"Yes, a few—they got there, but they didn't stay there long," replied the Duke, a flicker of humor in his wistfulness.

"You bet they didn't," agreed the chairman. "Thelismer, I'm just as honest as the world will let me be and succeed! But when a man gets to be perfectly honest in politics, and tries to lead his crowd at the same time, they turn around and swat him. I reckon he makes human nature ashamed of itself, and folks want to get him out of sight."

"I know," agreed the old man, and he looked out again on Niles and his audience. "The tough part of it is, Presson, those men out there are right—at bottom. They're playing traitor to me and acting like infernal fools, and I wouldn't let them know that I thought them anything else. But I'd like to step out there, Luke, and say, 'Boys, you're right. I've been working you. I've done you a lot of favors, I've brought a lot of benefits home to this district, but I've been looking after myself, and standing in with the bunch that has got the best things of the State tied up in a small bundle. I've only done what every successful politician has done—played the game. But you're right. Now go ahead and clean the State.'"

"You don't mean to say you'd do that?" demanded Presson, looking his old friend over pityingly.

"Luke, I mean that—but I don't intend to do it, not by a blame sight! I don't believe you ever realized that I was really honest deep down. I have told you something from the bottom of my heart. But"—he held out his big hands and closed and unclosed them—"if I should ever let them loose that way they'd be picked up before they'd gone forty feet by some other fellow that might be hollering reform and not be half as honest as I am."

He shoved his hands in his pockets and squinted shrewdly, and spoke with his satiric drawl.

"There was old Lem Ferguson. Lem got to reading books about soul transmigration or something of the kind, and turned to and let all his critters loose. Said that one living being didn't have any right to enslave another living being. Told them to go and be free. And somebody put his steers in the pound, and vealed two calves and sold 'em, and milked his cows, and stole his sheep, and ripped the tags out of their ears and sheared 'em for what wool they had. Luke, I'm no relative of Lem Ferguson's when it comes to practical politics. I know just as well as you do who's trying to steal this State, a hunk at a time. They've had the nerve to tackle my district. But if they think that I'm going to ungrip and let them grab it they've got a wrong line on old Thornton's sheepfold."

"What do you need in the way of help?" asked the State chairman.

"Nothing." Thornton turned again to survey his unruly flock. It was plain that they were baiting their overlord. Presson's acumen in politics enlightened him. An angry man may be made to antagonize the neutrals and even to insult his friends—and Thelismer Thornton was not patient when provoked. There was shrewd management behind this revolt.

Suddenly the yard was full of men, new arrivals. It was an orderly little army, woodsmen with meal-sack packs, an incoming crew on its march to the woods. A big man plodded ahead and marshalled them. Thornton hastened out upon the porch, and the chairman followed. The big man halted his crew, and leaned his elbows on the porch rail.

"Thought I'd walk 'em early in the cool of the day," he explained, "and lay off here for dinner and a rest. Pretty good lot of gash-fiddlers, there, Mr. Thornton. I picked the market for you."

"And I'll sample 'em right now," said the Duke, grimly. "Ben, tell 'em to drop those duffel-bags and rush that gang of steers out of my yard." He pointed at the flock of constituents. Niles had begun fresh harangue in regard to despots, addressing the new arrivals. They did not seem to be especially interested. There were a few long-legged Prince Edward Islanders, but most of them were wiry little French Canadians, who did not seem to understand much of the orator's tumultuous speech.

"If you've got a crew that's any good on a log-landing, we'll find it out," added the Duke. "Get at 'em!"

"Good gaddlemighty!" gasped Presson, "you ain't going to do anything like that!"

"You watch."

"Politics?" queried the big boss, swinging about to go to his crew. He grinned. It was evident that he considered that anything under that general head was in the Duke's supreme control, and that his employer's orders absolved him.

"It's just what they've been trying to prod into you—it's their game," adjured Presson, beating expostulating palms upon Thornton's breast.

"Then it has worked," the old man replied, calmly. He pushed the chairman aside. "Rush'em, Ben, and, if they don't go easy, toss 'em over the fence."

The big boss sauntered among his crew and growled a few crisp commands. The smile he wore gave the affair the appearance of a lark, and the woodsmen took it in that spirit. But the mob was sullen. Those who were not active rebels had been stung by the contempt that their leader now displayed. Some resisted when the woodsmen pushed them half playfully. A burly fellow stood his ground. Ivus Niles lurked at his back.

"The folks up in the Jo Quacca Mountains will snicker in good shape when
I tell 'em that Fightin' MacCracken let himself be dumped out of Duke
Thornton's dooryard by a pack of lard-eating Quedaws," he sneered in
the giant's ear.

MacCracken swept away the first three men with swinging cuffs. He was thinking of his reputation at home. The taunt pricked him.

"Call 'em off—call 'em off, sir," pleaded Davis. "I've been trying to get these men out of your yard. I don't approve of Niles. Let's have our politics clean, Mr. Thornton. I'm willing to argue with you. But don't let's have it said outside that Fort Canibas' politics is run by plug-uglies."

"He's right, Thelismer; you're letting them score a point on you," protested Presson.

But Thornton had been too grievously wounded that day to be able to listen to peace measures. He strode down off the porch, shouting commands. His men were willing, and MacCracken's defiance gave them the provocation they wanted.

"If it's fight you're looking for, you spike-horn stag," announced the boss, bursting through the press to reach the Jo Quacca champion, "we can open a full assortment, and no trouble to show goods."

He knocked MacCracken flat, reaching over the heads of the smaller men, and the next moment the Canadians swarmed on the fallen gladiator like flies, lifted him and tossed him into the road. The rest of the mob escaped. Niles's emblematic buck sheep, cropping the grass in the fence corner, was tossed out behind the fugitives.

"I was hoping there'd be a little more cayenne in it," complained the big boss, scrubbing his knuckles against his belted jacket.

"Come out in the road where it ain't private ground owned by the old land-grabber," pleaded MacCracken. "I'll meet you somewhere, Ben Kyle, where it'll have to be a fair stand-up." But Kyle gave him no further attention.

"Take the boys into the ram pasture," directed his employer. He pointed to a long, low addition in the rear of "The Barracks," the shelter that served for the housing of the Thorntons' crews, migratory to or from the big woods. "I'll bring out a present. I guess you've got a good, able crew there, Ben."

Chairman Presson followed the old man back into the mansion. He was angry, and made his sentiment known, but Thornton was stubborn.

"There may be another way of running this district just at this time, Luke, but this is my way of running it, and I'm going to control that caucus. So what are you growling about?" He was opening a closet in the wall.

"But you're starting a scandal—and they'll get so stirred up that they'll put an independent ticket into the field. You'll have to fight 'em all over again at the polls. You're rasping them too hard."

"Luke, there are a lot of things you know about down-country politics, and perhaps you know more than I do about politics in general. But there's a rule in seafaring that holds good in politics. If you're trying to ratch off a lee shore it's no time to be pulling down your canvas."

He took a jug out of the closet, and went to the low building. The chairman followed along, not comforted.

The woodsmen had piled their duffel-bags in corners and were waiting. There were long tables up and down the centre of the room. They were flanked by benches. The tables were furnished with tin plates, tin pannikins, knives, and two-tined forks. The big boss had already given his orders. He and his crew had been expected. Men were hustling food onto the tables. There were great pans heaped with steaming baked beans, dark with molasses sweetening, gobbets of white pork flecking the mounds. Truncated cones of brownbread smoked here and there on platters. Cubes of gingerbread were heaped high in wooden bowls, and men went along the tables filling the pannikins with hot tea. The kitchen was in a leanto, and the cook was pulling tins of hot biscuits from the oven. There was not a woman in sight about "The Barracks." There had been none for years. Those men in the dirty canvas aprons were maids, cooks, and housekeepers.

It was hospitality rude and lavish. That low, dark room with its tiers of bunks along the four sides, its heaped tables, its air of uncalculated plenty, housed the recrudescence of feudalism in Yankee surroundings. And the lord of the manor set his jug at one end of the table and ordered the big boss to pipe all hands to grog.

"A pretty good lot, Ben," he commented as they crowded around. "And this here is something in the way of appreciation."

"Mr. Harlan coming out here to meet me, or am I going in and hunt him up?" inquired Kyle. "I suppose he has located most of the operations for next season."

"You'll take them in. Harlan won't be out for a while." He turned and walked away, the chairman with him.

"Your grandson seems to be as much in love with the woods as ever," commented Presson. "But I shouldn't think you'd want him to associate with this kind of cattle all his life, herding Canuck goats on a logging operation. You've got money enough, the two of you. He ought to get out into the world, find an up-to-date girl for a wife, and get married."

Thornton had led the way out into the sunshine, and was strolling about the yard, hands behind his back.

"Luke," he confided after a few moments, "you've just tapped me where I'm tender. Look here, if it was just me and me only that this hoorah here to-day was hitting, I'd tell 'em to take their damnation nomination and make it a cock-horse for any reformer that wants to ride. I'd do it, party or no party! But the minute it leaked out that I was putting Harlan up for the caucus they turned on me. And now I propose to show 'em."

The chairman stopped and stared at his friend. That piece of news had not reached him till then.

"You don't mean to tell me," he demanded, "that you're going to take this time of all others to swap horses? Why, Harlan Thornton can't play politics! He doesn't know—"

"He don't need to. I'll play it for him. Between you and me, Luke, he doesn't even know yet that he's going to run for the legislature. I'm keeping him up in the woods so that he won't know. He's one of those stiff-necked young colts that wants to do only what he wants to do in a good many things." He added the last with a growl of disgust. "And he won't allow that any old man can tell him a few things that he doesn't know."

"Now, Thelismer," protested the chairman, "I don't know anything about what's going on in your family, here, and I don't care. I know your grandson is a straight and square young chap, a worker, and a good business man, but he's no politician. I'm not going to stand for his butting in at this stage of the game."

"He isn't butting in. I'm throwing him in, like I'd train a puppy to swim," retorted the old man, calmly. "And, furthermore, what business of yours is it, anyway?"

"I'm chairman of the State committee."

"And I'm the boss of this legislative district. Now, hold on, Luke." He bent over and planted his two big hands on the chairman's shoulders. "Harlan is all I've got. He's always been a steady, hustling boy. But to get him out of these woods and smoothed up like I want him smoothed up has been worse than rooting up old Katahdin. I've been pioneer enough for both of us. I don't propose to have him spend the rest of his life here. First off, he thought it was his duty to me to take the business burden off my shoulders. Now he's got into the life, and won't stand for anything else. And the only thing I care for under God's heavens at my age is to have him be something in this State. He's got the looks and the brains and the money! And he's going to be something! And I'm going to see him started on the way. God knows where I'll be two years from now. You can't reckon on much after eighty. To-day I'm feeling pretty healthy." There was a bite in his tone. "And I'm going to nominate Harlan for the legislature, and then I'm going to elect him. I'm going to see him started right before I die."

"And he doesn't want to go, and the voters don't want him to go," lamented Presson. "You're only trying to bull through a political slack-wire exhibition for your own amusement—and this whole State on the hair-trigger! By the mighty, it isn't right. I won't stand for it!"

The Duke started for the front of the mansion.

"And, furthermore, Thelismer, if you're willing to run a chance of tipping over the politics of this State for the sake of giving your grandson a course of sprouts, you're losing your mind in your old age, and ought to be taken care of."

Thornton turned and bestowed a grim smile on his angry friend.

"Presson, I've stood by the machine a good many years. Now, if I can't stand for a little business of my own without a riot, bring on your riot. I'll lick you in that caucus with one hand while I'm licking that dirty bunch of rebels with the other. I've got my reasons for what I'm doing."

"Give me a good reason, then," begged the chairman. "Killing off your friends for the sake of giving Harlan Thornton a liberal education doesn't appeal to me."

"My real reason wouldn't, either—not just now," returned the Duke, enigmatically.

At that moment half a dozen gaunt hounds raced around the corner of "The Barracks." They leaped at Thornton playfully, daubing his crash suit with their dusty paws. He seemed to recognize them. He cursed them and kicked them away savagely.

CHAPTER III

DENNIS KAVANAGH'S GIRL

A rangy roan horse followed the dogs, galloping so wildly that when his rider halted him his hoofs tore up the turf as he slid. A girl rode him. She was mounted astride, and Presson had to look twice at her to make sure she was a girl, for she wore knickerbockers and gaiters, and her copper-red hair curled so crisply that it seemed as short as a boy's.

"Good-morning, Mr. Duke," she called. "Is Harlan down from the woods yet?"

The old man turned to march off after a scornful glance at her. He kicked away another dog. Then he whirled and stepped back toward her. It was anger and not courtesy that impelled him.

"He isn't here, and he won't be here. And how many times more have I got to tell you not to be impertinent to me?"

"How, Mr. Duke?"

"By that infernal nickname," he stormed. "Young woman, I've told you to stay on your side of the river, and you—"

"Really you ought to be called 'Duke' if you order folks off the earth that way," she cried, saucily. "But I did not come to see you, Mr. Duke. I came to see Harlan. Has he got home yet?"

She swung sideways on her horse and nursed her slender ankle across her knee. It was plain that she had expected this reception, and knew how to meet it. She gazed at him serenely from big, gray eyes. She smiled and held her head a little to one side, her nose tiptilted a bit, giving her an aggravatingly teasing expression.

"I tell you he's not here, and he won't be here."

"Oh yes, he will. For"—she smiled more broadly, and there was malice in her eyes—"I sent word to him to come, and he's coming."

"You sent word to him, you red-headed Irish cat? What do you mean?"

The lord of Fort Canibas strode close to her, passion on his face. Presson could see that this was no suddenly evoked quarrel between the two. It was hostility reawakened.

"I mean that I'm looking out for the interests of Harlan when those at home are plotting against him. I hear the news. I listen to news for him, when he's away in the big woods. And I'm not going to let you send him off down to any old prison of a legislature, where he'll be spoiled for his friends up here. And he doesn't want to go. And he'll be here, Mr. Duke, to see that you don't trade him off into your politics."

She delivered her little speech resolutely, and gave him back his blistering gaze without winking.

"Oh, my God, if you were—were only Ivus Niles, or Beelzebub himself sitting there on that horse," Thornton gasped. "You—you—" he turned away from her maddening smile and stamped about on the turf. The hounds still played around him, persistent in their attentions. He kicked at them.

"It suits me to be just Clare Kavanagh, Mr. Duke—and I'm not afraid of you!"

"Kyle—ho there, Kyle!" The big boss came out of the "ram pasture," wiping food fragments from his beard. "Get a rifle and shoot these dogs. Clean 'em out! Take two men and ride this Irish imp across the river where she belongs."

Kyle balked. His face showed it.

Presson had never seen his old friend in such a fury. He menaced the girl with his fists as though about to forget that she was a woman. But she did not retreat. The picture was that of the kitten and the mastiff. Her sparkling eyes followed him. The scarlet of an anger as ready as his own leaped to the soft curves of her cheeks.

"You've got my orders, Kyle. I stand behind them."

Without taking her eyes off Thornton, the girl reached behind her and jerked a revolver from its holster.

"You shoot my dogs, Kyle, and I'll shoot you." In her tones there was none of the hysteria that usually spices feminine threats. She was angry, but her voice was grimly level. She had the poise of one who had learned to depend on her own resolute spirit. But she displayed something more than that. It was recklessness that was bravado. In the eyes of the State chairman, friend of Thornton, and accustomed to a milder form of femininity, it was impudence. Yet her beauty made its appeal to him. The old man lunged toward her, but the politician seized his arm.

"Thelismer," he protested, "you are going too far. I don't know the girl, or what the main trouble is, but you're acting like a ten-year-old."

Thelismer Thornton knew it, and the knowledge added to his helpless rage. He pulled himself out of Presson's grasp.

He began to revile the girl in language that made Presson set his little eyes open and purse his round mouth.

"Damn it, you don't understand," roared the Duke, whirling on his friend. Presson had faced him at last with protest that stung. "I know it's no kind of talk to use to any one. I'm no ruffian. I'm ashamed to have to use it. But the other kind don't work—not with her. Land-pirate Kavanagh is welcome to the ten thousand acres of timber-land that he stole from me; but when his red-head daughter proposes to steal my grandson, and laugh at me to my face while she's doing it, she'll take what I have to give her if she wants to stay and listen. Look at her, Presson! Look at her! Is that the kind of a girl for any young chap? A rattlebrained imp with a horse between her knees from daylight to dark, riding the country wild, insulting old age, and laughing at me and putting the devil into the head of my grandson! Kyle, get your men and run her across the river into her Canuck country! She isn't even an American citizen, Luke. Do you hear me, Kyle?"

Presson saw that the girl was not looking at her enemy then. From the back of her horse she could see farther up the road than they. She had spied a horseman coming. She recognized him. She uttered a shrill call that he understood, for he forced his horse into a gallop, and came into the yard before Thornton had gathered himself to continue his tirade. The Duke had seen his grandson almost as soon as she, and the passion went out of his face. He looked suddenly old and tired and troubled.

There was appeal in the gaze he turned on his grandson. He stepped forward.

"Don't let her make any more trouble between us, Harlan, not till you understand how she—"

But the girl forestalled him. She had fought her battle alone until he came. She slid off her horse and ran across the yard, sobbing like a child. And now Presson saw how young she was. On her horse, defiant almost to the point of impudence, she had a manner that belied her years. But when she fled to her champion, she was revealed as only a little girl with a child's impulsiveness in speech and action. The young man slipped his foot from a stirrup and held his hand to her. She sprang to him, standing in the stirrup.

"He called me wicked names, Harlan! I was only trying to help you. I wanted you to come, for I thought you ought to know! You've come. I knew you'd come. You won't let him send you away. You'll not let him call me those names ever again!"

He gently swung her down, alighted and faced his grandfather. He had the stalwart frame of Thelismer Thornton, and with it the poise of youth, clean-limbed, bronzed, and erect. He flashed a pair of indignant brown eyes at the old man. The Duke recognized the Thornton challenge to battle in the sparkle of those eyes.

"Let's talk this over by ourselves, Harlan," he advised. "Send the girl along about her business. She has messed things between us badly enough as it is."

"Have you been talking to this poor little girl as she tells me you have talked?" demanded young Thornton, narrowing his eyes.

"That isn't the tone to use to me, boy," warned the Duke. There had been appeal in his face and his voice at the beginning. But this disloyalty in the presence of the girl pricked him. She was still in the hook of Harlan's arm, and from that vantage-point flung a glance of childishly ingenuous triumph at him. "Not that tone from grandson to grandfather."

"It's man to man just now, sir. You know how I feel toward this little friend of mine. If you have abused our friendship here at our home, you'll apologize, grandfather or no grandfather—and that's the first disrespectful word I ever gave you, sir. But this is a case where I have the right to speak."

The Duke stiffened and his face was gray.

"I talked to her the way Land-pirate Kavanagh's daughter ought to be talked to when she comes here mocking me. Now, Harlan, if you want this in the open instead of in private, where it ought to be, I'll give it to you straight from the shoulder. You're not going to marry that girl. She shan't steal you and spoil you. I've told you so before. I give it to you now before witnesses."

The girl ran toward him. She was furious. It was evident that shame as well as anger possessed her.

"Have I ever said I wanted to marry your grandson? Has he ever said he wanted to marry me? Is it because you have such a wicked old mind that you think we cannot always be the true friends we have been? I do not want a husband. But I have a friend, and you shall not take him away from me!"

"You have heard, sir. Do you realize how you have insulted both of us?
You shall apologize, Grandfather Thornton!"

For reply the old man walked up to him, snapped the fingers of both hands under his nose, and walked away. "Give me ten words more of that talk and I'll take you across my knee," he called over his shoulder. "There are some men that never grow old enough to get beyond the spanking age."

Presson, interested spectator, looked for the natural outburst of youth at that point. But he stared at the young man, and decided that he truly had inherited the Thornton grit and self-restraint which the Duke seemed now to have lost all at once after all the years.

Harlan gazed after his grandfather, lips tightening. He was an embodiment of wholesome young manhood, as he stood there, struggling with the passion that prompted him to unfilial reproaches. Then he turned to the girl. He had a wistful smile for her.

"I'm sorry, little Clare," he said, softly. She slipped her hands under the belt of his corduroy jacket and gazed up at him tearfully.

"He had no right to say that I—that I—oh, he doesn't understand friendship!" she cried.

"No, and we'll not try to explain—not now! But I have some serious matters to talk over with my grandfather. Ride home, dear; I'll see you before I go back to the woods again."

"And you are going back to the woods? You are not going to let them send you away where you'll forget your best friends?"

"I never shall forget my friends. And I can't believe that you heard right, little girl. My grandfather will not put me in politics. Don't worry. I'll straighten it all out before I leave."

He lifted her to her horse and sent her away with a pat. She went unprotesting, with a trustful smile. The hounds raced wildly after her.

"Woof!" remarked the Hon. Luke Presson to himself, "there's a kitten that's been fed on plenty of raw meat!" And as he always compared all women with his daughter, reigning beauty of the State capital, he added: "I'd like to have Madeleine get a glimpse of that. She'd be glad that it's the style to bring girls up on a cream diet."

He hurried away behind Harlan, who had given him rather curt greeting, and had followed the Duke around to the front of the house. The old man was tramping the porch from end to end.

The boarding creaked under him as he strode, his gait a lurch that moved one side of his body at a time. The smoke from his cigar streamed past his ears.

It was silent at the front of the big house, and in that silence the three of them could hear the occasional shouts that greeted demagogic oratory down in the village. The comment of the lord of Canibas was the anathema that he growled to himself.

His grandson faced him twice on his turns along the porch, protest in his demeanor. But the old man brushed past.

"Grandfather, I want a word with you," Harlan ventured at last.

"You talk girl to me just now, young fellow, and you won't find it safe!"

He marched on, and the grandson resolutely waited his return.

"I'm going to talk business, sir. I want this thing understood. Is it true what I hear? Do you propose to put my name before that caucus? I want to say—"

But the old man strode away from him again.

"He says he's going to do it, and it's fool business," confided Presson.
"You've got to stop him. There's no reason in it."

"I've got my reasons. If you don't know enough to see 'em, it isn't my fault," snapped the Duke, passing them and overhearing.

"Then I've got this to say." The young man stopped his grandfather—as big, as determined, as passionate—Thornton against Thornton. "I'll not go to the legislature."

The old man shouted his reply.

"I don't know as you will, you tote-road mule, you! But, by the suffering Herod, they'll have to show me first!"

He elbowed his grandson aside and kept on pacing the porch.

CHAPTER IV

THE DUKE AT BAY

After that outburst Presson went away by himself to sulk. Young Thornton made no further protest. He stared at his grandfather, trying to comprehend what it meant—this bitterness, this savage resentment, this arbitrary authority that took no heed of his own wishes. He had always known a calm, kindly, sometimes caustic, but never impatient Thelismer Thornton. This old man, surly, domineering, and unreasonable, was new to him. And after a little while, worried and saddened, he went away. His presence seemed to stir even more rancor as the moments passed.

Presson understood better, but could not forgive the bullheadedness that seemed to be wrecking their political plans. His own political training had taught him the benefits of compromise. He was angry at this old man who proposed to go down fighting among the fallen props of a lifetime of power. And even though Presson now understood better some of the motives that prompted the Duke to force young Harlan out into the world, his political sensibilities were more acute than his sympathy.

Therefore the beleaguered lord of Canibas was left to fight it out alone.

He stood at the end of the porch and listened to the menacing sounds of the village.

He glared down the long street and grunted, "Grinding their knives, eh?"

Evidently the centrifugal motion of the political machine down there was violent enough to throw off one lively spark. A man came up the road at a brisk gait, stamped across the yard, and went direct to the Duke, who waited for him at the far end of the porch. He did not glance at Presson or at Harlan Thornton.

"Did you ever see anything like it, did you ever hear anything like it, Honor'ble?" the new arrival demanded with heat. "They're goin' to make a caucus out of it—a caucus!"

The man had a lower jaw edged with a roll of black whisker, a jaw that protruded like a bulldog's. With the familiarity of the long-time lieutenant, he pecked with thumb and forefinger at the end of a cigar protruding from his chief's waistcoat-pocket. He wrenched off the tip between snaggy teeth. He spat the tip far.

"Yes, sir, by jehoshaphat, a caucus!"

Chairman Presson's ear had caught the sound of politics. He felt that he was entitled, ex officio, to be present at any conference. He hurried to the end of the porch.

"We ain't had a caucus in this district for more'n forty years," stated the new arrival, accepting the chairman as a friend of the cause. "Except as the chairman catches the seckertery somewhere and then hollers for some one to come in from the street and renominate the Honor'ble Thornton. But, dammit, this is going to be a caucus." The word seemed suddenly to have acquired novel meaning for him. "They must have been pussy-footin' for a month. You could have knocked me down with your cigar-butt, Squire, when I got in here to-day and found how she stood. If it hadn't been for War Eagle Ivus and his buck sheep breakin' out, they'd have ambuscaded ye, surer'n palm-leaf fans can't cool the kitchen o' hell. But even as it is—hoot and holler now, and tag-gool-I-see-ye, they say they've got you licked, and licked in the open—that's what they say!" The man's tone was that of one announcing the blotting-out of the stars.

"Walt Davis bragged about it," said the old man, outwardly calm, but eyes ablaze. "It must be a pretty sure thing when he's got the courage to crawl out from under the wagon and yap."

"Good God!" blurted the chairman of the State Committee, "you don't mean to tell me!"

"It's the ramrodders! They've been up here, one or two of the old cock ones, workin' under cover," stated the unswerving one. "About once in so often the people are ripe to be picked. They've mebbe had drought, chilblains, lost a new milch cow, and had a note come due—and some one that's paid to do it tells 'em that it's all due to the political ring—and then they begin to club the tree! But standing here spittin' froth about it ain't convertin' the heathern nor cooperin' them that imagine vain things. Now here's what I've done, grabbin' in so's to lose no time. I—"

"No, just tell me what the other side has done," commanded the Duke.

"First place, they've got names in black and white of enough Republicans to down you in caucus. They've got 'em, them ramrodders have! I've hairpinned the truth out o' the cracks! They've been sayin' that you've only wanted your office so as to dicker and trade, and make yourself and them in your political bunch richer; they're showin' figgers to prove that much; sayin' you brag you carry our district in your vest-pocket; sayin' everything to stir up the bile that's in every man when you know how to stir for it. Furthermore, Squire, the fact that you're gettin' out yourself and proposin' to put your grandson in gives 'em their chance to say a lot. Next place, this is goin' to be a caucus. It ain't any imitation. They're goin' to use a marked check-list."

"What?" roared the Honorable Thelismer, jarred out of his baleful calm.

"Yes, sir! They've pulled the town clerk into camp and have had him mark a list. And you can imagine who they picked out as Republican voters in this town! And they'll stand and challenge every one else till their throats are sore. You and me has cut up a few little innocent tricks in politics in our time, Squire, but we never framed anything quite as tidy as this for a steal. If your friend, here, is in politics, he—"

"I'm Presson, chairman of the State Committee," explained that gentleman. The Duke of Fort Canibas was too much absorbed to make presentations.

"Hell! That so?" ripped out the other, frankly astonished. "Well, I'm glad you're here. You ought to be able to help us out."

Presson was not cheerful or helpful. "They're slashing this whole State open from one end to the other with their devilish reform hullabaloo," he said.

"I hear there is quite a stir outside," agreed the agitator, blandly. He looked the chairman up and down with interest. "You may call me Sylvester—Talleyrand Sylvester. Yankee dickerer! Buy and sell everything from a clap o' thunder to a second-hand gravestone. It brings me round the country up here, and so I've been the Squire's right-hand man in the political game, such as there's been of it." He turned his back on the pondering Duke and continued, sotto voce: "I reckon if he'd stayed in himself, Colonel, they wouldn't have had the courage to tackle him. They might have hit him with that whole stockin'ful of mud they've been collectin', and he wouldn't have staggered. But when they go to hit the young feller, there, with it, he's down and out."

"Eh!" barked the magnate of Canibas, catching the last words. "I am? Not by a—" He broke off, ashamed of wasting effort in mere boasts. "Presson," he went on, evidently now intent on proceeding according to the plan that he had been meditating, "you've got your own interest in seeing me keep this district in line, haven't you?"

"You're the head of our row of bricks," bleated the chairman. "We've got to keep you standing—got to do it."

"Then we'll get busy." The old man threw back his shoulders. "Carrying a caucus the way we've probably got to carry this one at the last gasp isn't going to be a genteel entertainment." He tapped a stubby finger on the honorable chairman's shirt-front. "I'm going to raise some very particular hell." He turned to his lieutenant. "The boys right in the village, here, our own bunch, are all right, of course, Sylvester?"

"Stickin' to you like pitch in a spruce crack, as usual. It's the outsiders from the other sections in the district. They hadn't known what a caucus was till them ramrodders got after 'em."

"Can't they be handled now that they're in here?"

"Have been lied to already too skilful and thorough. Me and Whisperin' Urban and a few others of the boys blew the haydust out of their ears, and tried to inject the usual—but they can't hold any more. They've got to be unloaded first—and there ain't time to do it."

"And you're pretty sure they can swing the organization when the caucus is called?" demanded the Duke.

"Two to one—and our men ain't got a smell on that check-list they've doctored. Why, they've even got me marked 'Socialist.' You can imagine what they've done to the rest of the boys. It's one o'clock now." (He had looked at four watches, one after the other, a part of his dickerer's stock-in-trade.) "In an hour and fifteen minutes they'll be organized and votin' by check-list. I ain't a man to give up easy, Squire, but I swear it looks as though they had us headed so far on the homestretch that we ain't near enough to trip 'em or bust a sulky wheel on 'em."

"You've got more than an hour's leeway." It was a soft lisp of sound that startled the group. The man had come by devious ways through the gullies of the Thornton field, around the corner of "The Barracks," and upon the porch. Those who knew him declared that "Whispering Urban" Cobb never walked by the straight way when there was a crooked one by which he could dodge around.

"No, they can't get a-goin' at no two o'clock," he assured them. A drooping gray mustache curtained his mouth, drooping gray eyebrows shaded his eyes, and he crowded very close to them and whispered, "I've stole the call for the caucus, and they'll hunt for it about half an hour, and then they'll have to round the committee up and get 'em to sign another, and have constables swear that the other call was posted—and, well, they won't get going much before four."

The Duke looked at him indulgently.

"I took it on myself to do it. I reckoned you might need the extra time, seein' that they was tryin' to spring a trap on you."

He took the cigar that the Duke offered him in lieu of praise.

"Bein' sure of that much time—if you'll see to it that they're regular about the call!" Mr. Cobb cocked inquiring eye at the old man.

"I'll see to it," stated Thornton, grimly.

"Well, then, bein' sure of that time, I'll—Mr. Thornton, would you object if I was to start in this afternoon on the contract of clearing up that slash where you operated on Jo Quacca last winter? Of course, this ain't just the best kind of weather for bonfires, but—the fire will certainly burn!" His whispering voice gave the suggestion ominous significance.

The Hon. Thelismer Thornton stared for a moment at Cobb, and then looked up at the heights that shimmered in the beating sun.

"You may start in, Cobb," he said at last. His perception of what the man meant came instantly. He had hesitated while he figured chances. "Take fifty of those men out behind there," his thumb jerked over his shoulder. "Give every man a shovel, and see that it doesn't get away from you. More smoke than fire, see!"

Mr. Cobb hastened away.

The duller comprehension of the chairman of the State Committee had not grasped the significance of the conversation.

"I'd let business wait till politics are finished, Thelismer," he chided.

"There is such a thing as running the two on a double track," returned Mr. Thornton, serene but non-committal. He whirled on Sylvester, his mien that of the commander-in-chief disposing his forces in the face of the enemy: "Talleyrand, you'll find fifty more quedaws out there after Cobb takes his pick. Take them down to Aunt Charette's and have her set out her best. And keep 'em well bunched and handy!"

He reached through an open window and filled the pockets of his crash suit with cigars from a box on a stand.

"Now, Luke," he invited, blandly, "let's go to a legislative district caucus. I haven't bothered to attend one for a good many years, but this one on the docket now gives signs of being interesting."

They walked down the dusty road toward the village. The State chairman was silent, with the air of a man pondering matters he does not understand; but the Hon. Thelismer Thornton beamed upon all he met. Having a certainty to deal with, and a tangible enemy in sight, he seemed at ease. He felt like one who has recovered from dizzying blows and is on trail of the enemy who dealt them. He was himself again.

A few of those he met he greeted with especial cordiality. To some he gave cigars, not with the air of one seeking favor, not with the cheap generosity of the professional politician, but with the manner of one taking paternal interest in the conduct of a good child. It was an act that seemed to go with his handclasp and smile. He caught the State chairman looking at him rather doubtfully on one of these occasions.

"The folks understand this thing up here," he said. "When those chaps were young ones I used to give them a stick of candy. Now that they are grown up I hand 'em a cigar—got into the habit and can't stop. Or else I send 'em around to Aunt Charette's and have it put on my account. Wicked performance, I suppose, and so the old ladies tell me. But I was born in the old rum-and-molasses times, Luke, when the liquor thing sort of run itself, and didn't give so many cheap snoozers a job on one side or the other."

"What's this Aunt Charette's you're talking about?" asked the chairman.

"An institution!" The Duke enjoyed the puzzled stare the little man rolled up at him. "I reckon you think you've solved the liquor question in this prohibition State at that hotel bar of yours, Luke. I've solved it in my own way up here. Aunt Charette's is an institution that I've founded. Come and look at it."

He led the way off the main street. There was a cottage at the end of a lane, tree-embowered, neat with fresh white paint and blinds of vivid green. An old man sat in an arm-chair under one of the trees. He wore gold earrings and an old-style coat with brass buttons.

"Uncle Charette," explained the Duke, as they passed him. "Simply a lawn ornament."

He led the way into the house without knocking.

"And this is Aunt Charette," he volunteered. In the centre of the spotless fore-room a ponderous woman rocked in her huge chair and knitted placidly. She was a picture of peaceful prosperity in black silk gown and gold-bowed spectacles.

"And here's the nature of Aunt Charette's institution." He pointed to an open cupboard in which there were many bottles.

"Oh! your local liquor agency," hazarded the chairman.

"No, sir! Aunt Charette's own dispensary for the ills of the mind and fatigues of the body, and run according to my own notions. It beats your bar and white jackets, Luke, or that solemn farce of cheap liquors and robber prices of the State agency system. You come in here, if you are not a drunkard or a minor or a pauper—and Aunt Charette knows 'em all—and you go to the cupboard and get your drink, or you go out there in the store-room and get your bottle, and hand the change to Aunt Charette and walk away. No other rumshop tolerated in the section, and pocket peddlers run out of town on a rail! No treating, no foolishness, no fraud. Pays her fine twice a year without going to court, the same as you. And no extras!" He smiled at the chairman significantly.

"No extras, eh!" mused Mr. Presson, enviously. "You must have a different crowd of county officers than we've got down our way."

"Perhaps so," admitted the old man, and then he allowed himself a bit of a boast; "but the secret is, you see, this little institution is something I've taken under my own wing."

It was an ill-starred moment for that honest boast. There came a thumping of feet in the hall. The man who burst in was flushed and sweating and excited.

"I'm glad you're here, Squire," he panted. "You're just in the nick o' time. They're going to jump on the old lady."

"Who's going to jump?"

"High Sheriff Niles and his posse. They ain't more'n ten rods behind, jigger wagon and all."

The Duke of Fort Canibas stared a moment at the herald. Aunt Charette raised her eyes to her protector with the air of one secure under the wings of a patron saint, and went on knitting.

"Gad!" hissed the State chairman. "They certainly do mean you this time, Thelismer! Discrediting your pull in county politics an hour before your caucus! Some one is showing brains!"

Thornton did not answer.

"How in blazes have they pulled over the sheriff?" demanded Presson. But the old man merely stared at the door.

High Sheriff Niles entered at that moment. He stood on the threshold and scowled. He was a stocky man, who had been a butcher. His face was blotched by ruddiness resembling that of raw meat. Behind his cockaded silk hat pressed the faces of his aids. The little yard was filled with men who peered in at the windows. A big truck wagon was creaking as its horses backed it to the door.

"What are you after here, Niles?" demanded Thornton. "After this stock of rum."

The Duke took another swing across the room, licked his lips, and set his extinguished cigar hard between his teeth. He was striving to control the wrath that came boiling up into his purple face and blazing eyes.

"There's the warrant!" The sheriff clapped the paper across his palm.
"Take the stuff, boys!" He waved his hand at the cupboard.

"But the most of it's in the cellar," shrilled the voice of a tattler in the hallway. "There's where she keeps it!"

"I don't need any advice," growled the sheriff. His men trudged into the room and made for the cupboard.

Now at last Aunt Charette understood that her stores were threatened. She did not leave her chair. She fumbled frantically at her big bag that hung at her waist.

"Non, non!" she cried. "Yo' may not to'ch! I have pay! I have pay for nex' sax month."

She flapped a paper at the sheriff. He took it perfunctorily. "That's all right, old woman, but it hasn't got anything to do with my business here. I'm after your stuff on a warrant." He gave back the paper and started for the stairs leading to the cellar.

"But I have pay," she vociferated. "You tell them I have pay, M'sieu' Thornton! You' told me if I have pay twice in ye'r I have de privilege—de privilege!"

The sheriff turned and grinned over his shoulder into the convulsed face of the Honorable Thelismer.

"There's a lot of bargains in politics, marm," he stated, dryly, "that takes more'n two to put 'em through when the pinch comes." He enjoyed the discomfiture that her artless confession brought to the Duke. The old man looked him up and down. That this Niles whom he himself had helped into office, who had been taking private toll from the liquor interests of the county as his predecessors had before him, a procedure condoned by the party leaders of whom the Honorable Thelismer was one—that this person should whirl on him in such fashion was a performance that Thornton could not yet fully understand. But there was the fact to contend with. A man he had helped to elevate was engaged in humiliating him in the frankly wondering gaze of his own community.

Those who peeped in at doors and windows were not, all of them, enemies. There were friends who sympathized and were astonished. Their murmurings told that.

"You infernal Hereford bull!" roared Thornton; "don't you dare to slur me before my people. You're making this raid because I haven't buttered you with ten-dollar bills to keep your hands off. You've taken 'em from all the other rumsellers—but this isn't one of your regular rumshops."

"That's right, Squire. Give it to him," muttered men at door and windows.

"We all know how the sheriff's office is run in this county." This statement was made by Talleyrand Sylvester, who came thrusting through the jam of the hall into the fore-room. "Squire," he whispered, hoarsely, "I've brought down them quedaws as you told me to. They're outside. Say the word and we'll light on that old steer in the plug-hat!"

For an instant there was a glint in the old man's eyes which hinted that the word would be given. But the impulse was merely the first reckless one of retaliation. Assault on law, even as represented by such an unworthy executive as he knew Niles to be, would make too wicked a story for slander to handle. Slander would be busy enough as it was.

He pushed the eager Sylvester to one side.

"Let me see your warrant, Niles," he requested. The officer passed it over, with a touch of sudden humility in his demeanor. "I'm only doing my duty as it's laid out by the statutes," he muttered. He quailed under the old man's eyes. He did not like the sound of the mumbling at the windows nor relish the looks of the men who had just come flocking into the yard at the heels of Sylvester.

"'Twas sworn out and passed to me," stated the sheriff.

"Sworn out on complaint of Tom Willy." He looked above the document and saw in the doorway the man who had cried information regarding the liquor in the cellar. "Tom Willy, the cheapest drunkard we've got in the town, taking sneaking revenge because he has been shut off from privileges here that decent men haven't abused! But I tell you, gentlemen, even Tom Willy isn't as cheap as the men who have sneaked behind him and prodded him on to do this. There's some one behind him, for Tom Willy hasn't got brains enough nor sprawl enough to do this all by himself."

He gave the warrant back to the sheriff. He had recovered his self-possession. He was again their Duke of Fort Canibas, who could retire with dignity even from such a position as this. "Go ahead and train with your crowd, Sheriff Niles," he drawled, sarcastically—"Tom Willy, and whoever they are behind him that are too ashamed to show themselves!"

He started for the door, Luke Presson at his heels. Aunt Charette, not exactly understanding, realized that the protecting aegis was departing.

"But I have pay!" she wailed. "You have de power, M'sieu' Thornton! They take my properties!"

He patted the shiny silk of the old woman's shoulder as he passed her.

"Keep your sitting, Aunt Charette," he advised, "and let them take it.
It will be a good investment for you—leave it to me."

He lighted a fresh cigar out-of-doors.

"Luke," he declared quietly between puffs, "this is developing into quite a caucus day—take all trimmings. I'm glad you are here to look on!"

CHAPTER V

A CAUCUS, AS IT WAS PLANNED

The town house of Fort Canibas needed no guide-board that day. All roads led to it. Thelismer Thornton walked down the main street, his following at his heels. His hands were behind his back, and he sauntered along like one who was at peace with the world. His face was serene once more. He seemed to have recovered all the genial good-nature that men associated with Thelismer Thornton. The chairman trotted on short legs at his side, looking up at him sourly. Thornton smiled down at him.

"Finding your old State campaign sicker than you thought for, hey,
Luke?"

He was now as Presson had always known him, but the little man did not seem to be consoled thereby.

"I'd like to know what's come over you to-day?" he complained. "Giving a helpless little girl hell-an'-repeat, and then standing for what you did back there right now!"

"Luke, both of us have seen a great many men lose their dignity fighting hornets. But I've come to myself, and I've stopped running and swatting. Well, Briggs, what is it?"

The man who had brought the alarm to Aunt Charette's was crowding close, plainly with something to say.

"I only wanted to tell you, Squire, that Sheriff Niles brought in word to the boys that high-uppers was back of him."

"Thinks he's running with the pack, eh? Well, Briggs, that's hardly news about Bart Niles."

"Thought I'd warn you, Squire. He says things ain't goin' on runnin' in this State the way they have been runnin'. Way he talks, him and them back of him think they've got you layin' with all four paws in the air. But we in the village here, that's behind you, don't understand it that way. Nor we can't figger what started it."

"Don't bother your heads about it to-day, Briggs. Simply stand by and be ready to grab in, you and the boys. That's all."

The post-office was in the lower story of the town house. The walls were brick to the second story. This upper part was a barn-like structure propped on the lower walls. Broad outside stairs led up to it.

Thornton and Presson were obliged to push their way through a crowd to reach the foot of the stairway. They were stopped there by an obstruction. Some men were lifting off a low wagon a cripple in a wheel-chair. He had an in-door pallor that made him seem corpselike. A man in a frock-coat and with a ministerial white tie was bossing the job.

The Duke stopped and gazed on the work amiably. The man of the white tie scowled.

"Raising a few reliable Republicans from the dead, are you, elder?" inquired the Duke, pleasantly.

The elder did not reply until he had started the cripple's chair bumping up the stairs. Then he turned on Thornton. He was not amiable.

"It's time some of the voters with honest convictions got a chance to attend a caucus in this district, even if they have to be brought from beds of pain."

Thelismer Thornton did not lose his smile.

"I'd like to have you meet the Rev. Enoch Dudley, evangelist, Luke. This is Mr. Presson, chairman of the State Committee, elder. Now that you're getting into politics you'd ought to be acquainted with your chief priest."

But Rev. Mr. Dudley, not approving the company that the State chairman was keeping, did not warm up.

"I thank you for your pleasantries, Mr. Thornton," he returned, stiffly. "I hope your sneers may make you as many votes to-day as they have in the past."

"Well, they won't," blurted a voice from a knot of men at the foot of the stairs. "We're getting woke up in this district. And it ain't going to be an empire any longer."

"I'm rather too humble a man, sir, to associate with the high lords of politics," Mr. Dudley remarked to the chairman. "The Honorable Thornton has always been up there. I'm simply one of the plain people."

"And it's time for the plain people to have their innings," declared another in the crowd.

"The pack is off!" muttered the Duke in Presson's ear.

"Why don't you introduce him right," called another. "Reverend Dudley is the next representative from this district, Mr. Chairman. And we know where he stands!"

"An humble little platform is mine," stated the minister. "But it's down where all can step aboard with me. That's all I can say."

There was a growl of approval in chorus from the larger group at the foot of the stairs. Thornton's men were at one side and looked troubled.

"War Eagle" Ivus Niles stepped forth then. He had recovered his buck sheep. He was hoarse, but still full of zeal.

"I want to ask you this, Tyrant Thornton: You ain't quite so sure that you're Lord Gull, monarch of all you survey, since my brother Bartholomew showed you the power of the law triumphant, are you?" But the taunt did not alter the tolerant smile on the Duke's face.

"Go ahead and get in all your yelps," he said, under his breath. "A hound loves company."

"When we start in to purify, we propose to purify in good shape!" cried another. "And a reverend elder ain't a mite too good for us as representative to the legislature."

"Some people think they are purifying when they burn a rag," observed the Duke, serenely. He lighted another cigar, beaming through the smoke on the glowering minister.

"Don't take that wrong, elder. I respect decency in politics. I respect men who are trying to clean things up. But before I'll let you disinfect me, I'll have to see your license and know what system you're using."

"You've got to fight the devil with fire!" roared the War Eagle.

"You mustn't steal my own plan of campaigning, Ivus. I've got a copyright on that."

He had been studying the situation there outside the town hall while he talked. Two men from the shire town, wearing the nickel badges of deputy sheriffs, stood at the foot of the stairs. A group of men that he knew to be his loyal supporters from his own village were standing at one side. He strolled over to them.

"Squire Thornton," said one, "we're barred out of this caucus. They won't let us up."

And still their leader was imperturbable. He turned inquiring gaze on the Reverend Dudley, and that gentleman declared himself with suspicious haste.

"This is going to be a strictly Republican caucus, and the check-list has been marked," he said. "We don't propose to have Democrats come in and run our affairs for us."

It was a challenge thrown down in good earnest.

In spite of the warning that his scout had brought to him, the Duke had hardly believed that amateur politicians would go to this extreme. More than ever he realized that unscrupulous men higher up were using these tools. And it was plain that the instruments had been tutored to believe that the end justified the means. What Ivus Niles said about the devil and fire betrayed them.

The Duke walked over to the minister, and took him by the lapels of his coat.

"Elder," he protested, "I don't like to see a good man used for tongs in politics. There's a lot you don't know about this game. You're in wrong."

"You're not the right man to tell me so, Mr. Thornton. I represent reform. It's time we had it. And your gospel in politics isn't my gospel."

"You've got the revised version, Parson Dudley, if you find a text in it about splitting a caucus at the door of the hall."

"The sheep shall be divided from the goats, sir."

"You've got this caucus and the Judgment Day mixed, elder." He released the minister and stepped back. "I never yet talked rough to a parson. But you've cut loose from common sense. When you get down on a level with me at a caucus door you're no parson—you're a politician, and you'll have to let me say that you're a blasted poor one. You're Enoch Dudley, now. And I want to tell you, Enoch, that neither you nor any bunch of steers you happen to be teaming can keep legal voters out of that hall. As to whether this or that man can vote in the caucus, that will be settled when we get in there. But these men of mine are going in. It's up to you to decide whether they shall go in as lions or lambs."

"Violence shall rest on your own head!" cried the minister. "I'll see that the world knows about it."

"We'll see whose case shows up best when the report is made," retorted the Duke. "But I'm done arguing. Pull off those deputies." Sheriff Niles appeared at that moment. He had left his subalterns to store the confiscated liquors.

"Niles, pull your men off the door, here," commanded the Duke. "Your county politics hasn't any business at our caucus here to-day."

"I've been asked to keep this caucus regular, and I'm going to do it," insisted the sheriff.

"So am I," agreed Thornton. "So when the story goes out it will have to be said that you and I were working together to keep politics pure." The faithful Sylvester was hovering on the outskirts of the crowd. Thornton beckoned to him and he came. The Duke had probed the scheme and understood the stubbornness of the opposition. He was ready to act now.

"Sylvester, you're a constable of this town. Take those fifty woodsmen over there as a special posse. I'm going to stand here at the foot of these stairs, and see to it that this caucus isn't packed. If you see hand laid on me or on a respectable voter going up these stairs, you pile in with those men. Go ahead up, boys, one and all!" He stepped between the deputies and beckoned to the voters. He stood there like a lighthouse marking safe channel. He challenged both the sheriff and the minister with his gaze. "We've got peace in stock and fight on tap, gentlemen," he declared. "Full assortment, and no trouble to show goods."

The village loyalists trooped forward promptly and flocked up. The deputies made no effort to stop them. Niles did not issue orders. Threats and badges might cow voters. But he knew woodsmen. He was not prepared to fight fifty of them.

The opposition hurried up also. Men streamed past on both sides of the old man, looming there in his wrinkled suit of crash.

"Let 'em go. We've got him licked in the caucus anyway," growled Niles to one of his deputies. "The back districts are here two to one against his village crowd."

Chairman Presson stood at one side and waited. Harlan Thornton came to him, leading his horse through the crowd.

"You have influence with my grandfather, Mr. Presson. You have told me yourself that it's folly to try to send me to the legislature. I'm not fitted for such duties. I am interested only in our business. You have had a chance to talk with him since you left the house. Haven't you made him change his mind?"

"I don't know," confessed Mr. Presson. "He's got my opinion, but he doesn't seem to think it's worth much."

"Well, there's only one thing to do." stated Harlan, resolutely. "I'll stand up here and let the voters of this district know how I feel about it. I've got my own rights in this thing, grandfather or no grandfather."

"Harlan, my boy!" The State chairman laid his hand protestingly on the young man's arm. "You've got my sympathy in regard to your going to the legislature in this fashion. But let me say something to you. Thelismer Thornton is standing here to-day putting up as pretty a political fight as I ever looked on. I hope he'll change his mind about sending you. I'll talk with him again. But if you lift one finger now when he's got his back against the wall you'll be a disgrace to your family. Take that from me. You'd better hop on your horse and ride off where the air is better."

After a moment of sombre reflection the young man swung himself to the back of his horse and galloped away. The look that he got from his grandfather when he departed did not enlighten or reassure him.

The little square of the town house was pretty well cleared by this time. The voters had crowded into the hall. One of the last men to pass the Duke hesitated on the stairs and came back. He was a short, chunky, very much troubled gentleman. He had slunk rather than walked past. He came back with the air known as "meeching."

"I'm afraid you're going to misunderstand me, Mr. Thornton."

The Duke offered no opinion.

"I hardly know how to go to work to explain myself in this matter," faltered the apologist.

"Considering that I got your appropriation for your seminary doubled last session in the stingiest year since the grasshoppers ate up Egypt, I should think you'd find it just a little troublesome convincing me that Enoch Dudley has got any claim over my interests so far's you're concerned. What's the matter with you, Professor?"

He invited the State chairman toward them by a toss of his head. His tone had been severe, but there was humor in his eyes.

"This is Principal Tute, of the Canibas Seminary, Luke. You remember the cussing I got from the Finance Committee for holding up the bill till I got the Professor's appropriation doubled. He's trying to tell me how much obliged he is."

Mr. Tute looked very miserable.

"I've always said you were the best man this district ever had in the legislature. I've stood up and said that in the open, Mr. Thornton. You're an institution down to the capitol. When there was talk of a change for the sake of reform—and you know I'm teaching reform principles in my school, Mr. Thornton," he hastened on desperately; "I'm teaching sociological principles in accordance with the advanced movement, and if I don't practice what I preach I'm false to my pupils, and—"

"You're going to vote against me to-day, are you, Tute?"

"I've said right along we ought to bear with you so long as you lived and wanted to be elected."

"Like the seven years' itch, eh?"

"But you are trying to make us mere serfs in politics by dictating our choice, and what I teach of the principles of democracy—"

Thornton tapped the little man on the shoulder.

"What they've done, Tute, is come up here with a dose to fit the palate of every one of you fellows, and you don't know enough to understand that you're being handled. You're going to vote against me, are you?"

"I call on this gentleman to witness that I say you're the best man for the place. You're able, you're efficient, and you have done an immense amount of good for your constituents, and you—"

"But you won't vote for me to-day, eh?" reiterated the old man, pitilessly.

Mr. Tute started again on his line of fulsome praise, but the Duke checked him brusquely.

"That will do, Professor Tute. I like cake. I like it frosted. But I'll be d—d if I want it all frosting. Run up into the hall. Come along, Luke. We'll miss the text if we don't get in."

The last of the stragglers followed them up the stairs.

CHAPTER VI

A CAUCUS, AND HOW IT WAS RUN

The earlier arrivals had pushed the settees of the Fort Canibas town hall to one side. They were piled against an end wall. There were not enough of them to furnish seats for that mob. For that matter, voters seemed to have no inclination to sit down that day. There was barely enough standing-room when all had entered the hall.

Through them, friends and foes jostling each other, the Duke took his leisurely way. Presson was close behind him.

The rostrum, elevated a few feet above the main floor, was enclosed by boarding that came almost to the shoulders of those who stood within. Thornton, arrived at the front of the hall, put his shoulders against the boarding, shoved his hands into his trousers pockets, and gazed into the faces of his constituents. He was still amiable. But Presson sulked. It was hot in there, and the proletariat was unkempt and smoked rank tobacco.

"It's worth your while just the same, Luke," advised Thornton, in an undertone. He was conscious of the chairman's disgust, and it amused him. "They're going to have real caucuses in this State this year, they tell me. And this seems to be a nice little working model of the real thing. Better study it. It'll give you points on 'popular unrest,' as the newspapers are calling it."

The men in the pen above them were having an animated discussion. They were the members of the town committee. Thornton craned his neck and looked up at them. One of his loyal friends was there.

"What's the matter, Tom? Why not call to order?"

The man gave him a cautious wink before replying.

"There don't seem to be any copy of the call here, Squire. Some of 'em says we'll waive the reading of it. I say no. I say we don't want any holler to go out that this caucus wasn't run regular."

"It's only a 'technetical' point, anyway," protested one of the disputants.

"Well, I wouldn't allow too many of those 'technetical' points to get by in a caucus that you're ready to advertise under your reform headlines," advised the Duke. He settled himself against the boarding again. "Better give us straight work, boys."

It was not a threat. But it operated as effectually. A member of the town committee rapped for silence, and explained the situation rather shamefacedly. He asked the voters to be patient until the call could be prepared in the regular way.

"And now comes War Eagle Niles to help us kill time," observed Thornton. The agitator was pushing toward them. Men were urging him forward. It was evident that baiting their autocrat had become the favorite diversion of Fort Canibas' voters that day.

"Perhaps it was all right once for politicians to lead people by the nose, but it ain't all right now," stated Niles, as soon as he had squirmed into a favorable position for attack. "People didn't know, once. They didn't have newspapers, nor grange discussions, nor lecturers, nor anything to keep 'em posted. They let themselves be led."

"Don't let yourself be led, Ivus. You're more interesting as you are now, bolting with your head and tail up. But I wonder whether you know just what it was you shied at?"

"Know? You bet I know!" shouted the demagogue. "How about taxes? I'm paying more to-day on my little farm out back there than you're paying on a whole township of your wild lands. And don't you suppose I know how it's all arranged?"

"Why, Ivus, I suppose the chaps that have paid you to go around this district shooting your mouth off about 'tyrants' have supplied you with plenty of ammunition. Go ahead! I'd like to know how it was arranged, according to their notions."

"Who was that man that drove up to your house this morning in his devil machine, that cost more than my whole stand of farm buildings twice over—that man that's standing there beside you now, sneering at the voters of this State that he's been teaming? That's the Honor'ble Presson. He's chairman of the State Committee. He runs the big hotel down to the capital city. And where does he get money to buy automobiles with? I know. It's out of selling rum over his bar—and there's a law in the State constitution that makes selling rum a jail offence. But you don't see him in jail, do you?"

Astonishment that changed to fury nearly paralyzed the honorable chairman's tongue while Niles proceeded that far. When he did find his voice to protest, the War Eagle turned from him to the Duke like one who finds a weapon in each hand and becomes reckless.

"And no one sees you coming up and paying taxes on what you're really worth. It's all: 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours!' among the big fellows in this State. You can break all the laws you want to if you're in the right ring. And it's going to have a stop put to it!"

"Go ahead, Ivus!" encouraged his object of attack.

"If she's as sick as all that, she needs medicine quick. Get out your dose."

"The people is going to be reckoned with now," declaimed Niles, banging his knotted fist against the boarding.

"You mean of course The People—spelled with a capital T and a capital P, the same as you see it in those reform newspapers you've mentioned! Now, boys, I want you all to listen to me just one moment. You know I'm no hand to make speeches. But just let's talk this over. It'll take only a jiffy. There's a little time to kill while we're getting this caucus started regular. Now, some of these newspaper editors, who never get anywhere out of their offices except home to dinner, are writing a lot just now about THE PEOPLE—in capital letters, understand! Talking about 'em like as though they were a great force in politics—always organized and ready to support reform. Only needed to be called on. Fellows like Ivus here, that read and read and never bump up next to real things outside, get to think that The People make up an angel band that's all ready to march right up to the ballot-box and vote for just the right thing. Only have to be called on!"

The voters were crowding closer and listening. There was a half-smile on his face while he talked. He was not patronizing. But he took them into his confidence with simple directness.

"Boys, I don't know where you'll go to find that angel band!"

"The people of this State are gettin' woke up enough to know!" cried a voice. The man stepped forward. It was Davis. "I say to you again, Mr. Thornton, don't put us all on the plane of Ivus Niles."

The Duke was not ruffled by the interruption.

"Walt, I've been in politics a good many years. I was in the House in this State when Jim Blaine was there reporting for his newspaper. I want to tell you that when you get next to the real thing in politics you'll find that this people thing—the capital-letter idea—is a dream. Yes, it is, now! Don't undertake to dispute me! Here in one town you'll find a man or a set of men handling a bunch. A county clique handles another one. Some especial local interest makes this crowd vote one way; same thing will make another bunch in another town mad and they'll vote against it. It's all factions and self-interest, and you can't make it over into anything different. That's practical politics. Get out and you'll see it for yourself. You can swap and steer—that's politics. But as for uniting 'em into The People—well, try to weld a cat's tail and a tallow candle, and see how you get along!"

"It's high time we had less politics, then," cried Davis, "when politics lets the picked and chosen get rich selling rum or dodging taxes, and takes a poor man and pestles his head into the mortar till every cent is banged out of his pocket!"

"Davis, I'm patient with ramrodders when they're having an acute attack like you're having. It's the chronic cases I get after, the ones who are in it for profit, and have been poking you fellows up because they're paid for doing it. All of a sudden all of you are yapping at me because I've played the game. I'm talking business with you now. I suppose I might spread-eagle to you about our grand old State, and the call of duty and the noble principles of reform; I might fly up on this fence here and crow just as loud as any of those reform roosters, and not have any more sense in what I was saying than they do. I see you've got hungry for that revival hoorah. But I'm not going to perch and crow for the sake of getting three cheers! I'm going to stay right down here on the gravel with you, boys, and scratch a few times, and show you a few kernels, and cluck a little business talk. This district—you and your folks before you—has been sending me to the legislature for a good many years. I'm an ordinary man, and I've been against ordinary men down there at the State House. I should have played the game different with angels, but I couldn't find the angels."

He pointed through a window to a large building that occupied a hilltop just outside the village.

"Half the counties in the State were after that training seminary," he went on. "I beat the lobby, and got it. How much money do you and your neighbors make boarding the scholars? I have pulled out State money for more than a thousand miles of State roads in this county. I got the State to pay every cent of the expense of that iron bridge across the river. I lugged off bigger appropriations for my district than any other man who has been in the House—because I know the ropes and have the pull. I could have played angel, and not brought home a plum. Would that suit you?"

"I ain't detracting from what you got for us. But while you was dipping with your right hand for us, you was dipping with your left hand for yourself and them that trained with you," retorted Davis.

"And I wasn't to take any ordinary, human, business precautions about looking out for myself in any way, then?"

"You wasn't supposed to be representing yourself down there."

"For one hundred and fifty dollars every two years, and my mileage, I was to give up all my own business and my interests, and play statesman, pure and holy, for you up here? Refuse to help those men down there who helped me when I wanted something, and go down in the rotunda twice a day and thumb my nose at the portraits of the fathers of the State because they played politics in their time? That what you wanted me to do?"

"I've only got this to say," retorted Mr. Davis, afraid to argue: "You're proposing to jam your grandson down our throats, now that you've made your pile and got tired. You're going to have a man from this district that will do what you say and keep on flimflamming the people. I and them with me say no, and we'll show you as much in the caucus to-day."

"For the sake of having your own stubborn way—like most of the others that are howling about 'The People' in this State just now—you are ready to tip over this district's apple-cart, are you? Is that what you are trying to do? You take what I have given you, legislation and money that I've paid for labor in this section, and then propose to kick my pride in the tenderest place? I'll show you, Davis!"

"Well, show! We ain't a mite scared."

For some moments the throng in the town hall had shown waning interest in this discussion. There seemed to be matters outside that distracted the attention of those near the windows.

"There's a fire up Jo Quacca way!" called some one. The windows of town hall were high and uncurtained. All could see. Smoke, ominous and yellow, ballooned in huge volumes across the blue sky of the June day.

"There ain't no bonfire in that, gents," declared a man. "That fire has got a start, and if it's in that slash from that logging operation, it ain't going to be put out with no pint dipperful."

There was sudden hush in the big room. All men were gazing at the mounting masses that rolled into the heavens and blossomed bodefully over the wooded hills. Fat clouds of the smoke hung high and motionless. From the earth went up to them whirls and spirals and billowing discharges like smoke from noiseless artillery.

A man had climbed upon a window-sill of the hall in order to see more clearly.

"I tell you, boys," he shouted, "that's a racin' fire, and it's in that Jo Quacca slash! I, for one, have got a stand of buildin's in front of that fire."

He jumped down and started for the door. Several men followed him.

The chairman of the town committee began to shake a paper above his head.

"It's no time to be leaving a caucus," he pleaded. "We've fixed up a new call. We'll get down to business now."

"I know where my business is just this minute!" shouted the man who was leading the first volunteers. "And it ain't in politics."

The chairman tried to put a motion to adjourn, but at that moment the meeting-house bell began to clang its alarm.

"Save your property, you Jo Quacca fellows!" some one cried, and the crowd stampeded.

Thornton remained in his place in front of the rostrum. He noted who were running away. The deserters were the back-district voters—the opposition among whom his enemies had prevailed. The villagers remained. Here and there among them walked Talleyrand Sylvester. He was unobtrusive and he spoke low, but he was earnest.

When at last the chairman made his voice heard, Ivus Niles was shouting for recognition. That stern patriot had remained on guard.

"Maybe my house is burning, gents, but I ain't going to desert my post of duty till a square deal has been given. I call on you to adjourn this caucus till evening."

"Question!" was the chorus that assailed the chairman. The villagers crowded around the rostrum.

The motion to adjourn was voted down with a viva voce vote there was no disputing.

"It ain't just nor right!" squalled the War Eagle. "I'm here to protest! You ain't giving the voters a show! This thing shan't be bulled through this way!"

But that caucus was out of the hands of Mr. Niles and such as he, though some of the staunchest of Thornton's opposition had remained to fight.

Sylvester elbowed his way to the front, his followers at his back.

"I move, Mr. Chairman, that the check-list be dispensed with. It ain't ever been used in this caucus, anyway. And I'm in favor of hustling this thing so that we can all get up there and fight that fire. I don't believe in staying here caucusing, and let folks' property burn up."

The opposition howled their wrath. They understood all the hypocrisy of this bland assertion, but protest amounted to nothing. The voters were behind Sylvester. That gentleman promptly put in nomination the name of Harlan Thornton for representative to the legislature from the Canibas class of towns and plantations, and the choice was affirmed by a yell that made the protesting chorus seem only a feeble chirp. And then the caucus adjourned tumultuously.

Through it all Thelismer Thornton stood with shoulders against the boarding, that quizzical half-smile on his face. He walked out of the hall past the outraged Ivus Niles without losing that smile, though the demagogue followed him to the door with frantic threats and taunts.

The meeting-house bell still chattered its alarm, an excited ringer rolling the wheel over and over.

Chairman Presson, who had found speech inadequate for some time, followed the Duke to the stairway outside, and stood beside him, gazing up at the conflagration. Smoke masked the hills. Fire-flashes, pallid in the afternoon light, shot up here and there in the yellow billows rolling nearest the ground.

"I tell you, Thelismer, you'll never get across with this! It's too devilish rank!"

Elder Dudley marched past, leading the last stragglers of his following from the hall. His face was flushed with passion, but he had neither word nor look for the Duke. Even Niles was silent, bringing up the rear of the retreat, pumped dry of invective.

"You'll be up against Dudley, there, at the polls, running on an independent ticket. He's sure to do it!" went on Presson, watching them out of sight.

"You don't know the district," said Thornton, serenely. "And what's more important, I've got almost three months to meet that possibility in. I had only three hours to-day. You needn't worry about the election, Luke."

With his eyes still on the seething smoke vomiting up from the Jo Quacca hills he lighted a fresh cigar.

"There's something up there that's worrying me more. Cobb has got fire enough to break up a State convention."

Certain columns of smoke shot up, bearing knobs like hideous mushrooms. The knobs were black with cinders and spangled with sparks. The menace they bore could be descried even at that distance. A breeze wrenched off one of those knobs, and carried it out from the main conflagration. The roof of a barn half-way down the hillside began to smoke. Sparks had dropped there. After a time the two men could see trickles of fire running up the shingles.

"There goes one stand of buildings," announced Thornton.

"I swear, you take this thing cool enough!"

"Well, I'm not a rain-storm or a pipe-line, Luke. There's nothing more I can do. When Sylvester gets there with his crowd I'll have a hundred men or so of my own fighting it. And if a man sets fire on his land the law makes him pay the neighbors if the fire gets away and damages them. I'm prepared to settle without beating down prices. Let's go over to The Barracks."

Presson went along grumbling.

"You ought to have stayed in this fight this year for yourself, Thelismer. There was no need of all this uproar in ticklish times. A proposition like this makes the general campaign all the harder." He kept casting apprehensive glances behind at the swelling smoke-clouds.

"I'm paying the freight, Luke."

"There'd have been no fight to it if you'd stayed in yourself. Even your old whooping cyclone of a Niles, there, said that much. You've gone to work and got your grandson nominated, but between him and the bunch and that fire up there it looks to me as though your troubles were just beginning. Say, look here, Thelismer, honest to gad, you're using our politics just to grind your own axes with!"

"And you never heard of anybody except patriots in politics, eh?"

"When you prejudice a State campaign in order to break up a spooning-match and to give your grandson a course of sprouts outside a lumbering operation, you're making it a little too personal—and a little too expensive for all concerned."

The State chairman had his eyes on the fire again.

"As far as my business goes—that's my business," said the Duke, placidly. "As for the expense—well, I never got a great deal of fun out of anything except politics, and politics is always more or less expensive. When the bills get in for what has happened to-day I reckon I'll find the job was worth the price. You needn't worry about me, Luke—not about my failing to get my money's worth. For when I walk across the lobby of the State House, and they can say behind my back, 'There's old Thornton—a gone-by. Got licked in his district!' When they can say that, Luke, life won't be worth living, not if I've got thousand-dollar bills enough to wad a forty-foot driving-crew quilt!"

CHAPTER VII

WITH THE KAVANAGH AT HOME

When Harlan Thornton rode away out of the yard of the town house he was the bitterest rebel in the Duke's dominions. But he realized fully the futility of standing there in public and wrangling with his grandfather.

He understood pretty well the ambitious motive his grandfather had in forcing his will; Thelismer Thornton had urged the matter in the past. It had been the only question in dispute between them. And the young man had never resented the urgings. He appreciated what his grandfather hoped to accomplish for the only one who bore his name. But this high-handed attempt to shanghai him into politics outraged his independence. His protests had been unheeded. The old man had not even granted him an interview in private, where he could plead his own case. In business matters they had been co-workers, intimate on the level of partnership, with the grandfather asking for and obeying the suggestions the grandson made. On a sudden Harlan felt that he hardly knew this old man, who had shown himself contemptuous, harsh, and domineering. And then he thought of the girl who had been so grievously insulted in his presence, and he rode to find her.

His way took him across the long bridge that spanned the river. The river marked the boundary-line of his country. After that day's taste of the politics of his native land he felt a queer sense of relief when he found himself on foreign soil.

Beyond the little church and its burying-ground, with the tall cross in its centre, the road led up the river hill to the edge of the forest. Here was set Dennis Kavanagh's house, its back to the black growth, staring sullenly with its little windows out across the cleared farms of the river valley.

To one who knew Kavanagh it seemed to typify his attitude toward the world. He had seen other men clutching and grabbing. He had clutched and grabbed with the best of them. When one deals with squatter claims, tax titles, forgotten land grants and other complications that tie up the public domain, it often happens that the man who waits for the right to prevail finds the more unscrupulous and impetuous rival in possession, and claiming rather more than the allowed nine points at that. So Dennis Kavanagh had played the game as the others had played it. When one looked up at the house, with its back against the woods, staring with its surly window-eyes, one saw the resoluteness of the intrenched Kavanagh put into visible form.

The dogs came racing to meet Harlan. They knew him as their mistress's friend.

She was sitting on the broad porch-rail when he rode up, and he swung his horse close and patted her cheek as one greets a child. She smiled wistfully at him.

"Am I impudent, and all the things your grandfather said? I've been thinking it all over, Big Boy, as I was riding home."

"You're only a little girl, and he talked to you as he'd talk to one of our lumber-jacks," he burst out, angrily. "It was shameful, Clare. I never saw my grandfather as he was to-day. He has used me just as shamefully."

"I suppose I haven't had the bringing up a girl ought to have," she confessed. "I haven't thought much about it before. There was nothing ever happened to make me think about it. I was just Dennis Kavanagh's girl, without any mother to tell me better. I suppose it has been wrong for me to ride about with you. But you didn't have any mother and I didn't have any mother, and it—it sort of seemed to make us—I don't know how to say it, Big Boy! But it seemed to make us related—just as though I had a brother to keep me company. I suppose it has been wrong when you look at it the way girls have to look at such things."

He gazed on her compassionately. A few ruthless words had broken the spell of childhood.

There was shame in her eyes as she gazed up at him. He had seen the flush of youth and joy in her cheeks before—he had seen the happy color come and go as they had met and parted. But this hue that crept up over cheeks and brow made pity grow in him.

"He said—but you know what he said! And it isn't true. You know it isn't true. He shamed and insulted me because I'm a girl—and can't a girl have a friend that's tender and good to her?"

"A girl can," he said, gravely, "because I'm that friend, Clare. Perhaps my grandfather cannot understand. But I'll see that he does. We are to have some very serious talk together, he and I. I'm here to tell you, little girl, that I'm grateful because you sent that message into the woods to me. I'm not going to allow myself to be made a fool of in any such fashion; I'm not going to be sent to the legislature."

"Oh, I've been thinking—thinking how it sounded—all that I said," she mourned. "It all came to me as I was riding home—after what your grandfather said. I didn't realize what kind of a girl I must seem to folks that didn't know. But you know. It sounded as though I was claiming you for myself, when I didn't want you to go away. I'm ashamed—ashamed!" She averted her eyes from him. The crimson in her cheeks was deeper. It was a vandal hand that had wrecked the little shrine of her childhood. His indignation against Thelismer Thornton blazed higher.

But Dennis Kavanagh knew how to be even more brutal, for that was Dennis Kavanagh's style of attack. He came out upon the porch, a broad, stocky chunk of a man, with eyebrows sticking up like the horns on a snail, and the eyes beneath them keen with humor of the grim and pitiless sort.

"And how do you do to-day, Harlan Thornton?" he asked. "And how is that old gorilla of a grandfather of yours? Though you needn't tell me, for I don't want to know—not unless you can lighten me up a bit by telling me that he's enjoying his last sickness. But right now while I think of it, I have something to say to you, young Thornton, sir."

The young man stared hard at him. It was an unwonted tone for Kavanagh to employ. Clare's father, till now, had not included Harlan in his feud with the grandfather. He had always treated him with a brusqueness that had a sort of good-humor beneath it. His discourse with the young man had been curt and satiric and infrequent, and consisted usually in mock messages of defiance which he asked to have delivered by word of mouth to the grandfather. But his tone now was crisp and it had a straight business ring.

"My girl will be sixteen to-morrow. She is done with childhood to-day. Children may ride cock-horse and play ring-around-a-rosy. I haven't drawn any particular line on playfellows up to now. But there isn't going to be any playing at love, sir."

"I never have played at love with your daughter!" cried Harlan, shocked and indignant at this sudden attack.

"Well, I'm fixing it so you won't. We won't argue about what has happened, nor we won't discuss what might happen. All is, I don't propose to have any grandson of old Thornton mixed up in my family. I don't like the breed. You take that word back to him. I hear he's been making talk. He made some talk to-day. You needn't look at Clare, young man. She didn't tell me. But it came across to me mighty sudden. Others heard, too. What I ought to do is go over there and stripe his old Yankee hide with a horsewhip. But you tell him for me that that would be taking too much stock in anything that a politician in your politics-ridden States could say. That's all. You've got it, blunt and straight. And, by-the-way, I understand he's making a politician out of you, too, to-day? I'm taking this thing just in time!"

The young man and the girl looked at each other. It was a pitiful, appealing glance that they exchanged. Shame surged in both of them. In that gaze, also, was mutual apology for the ruthless ones who had dealt such insult that day in their hearing; there was hopelessness that any words from them to each other, just then, could help the situation. And in that gaze, too, there was proud denial, from one to the other, that anything except friendship, the true, honest comradeship of youth, had drawn them together.

Kavanagh eyed them with grim relish. The thought that he was harrying one of the Thorntons overbore any consideration he felt for his daughter, even if he stopped to think that her affection was anything except the silliness of childhood.

"Politics seems to be a good side-line for the Thornton family," Kavanagh remarked, maliciously. "If you can start where your grandfather is leaving off, you ought to be something big over in your country before you die!"

"I'm not interested in politics, Mr. Kavanagh, nor in my grandfather's quarrels with you."

"I am, though! Interested enough to advise you to keep to your own side of that river!"

"I'll admit that you have the right to advise your daughter about the friends she makes. But I don't grant you the privilege of insulting me before her face and eyes by putting wrong constructions on our friendship."

"Meaning that you're going to keep up this dilly-dally business whether
I allow you to or not?"

It was a cruel question at that moment. The girl was looking at him with her heart in her eyes. He had understood her pledge of loyalty given a moment before. Youth is not philosophic. She would misunderstand anything except loyalty in return.

"Going to court my daughter, are you, according to the Thornton style of grabbing anything in sight that they want?"

"Say, look here, Mr. Kavanagh," declared the young man, hotly, "I'm not going to answer any such questions. But I'm going to tell you something, and I'm going to tell it to you straight and right here where your daughter can hear me. I'm not the kind that goes around making love to any father's daughter behind his back. I've never made love to your daughter. Why, man she's only a child! And don't you give me any more sneers about it. That's man to man—understand? And I'm not going to let you nor my grandfather or any one else break up the innocent friendship between my little playmate here and myself. Now I hope you'll take that in the way I mean it. If you don't, it's your fault." He had spoken to answer the appeal in her eyes.

He had backed his horse away so that he could face Kavanagh on the steps of the porch. The girl leaped down from the rail, her face alight, and ran to him and patted his hand.

"By Saint Mike, do you think you'll tell me how to run my house?" demanded Kavanagh. He came down the steps. "I'll build a coffin for you and a cage for her before that!"

"You stay where you are, father!" She faced him with spirit. "You have insulted me worse than you've insulted Harlan. You needn't worry about my going behind your back to make love to any one. But you shall not break up the dearest friendship I ever had."

This was the Clare Kavanagh who had bearded even Thelismer Thornton that day—the imperious young beauty that the country-side knew. Her father had often tested that spirit before, and had allowed her to dominate, secretly proud that she was truly his own in violence of temper and in determination to have her own way. But just now he was lacking that tolerantly humorous mood which usually gave in to her.

"To the devil with your fiddle-de-dee friendship!" he shouted. "You're sixteen, you young Jezebel; and you—you're old enough to know better, Thornton. I know what it's leading to, and it ain't going further. I'll not stand here and argue with you. But if you come meddling in my family after what I've said, you'll get hurt, young man."

"That's right—we won't argue the question," Thornton retorted. "There's nothing to argue. You know where I stand in the matter, little girl. That's all there is to it, so far as we're concerned. I'm going now. I think I'm ready for that talk with my grandfather."

He took leave of her with a frank handclasp. Kavanagh glowered, but did not comment.

When Harlan whirled his horse he saw the conflagration on the Jo Quacca hills.

He gasped something like an oath. "There goes the slash on our operation!" he said, aloud.

"Your grandfather must have got you into politics in good shape by this time," observed Kavanagh, sarcastically. "At any rate, he seems to be celebrating with a good big bonfire."

At that moment the three of them beheld the farm buildings burst into flame.

"Offering up sacrifices, too!" commented the satirist. "Seems to me, Thornton, you ought to be there. They'll be calling for three cheers and a speech!"

In one heartsick moment Thornton realized that this raging fire had something to do with the political affairs of that day. He had seen "Whispering" Urban Cobb at "The Barracks" in the forenoon, and knew that he had led away a crowd of woodsmen for some purpose of his own. Just what a dangerous conflagration on the Jo Quacca hills could accomplish in relation to that caucus, Harlan did not stop to ponder. He could see that a fire was rioting over his lands, and destroying the property of others. His horse had already begun to leap for the highway, but the girl cried after him so beseechingly that he reined the animal back.

"Just one moment, Harlan! A little instant! I haven't unsaddled Zero yet. Wait!" She whistled, and the horse came cantering. The hounds, seeing him, leaped and gave tongue understandingly. "I'm going with you," she declared, swinging to her saddle.

Her father came down off the steps, running at her. "No, you're not, you wild banshee. What did I just tell you?"

"You told me that children may ride cock-horse—and I'm not sixteen till to-morrow!" she cried, jumping her horse just as her father's clutching fingers touched his bridle. She was out in the road before Harlan's horse had picked up his heels. She swung her little whip above her head.

"Come on, Big Boy!" she urged at the top of her voice, crying above the clamor of the racing dogs. "We're playfellows to-day, and I can't fall in love till to-morrow!" The last words she lilted mockingly, flashing a look backward at Dennis Kavanagh.

The old man did not shift his attitude, fingers curved to clutch, arms extended, until he heard the tattoo of their horses' hoofs on the long bridge.

"Maybe Brian Boru might have been proud of her for a daughter," he muttered, as he trudged back up the steps, "but I'll be dammed if I know whether I am or not!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE MANTLE OF THELISMER THORNTON

The fire on the Jo Quacca hills was checked at nightfall. Two hundred beaters and trenchers managed to fight it back and hold it in leash to feed on the slash of the timber operation. But, like a tiger confined in its cage, it had reached out through its bars and claimed victims. Three stands of farm buildings were in ruins.

Harlan Thornton, sooty and weary, left the fire-line as soon as he knew that the monster had been subdued. He rode about to reassure the owners that their losses would be made up by himself and his grandfather.

"Keep away from the lawyers," he counselled the losers. "They'll get half the money out of you if you hire them. We'll settle after appraisal."

The men that he talked to seemed sullen in spite of his assurances. They seemed to be repressing taunts or reproaches merely in consideration of the fact that he was holding the purse-strings. He noted this demeanor, and feared to ask questions.

Clare Kavanagh rode with him; she had not left his side, even when he led his crews into perilous places and entreated her to keep back.

And they rode away together down the long stretch of highway from the hills to the village. Behind them, against the dusk, glowed the red, last signals of the dying fires: tree-trunks upraised like smouldering torches, the timbers of the falling buildings tumbling from their props and sending up showers of sparks. A pale sliver of new moon made the red of the fires even more baleful, and the two who rode together looked back and felt the obsession of something they had never experienced before.

"I am unhappy, Big Boy," sighed the girl. "We have never come back from our rides like this."

"It has been a wicked day for both of us, child."

"And you cannot call me child after to-day—so my father says." Her voice was still plaintive, but there was a hint of the old mischief there. "I'll be sixteen to-morrow—and I didn't know until to-day that I'd be so sorry that it is so. Ever since I was ten I've been wishing I could be eighteen without waiting for the years. But I don't know, now, Harlan. It seemed as though I'd be getting more out of living. I thought so." Tears were in her voice now. "It seems as though I'd grown up all of a sudden; and things aren't beautiful and happy and—and as they used to be—not any more! I've lost something, Harlan. And if growing up is losing so much, I don't want to grow up."

He listened indulgently and understood this protest of the child. Their horses walked slowly side by side, and the tired hounds trailed after them.

"The grown-ups do lose a lot of things out of life, little girl—things that mean a great deal in childhood. But keep your heart open, and other things will come."

"Perhaps when I get to be twenty-four years old and as big as you are I can talk that way, and believe it, too. But just now I'm only a girl that doesn't believe she's grown up, even if they do tell her so, and tell her she mustn't be a playmate any longer. And you are not to ride with me any more, and you are not to come to my house nor may I come to yours. That's what they say. What are we to do, then?"

She cried her question passionately. He had no answer ready. Platitudes would not do for this child, he reflected, and to lecture her then even on the A B C's of the social code would be wounding her ingenuous faith.

"If this is the way it all turns out, and I can't have your friendship any longer, what is it that you're going to do or I'm going to do?" she insisted. "That's losing too much, just because one is grown up."

Tenderness surged in his heart toward this motherless girl—tenderness in which there was a new quality. But he had no answer for her just then. He did not understand his own emotions. He was as unsophisticated as she in the affairs of the heart. His man's life of the woods had kept him free from women. His friendship with this child, their rides, their companionship, had been almost on the plane of boy with boy; her character invited that kind of intimacy.

And so he wondered what to say; for her demand had been explicit, and she demanded candor in return.

At that moment he welcomed the appearance of even Ivus Niles. That sooty prophet of ill appeared around a bend in the road ahead. The twilight shrouded him, but there was no mistaking his stove-pipe hat and his frock-coat. He was leading his buck sheep, and the hounds rushed forward clamorously. Niles stopped in the middle of the road, and let them frolic about him and his emblematic captive.

"The dogs won't hurt you, Niles," Harlan assured him, spurring forward.

"I ain't afraid of dogs, I ain't afraid of wolves, not after what I've been through with the political Bengal tigers I've been up against to-day," Niles assured him, sourly. "And your grandfather is the old he one of the pack. You tell him—"

"You can take your own messages to my grandfather, Niles." He swung his horse to pass, the girl at his side, but the War Eagle threw up his hand commandingly.

"I've got a message for you, yourself, then, and you stay here and take it. He stole our caucus for you to-day, your grandfather did—"

"You don't mean to say I was nominated!"

"That's too polite a word, Mr. Harlan Thornton. I gave you the right one the first time. He stampeded our caucus by having that fire set on the Jo Quacca hills. Three sets of farm buildings offered up to the gods of rotten politics! That's a nice kind of sacrifice, Thornton's grandson! It goes well with the crowd you're in with. It will smell well in the nostrils of the people of this State. You ought to be proud of being made a lawmaker in that way."

It was not reproach—it was insult, sneered in the agitator's bitterest tone.

"The property of three poor toilers of the soil laid flat in ashes, a town terrified by danger rushing down through the heavens like the flight of the war eagle," shouted Niles, declaiming after his accustomed manner, "and all to put you into a seat in the State House, where you can keep stealing the few things that your grandfather ain't had time or strength to steal! You've had your bonfire and your celebration—now go down and hoist the Star-Spangled Banner over 'The Barracks'—but you'd better hoist it Union down!"

Harlan dropped off his horse and strode to Niles. He seized him by the shoulder and shook him roughly, for the man had begun his oratory once more.

"Enough of that, Niles! Was I chosen in the caucus to-day? I want yes or no."

"Yes—and after three-quarters of the voters had been stampeded to fight that fire that was sweeping down on their property! And you—"

Harlan pushed him to one side, leaped upon his horse, and rode away.
The girl jumped her roan to his side.

"It's wicked, Harlan," she gasped, "wicked! I heard him! What are you going to do?"

That was another of her questions that he found it hard to answer. "I'm going to find my grandfather, Clare, and I'm going in a great hurry. Come, I can't talk now, little girl!"

They galloped down the long hill to the bridge, their horses neck and neck.

"The last ride as playmates!" she cried, as they started. Her voice broke, pathetically. He did not reply. He was too furiously angry to trust himself in conversation at that moment, and he rode like a madman, knowing that she could keep pace with him.

They drew rein at the end of the bridge.

"It's only a bit of a run for you now, little girl. I'll keep on home."

She put her hand out to him and held him for a moment.

"I'm afraid you'll go away to be a big man, after all, Harlan," she said, dolefully.

"Go in this way? What are you talking about, child?" he demanded, choking, his fury getting possession of him. "I've been disgraced—abused. I'll—but I mustn't talk to you now—the wicked words might slip out."

But she would not loose his hand just then.

"I sent for you to come home because I heard father say that politics is wicked business. But I didn't know it was as wicked as this. It's no wonder they can't get the good men like you to go into it. If they could it would be better, wouldn't it?"

Even in his distress it occurred to him that out of the mouth of this child was proceeding quaint and unconscious wisdom.

"I wish it wasn't wicked," she went on, wistfully. "I've been thinking as I rode along that I've been selfish. I'd like to see you a big man like some of those I've read about. It was selfish of me to say I didn't want you to get out of the woods and be a big man."

"I couldn't be one," he protested.

"Even a foolish little girl up here in the woods has got faith that you can—and men who are really big don't forget their old friends. I don't want you mixed up in any wicked thing, Harlan, but I wouldn't want you to go away from me thinking I was selfish and jealous. That isn't the right kind of a friend for any one to have. I've been thinking it over."

He stared at her through the dusk. This sudden flash of worldly wisdom, this unselfish loyalty in one so young, rather startled him.

"That's real grown-up talk, child," he blurted.

"Is it?" The wan little flicker of a smile that she mustered brought tears to his eyes. "Maybe it's because I'll be sixteen to-morrow. Good-night, Big Boy!" This new, womanly seriousness was full of infinite pathos. She had not released his hand. She bent forward suddenly, leaning from her saddle, and kissed his cheek. "And good-bye, my playmate!" she whispered. While his fingers still throbbed with the last pressure of her hand, the black mouth of the big bridge swallowed her. He listened to the ringing hoof-beats of her horse till sudden silence told him she had reached the soft soil on the other shore.

He did not gallop to meet his grandfather. He walked his horse for the long mile past the scattered houses of the village till he came to "The Barracks."

When he was still some distance away he saw in the gloom of the porch the red coal of the Duke's cigar. Even then he did not rush forward to protest and denounce.

He slipped off his horse, and led him toward the porch. But before he could speak his grandfather hailed him.

"Run in to your supper, bub. The boys are holding it hot for you. Luke and I were too hungry to wait."

"I can't eat now—not with what's on my mind."

"Oh, bub—bub! Run along with you! There's plenty of time for talk. I'll be here when you come out. Get something to eat, now! That's a good boy!"

Somehow he couldn't begin the attack just then. That tone was too affectionate, too matter-of-fact. And even then his hand seemed to feel the pressure of the little fingers that had released him at the bridge, and the choking feeling was still in his throat.

He gave his horse over to the hostler, and went into the house.

The lamp in the old mess-room thrust its beams only a little way into the gloom. It shone over the table and left the corners dark. The cookee brought the food from the kitchen, poured the tea, and then wiped his hands briskly on his canvas apron.

"I want to shake with you, Mr. Harlan!" He put out his hand, so frankly confident that he was doing the proper thing that the young man grasped it. "It was done to 'em good and proper. They tried to pull too hot a kittle out of the bean-hole that time—sure they did! I congratulate you! I knowed you'd get into politics some day."

Harlan pulled his hand away, and began to eat.

"Served up hot to 'em—that mess was," chuckled the cookee, on the easy terms of the familiar in the household. "Nothing like a rousin' fire if you're going to make the political pot bile in good shape."

He chuckled significantly.

The man pushed the food nearer, for Harlan did not seem to be taking much interest in his supper.

"I suppose you'll be boardin' at Mr. Presson's hotel when you get down to the legislature. I had a meal there once. They certainly do put it up fine. Say, Mr. Harlan, what do you say? Can't you use your pull, and get me a job as waiter or something down there for the session? Excuse me for gettin' at it so quick, but I thought I'd hop in ahead of the rush—they'll all be after you for something, now that you're nominated."

The young man could not discuss with this cheerful suppliant his indignant resolve not to be a legislator.

"You'll have to stay home here and look after Grandfather Thornton,
Bob," he hedged.

"Oh, thunder! He's goin' right down to spend the winter with you. Was tellin' Mr. Presson so when they et just now. Said you'd be needin' a steerin' committee of just his bigness!"

Harlan got up and kicked his chair from under him. It went over with a clatter. To his infinite relief he had suddenly recovered some of that wrathful determination that Ivus Niles's sneers had given him earlier in the evening.

Thelismer Thornton heard him coming.

"Pretty heavy on his heels, the boy is!" he observed to the State chairman. "He's been licking his dander around in a circle till he's got it rearing."

The young man halted, erect before his grandfather, but again the old man got in the first word.

"I'm going to give you all the time to talk in you want, bub. I was a little short with you to-day, when I was stirred up, but no more of that! Say all you want to. And I'm going to give you a little advice about starting in. Now—now—now! Hold on. I know just how you feel. I don't blame you for feeling that way. But it had to be done just as I did it—all of it! Now you ought to start in with me just the way Sol Lurchin was advised to when he wanted to tackle Cola Jordan, who had done him on a horse-trade. Sol went to old Squire Bain, and says he to the Squire, 'I want to stay inside the law in this. I don't want him to get no legal hold on me. But I want to talk to him. Now, what'll I say so's to give him what's comin' and still be legal?' 'Well,' says old Squire, rubbing his hands together, 'you've got to start easy, you know. You want to start easy, so's to make the climax worth something. Now, let's see! Well, suppose you walk up to him and say, "You spawn of the pike-eyed sneak that Herod hired to kill babies, you low-down, contemptible son of a body-snatcher, you was born a murderer, but lacked the courage and became a horse-thief!" There, Sol, start in easy like that and gradually work up to a climax, and you'll have him going—and all inside the law. Two dollars, please!'"

The Duke leaned back in his chair and nested his head in his big hands.
He gazed up meekly at his chafing grandson.

"Start in easy, bub, like that, and work up to your climax. I know just how you feel!"

But just at that moment the chairman of the State Committee was laughing too loudly for any dignified protest to be heard.

"For some reason, grandfather, you seem all at once to have taken me as a subject for a practical joke," said the young man, stiffly. The interlude had taken the sharp edge off his indignation, but he was still bitter. "It may seem a joke to you. To me it seems insult and persecution. I have attended to business, I've worked hard and made money for both of us. To-day you've held me up before this section to be laughed at by some and hated by the rest. I'm glad I've had half an hour to think it over since I first heard about what happened in that caucus. I won't say the things to you I intended to say. I'll simply say this: I'm going to write a letter declining this nomination. I'm going to publish that letter. And I'm going to say in that letter that I will not take any office that isn't come at honestly."

"Harlan, sit down." His feet had been in one of the porch chairs. He pushed it toward his grandson. The young man sat down.

"You don't know much about the practical end of politics, do you?"

"I do not."

"You'll allow that I do?"

"You seem to, if that's what you call this sort of business that has been going on here to-day."

"Bub, look at the thing from my standpoint for just one moment. I'll consider it from yours, too—you needn't worry. I want you to be something in this world besides a lumber-jack. You've got the right stuff in you. I tried argument with you. You'll have to own up that I did. It didn't work—now, did it?"

"I told you I didn't want to get into politics. I don't want to get in.
I don't like the company."

"Politics is all right, Harlan, when the right men are in. You are the kind the people are calling for these days. You're clean, straight, open-minded, and—"

"Clean and straight! And the people are calling for me!" The young man broke in wrathfully. "You say that to me after the sort of a caucus you sprung to-day? If that's what you consider a call from the people, I don't want to be called that way."

"It was a call, but it had to be shaded by politics a little," returned the Duke, serenely.

"If a good man is going into politics, he can go in square."

"Sometimes. But not when the opposition is out to do him with every dirty trick that's laid down in the back of the political almanac."

"If you wanted to start me, and start me fair and right, why didn't you let my name go before that caucus to-day, and then hold off your hands?"

"Because if I had you'd have stood about the same chance as a worsted dog chasing an asbestos cat through hell. Look here, bub, I wish I had the time; I'd like to tell you how most of the good men I know got their start in politics. You can be a statesman after you've got your head up where the sun can shine on it, but you've got to be touching ground to keep your head up. And if you're touching ground in politics, you'll find that your shoes are muddy—and you can't help it."

The grandson did not reply. Thornton relighted his cigar. The flare of the match showed disgust and stubbornness in the features opposite.

"You know Enoch Dudley as well as I do, Harlan. That's the man they put up. And a man that has let two of his sons be bound out and has turned back his wife for her own people to support can't hide behind any white necktie, so far's I'm concerned. Luke and I know where the money came from that they've been putting in here. We know the men behind, and what their object is. We know what they are trying to do in the next legislature. You'll see it all for yourself when the time comes, Harlan. You'll be up against them. You understand men. I'll only be wasting time in telling you what you'll see for yourself. Do you want to see a man like Enoch Dudley representing this district? If you do, go ahead and write that letter!"

"You'll not do that, Harlan," stated the chairman, with decision. "As it stands now, whatever they say about this caucus will be simply the whinings of a licked opposition. We know how to handle that kind of talk. There isn't a man on our side, from Sylvester to Urban Cobb, who will open his mouth, even if the thumb-screws are put to him. Harlan, are you the kind of a fellow that would hold your grandfather up before the people of this State in any such light? Of course you are not!"

"No, I don't suppose I am," acknowledged the young man. "But I can decline to run."

The State chairman pulled his chair close, and tapped emphasis on the candidate's knee.

"No, you can't. It would give 'em the one fact that they need for a foundation to build their case on. What you've got to do, Harlan, is accept this nomination, just as it is handed to you. Stand up and fight for your election like a man. The thing may look rank to you. Politics usually looks rank to a beginner, who has to get down and fight on the level of the other fellow. But you'll understand things better after you get along a little further. If you back out now you're leaving your grandfather open to attack. Those dogs can only bark, now. If you let 'em past you they'll have a chance to set their teeth in. Harlan, you think too much of your grandfather to do such a thing as that, don't you?"

The three of them sat in silence for a while.

"I hate to say anything just now, my boy," said the old man, at last. He leaned forward, his elbows on the arms of his chair. "Luke has put it to you a little stronger than I should have done. I don't want to beg you or coax you. If you think it's too much of a sacrifice to stand by me—if you want to quit, and can't look at it in any other way, go ahead. I can fight it out alone. I've had a good many lone fights. I'm good for one more. But before you say what you're going to say, I've got a last word to drop in. You know how I've dealt with men in business matters, my boy."

"But why can't you do the same in politics?" demanded his grandson, bitterly.

"It's just on that point that I want to put you right. I know pretty well why you haven't hankered to get into politics, Harlan. You've heard some of the sneers, slurs, and the gossip. You didn't know much about it, but you sort of felt ashamed of me on account of politics. Hold on! I know. It has been a kind of shame and pity mixed, like one feels for a drunkard in the family. This caucus seemed to you like a spree—and you got mixed into it, and you're angry with me. Listen: there are people in this world who won't allow that a man is honest in politics unless he goes about hunting for all the measures that might help him personally and kills 'em. And the same yellow-skins that howl because he doesn't do that would turn around and cuss him for seventeen kinds of a fool if he did, and ruined himself by doing it. I haven't stolen, boy. I've given my time and my energies to developing this State. I've seen it prosper and grow big. And I've shared in the prosperity by seeing that my own interests got their rights along with the rest. I'm where I can look back. And I can't see where the reputation of being a saint who cut off his own fingers for a sacrifice would help me get endorsers at the bank or find friends I could borrow money from. Harlan, boy, I'm an old man. I can't live much longer. A little reputation of some kind or another will live after me. I want you to know the right of it. And the only way for you to find out is to be what I have been. Hearing about it won't inform you. I want you to meet the men and play the game. I want you to realize that when I say I've done the best I could, I'm telling you the truth. Harlan, stand up here with me. Give me your hand. Say that you'll stand by the old man in this one thing—the biggest he ever has asked of you. It's a matter between the Thorntons, boy!"

There had been an appeal in his voice that was near wistfulness. And while he talked the wisdom that had come from the mouth of a child that evening threaded its own quaint appeal into the argument of the grandfather. Resentment and obstinacy, if they be tempered with youth, cannot fight long against affection and the ties of blood.

Harlan took his grandfather's hand.

"That's my boy!" cried the Duke, heartily, and he slipped his arm about his grandson's shoulders and patted him.

"It straightens things out a good deal," observed Presson, with the practicality of the politician. "Harlan, you're going to find a winter at the State House worth while. With your grandfather to set you going right and post you up, you ought to make good."

"I'd like to have a little light on one point," remarked the young man, curtly. He felt again the irritating prick of resentment. "What am I to be down to that legislature—myself, or Thelismer Thornton's grandson?"

"You can't afford to throw good advice over your shoulder," protested the chairman—"not when it comes from a man that's had fifty years of experience."

"Hold on, Luke, don't set the boy off on the wrong track. I know how he feels. Harlan, you're going down there just as I said you're going—with an open mind, clean hands, good, straight American spirit to do right just so far as a man in politics can do right! I want you to see for yourself. If you want my help in anything you shall have it. But it'll be Gramp advising his boy—not a boss, hectoring. Believe that!"

"You needn't be afraid of the city fellows," advised Presson.

Harlan stood up before them, earnest, intense, determined.

"A fellow placed as I have been has this much advantage over city chaps, and I'm going to take courage from it," he said: "I've had a chance to read. There are long evenings in the woods, and I haven't been able or obliged to kill time at clubs and parties. I have read, Mr. Presson. I don't know how much good it has done me. That remains to be found out. Perhaps a fellow who reads and hasn't real experience gets a wrong viewpoint. But this much I do believe: a man can be honest, himself, in politics, and can find enough honest men to stand with him. I'm going to try, at any rate. For if there's any dependence to be put in what I read there's something serious the matter in public affairs."

"Going to start a reform party, young man?" chuckled the State chairman. He had seen and tested youthful ideals before in his political experience.

"I didn't mean it that way. I wasn't talking about myself. I'll be only a little spoke in the wheel, sir. But I mean to say that when I get to the State House I'm going to hunt up the men who believe in a square deal, and I'm going to train with 'em." He spoke a bit defiantly. It was youth declaring itself. It was a spark from the fire that Ivus Niles had kindled by his sneers.

"Boy," said the old man, cheerfully, "you're prancing just a bit now. But you needn't be afraid of me, because I said I'd help you. The first thing I'll do will be to take you around and introduce you to the men down in the legislature who are proposing to reform the State. So you see I mean right!"

The State chairman seemed much amused. He chuckled.

The Duke walked to the end of the porch and gazed up at the Jo Quacca hills, where the dim, red glow still shone against the sky.

"So it took down three stands of buildings, did it, Harlan?" he called. "Did you tell the boys we'd settle promptly, and for them to keep away from the lawyers?"

"I arranged it the best I could and got their promise. But they seem to know the fire was set on purpose, and are pretty gruff about it."

"Of course the fire was set on purpose—and I have a right to clear my own land when I want to. But I know how to settle, bub, so as to turn their vinegar to cream. For when I square a political debt, whether it's pay or collect, there's no scaling down! Full value—and then a little over!"

He came back and as he passed he tweaked Harlan's ear.

"It's been a hard day, boy! Come on, let's all three go to bed."

CHAPTER IX

IN THE CENTRE OF THE BIG STATE WEB

Chairman Presson, going his way next morning, had to confess to himself that he did not have much to do with the workings of the Fort Canibas caucus. But it was worth while to see it. It revealed the character of the opposition throughout the State. And he did a notable job in the publicity line immediately. That was his opportunity of "rallying to the flag." The Duke had got his blow in first; the chairman of the State Committee got his news in first—for the State machine controlled the principal newspapers.

First news, put right, wins. The caucus in Fort Canibas exposed the methods of "so-called reformers"—as the report of it was set forth in print. And that news was a tocsin for town committeemen who had been dozing.

Thelismer Thornton, House leader, party boss, knight of the old regime, and representative of all that the reformers had been inveighing against, still controlled his district. That fact was impressed upon all. And the more vociferous the resulting complaints of the opposition, the more apparent it became that it was no mere skirmish party that had been sent out against him; he had whipped the generals themselves. His methods were mentioned discreetly; his results were made known to all men.

The fact that it was his grandson who had been nominated was not emphasized as an item of general knowledge. That "Thornton had been nominated" was. It was the essential point.

It was accepted as a tip by the many who were waiting and wondering just what this reform movement would accomplish in actual results—and that means ability to own and distribute plums. It shifted the complexion of many caucuses, or rather fixed that complexion, without any one being the wiser; for the managers of districts had been waiting for tips without saying anything in regard to their uncertainty. That's an essential in practical politics—being able to wait without letting any one know of the waiting. It gives a man his chance to cheer with the winner and declare himself an "original." The convert is never half as precious in politics as an "original." It is in heaven that the joy over the sinner who repenteth is comforting and extreme. In politics the first men on the band-wagon get the hand and what's in it.

And yet, as the tide of caucuses swelled and reports of results flowed into State headquarters, Chairman Presson and his lieutenants found themselves unable to mark men with the old certitude of touch. There was a queer kind of slipperiness everywhere. It was evident that the Canibas result had stiffened backbones in many quarters, but more new men than usual were coming forward with nominations in their fists. Many of these men were not telling any one how they felt on the big questions that were agitating the State. Some announced themselves with the usual grandiloquent generalities. It is easy enough to say that one believes in reform and good citizenship, for one can construe that later to suit circumstances.

The reformers were making a great deal of noise, mostly threats. They were passing to candidates specific questions as to their stand on the larger issues. Many candidates who had subscribed and declared themselves dodged up to headquarters on the sly and assured the State chairman that they had pledged their positions because it seemed to be a reform year, and they had to do something to shut up the yawp of the reformers. When they privately assured Presson that they would be found on the right side just the same after election, he took heart for a moment, and then was downcast after they were gone; it was tabulating liars—an uncertain job. Presson listened and took what courage he could, but the asterisks in his lists confessed his doubts.

"There's a line of stars down those lists that would puzzle the man who invented political astronomy," he told his intimates. "But I don't dare to go looking for the trouble right now. It'll be like a man looking for measles in his family of thirteen; it'll break out if it's there—he won't have to hunt for it."

The Republican State Convention was called for late June. The party managers believed that it would clarify the situation somewhat; "it would afford an opportunity for conference and free debate on the big questions where division of opinion existed," so the party organs assured their readers day by day. Chairman Presson asked them to drum this idea into the heads of the people.

But what he told himself and the secret council was that there needed to be a round-up where some of the wild steers could be thrown and branded before they should succeed in stampeding the main herd. It was a situation that called for one of the good, old-fashioned "nights before." For a practical politician knows that speeches and band music do not make a convention; they merely ratify the real convention; the real convention is held "the night before," behind closed doors at the headquarters hotel.

There were two candidates for the gubernatorial nomination. The natural legatee of the old regime in his party was in line, of course. He had been in line for ten years, as his predecessors had waited before him. He had served apprenticeship after the usual fashion: had given his money and his time; he had won the valuable title which only he who has suffered and has been bled can win, that of "the logical candidate."

But that seemed not the halcyon year for "the logical candidate."

The inevitable had happened in the matter of political succession. There had been too long a line of successors. The machine had become too close a corporation. A machine, over-long in power, by the approved process of making itself strong makes itself weak. It must pass around the offices. When it picks the best men it makes enemies of all those it disappoints. That includes principals and followers. For a time these "best men" have enough of a personal following to repel boarders. But party "best men" must make enemies in fortifying themselves and their friends.

Every time a matter is decided between factions, or a political seeker wins a subordinate job, a rival and his friends are sent away to sulk. And so at last, in the process of making the fortress impregnable, the big wall falls and "the unders" come into the citadel.

Chairman Presson would not allow that the situation in that year of reform unrest was as bad as the "unders" seemed to think. But he was worried because he was finding all men liars. And when men are lying and marking time in politics and glancing over their shoulders, look out for the stampede!

In a stampede "a logical candidate" is the first one to be trampled on.
This one was threatened in earnest.

His opponent in his own party was Protest walking on two legs and thundering anathema through a mat of mustaches that made him a marked figure in any throng. His enemies called him "Fog-horn" Spinney; his admirers considered him a silver-tongued orator. As a professional organizer of leagues, clubs, orders, and societies he knew by their first names men enough to elect him if he could be nominated. And Arba Spinney's methods may be known from the fact that once he got enough votes to make him a State Senator by asking his auditors at each rally to feel of the lumps in the corners of their ready-made vests. A man who is fingering the sheddings of shoddy feels like voting for the candidate who declares that he will make a sheep a respectable member of society once more.

As "a logical candidate," David Everett, ending his four years as a member of the Governor's executive council, was the refinement of political grooming. And he was "safe." A well-organized political machine has no use for any other sort!

Arba Spinney, vociferous, rank outsider, apostrophizing the "tramp of the cowhide boots," reckless in his denunciation of every man who held office, promising everything that would catch a vote, urging overturn for the sake of overturn and a new deal, marked the other extreme. For the mass, Change, labelled Reform, seems wholly desirable. Political sagacity saw trouble ahead. And no one in the State was politically more sagacious than Thelismer Thornton, who had seen men come and seen men go, and knew all their moods and fancies.

On the morning that the State chairman hurried out of Fort Canibas he discussed the matter of the rival candidates with the old man—that is to say, he talked and Thornton listened. And the more the chairman talked, the more his own declarations convinced him.

"Why, the old bull fiddle can't fool the convention, Thelismer. He's running around the State now, and they're listening to him like they'd listen to a steam calliope, but what he says don't amount to anything for an argument. It's the pledged delegates that count."

The old man drew a fat, black wallet from his hip pocket, and leisurely extracted a packet of newspaper clippings.

"I've been watching the lists of delegates as they've been chosen, Luke.
But I fail to see where you're getting pledged delegations."

"They don't need to be pledged, not the men our town committees are picking."

"Your town committees may be picking the men for delegates, but it is the caucus that does the pledging. And the delegates are being sent out without labels. You don't dare to insist on the pledges—now, do you?"

"You know as well as I do, Thelismer, there's no need of shaking the red rag this year. We're making a different play. We've been having our newspapers drum hard on the tune: 'Leave it out to the people.' It'll be Everett all right in the convention, but we don't want to seem to be prying open their jaws and jamming him down their throats."

Thornton fingered his clippings.

"Luke, I thought you realized yesterday after that caucus of mine was over just how sick your State campaign is. But you've started in hollering now to try to convince yourself that it isn't so. You can't afford to do that. I've been in this thing longer than you have. I've seen the symptoms before. I recognize the signs of a stampede. That convention will be ripe for one. And you know what will happen to Dave Everett, once they get started! You and I know there ain't a thing that can be said for him except that he's the residuary legatee of all the machine politics that's been played in this State for the last twenty-five years. That's between us, and you and I might as well talk the thing as it is. She's balancing, Luke. She's right up on end. And there'll be enough old wind-bags in that convention to get up a devil of a breeze. They'll blow her over."

The State chairman had started to leave, after his declaration. His automobile was purring at the foot of the steps. But he turned his back on the expectant chauffeur, and tramped onto the porch.

"You don't mean to tell me that 'Fog-horn' Spinney is a dangerous candidate, do you?"

"No, but Everett is! It happens once in so often, Luke—a situation like this. Everett is lugging too much. Last fire we had in the village here Ed Stilson tried to lug an old-fashioned bureau on his back and a feather tick in his teeth, but he couldn't get through the door."

"Thelismer, why have you waited till now before saying this? I'd rather have your judgment in political futures than that of any other man in this State. But this is a damnation poor time to be getting around to me with it."

"We had a caucus here yesterday, Luke, I'd only been suspecting till then. In politics I'm quite a fellow to judge the whole piece in the web by a sample. And I tell you Everett is going to make a dangerous proposition for us!"

Presson stared at him for a full minute, blinking, thinking, knotting his brows, and chewing fiercely on a piece of gum.

"Pull him out—that what you mean? Well, it can be done. There are plenty of men in the party that are all safe and right, but haven't been identified with the machine."

"And what will you say to Dave Everett and his friends, all of whom you'll need at the polls?"

"It's a party exigency, isn't it?"

"It can be called that—and you can call a skunk 'Kitty' on your way home from the club, but that fact won't change your wife's opinion of you when you come in. You walk up to Dave Everett now with your political exigency in your hand, Luke, and it would turn to a political _ax_egency, and you'd have a pack of rebels on your back that would down you sure! No, sir! You can't afford to smash a man that way."

"Then we'll ram him through the convention, reformers or no reformers!"

"You haven't got your crowd."

"Thelismer, you're right! I wouldn't have admitted it yesterday, but after seeing how they came roaring up against you, I'm scared. I'm going to pull Everett out of the fight and set up another man—one of the young and liberal fellows. I'll do it within twenty-four hours!"

The Duke replaced his clippings and shoved the big wallet into his pocket.

"Sudden remedies are sometimes good in extreme cases, Luke," he drawled, "but administering knockout drops to a sick party is not to be recommended."

The chairman's patience left him then.

"What kind of a trick is this, standing up here at the eleventh hour and putting the knife into your party?" he demanded, wrathfully.

"I had a dog once, Luke, that was snapping at flies in general as he was lying on the porch here, and he snapped at a brown hackle fly that was hitched onto a fish-line. And he ran off down the road with a hook in his mouth and sixty yards of line and a pole following him. You'd better spit out that last fly, Luke. Now will you take a little advice from me, on the condition that I'll follow up that advice with some practical help?"

"That's what I'm waiting for."

"Then you get back onto your job, and leave Everett just where he is—not one word to him or his friends. That's the advice part. The help will come when I've got a few things straightened out a little more."

"The convention is less than three weeks off. What's your plan? I want to know it now."

"Well, you won't."

"Do you think for a moment that I, the chairman of the Republican State
Committee, am going into a convention with blinders on?"

"You can go in any way you want to," retorted the Duke, calmly. "But that's all you're going to hear from me to-day, Luke. Faith without works is no good. You furnish the faith, and I'll furnish the works."

"I never heard of any such devilish campaign management as this," grumbled the chairman. "You're talking to me as though I didn't know any more politics than a village hog-reeve."

"Well, I'm the doctor in this case, providing I'm called," said the old man. "Just now I'm feeling of the pulse and making the diagnosis, and am getting ready to prescribe the dose. I'll call you into consultation, Luke, when the right time comes, and I'll guarantee that nothing will leak out to wound your pride or your political reputation. But I want to say that if you stand here to-day waiting to hear any more about what I intend to do, you'd better shut off that automobile. You won't be leaving for quite a spell."

The chairman knew his man. He trotted down the steps and got into his car.

"When you get ready to let me know how you're running this campaign, you'll find me at headquarters," he said, wrathfully, by way of farewell. Then he departed, with the news of how Thelismer Thornton was still boss of the northern principality—but that Thelismer Thornton, Nestor of State politicians, had calmly arrogated to himself the sole handling of the biggest question in State politics, the chairman kept to himself. He was in too desperate straits to rebel at that time. Furthermore, he knew that Thelismer Thornton in the years past had served as kedge for many a political craft that a lee shore threatened. He was measurably contented, after reflection, to have the old man take the thing into his own hands in that masterful fashion.

The Duke pulled his chair to the end of the porch, where he could look across to the far hills beyond the river. He lighted one of his long cigars, put his feet on the rail, and began to smoke, squinting thoughtfully, pondering deeply.

To all practical intents and purposes he was holding there on the porch of "The Barracks" the next State convention of the Republican party. The birds were busy about the old blockhouse opposite, coming and going. He seemed to be studying their movements through his half-open eyes, as though they were prospective delegates. And at last a grim smile of satisfaction fixed itself upon his face.

His grandson found him in this amiable mood when he came with the losers by the Jo Quacca fire. Each man submitted his list rather defiantly. They sat down and scowled while Harlan told what he had discovered in his investigation of the circumstances.

"I have not tried to beat them down," he concluded. "I even reminded them of a few items they had overlooked. What happened yesterday was enough to make almost any man forget things."

He was inclined to be a little defiant, too, fighting the battles of the property owners, even though his own pocket must suffer by the settlement.

But the Duke preserved his unruffled demeanor. He slowly made some figures on the bottoms of the papers and passed the sheets to his grandson.

"Fill in the checks and bring them out here and I'll sign 'em," he directed. And as Harlan bent over him, he whispered: "You're playing good politics now, boy. Stand up for the under dog. I see you're remembering that you're a candidate."

"I'm only doing what's right," protested the young man.

"When you can be right and still play politics, you're getting ahead fast," murmured the Duke. "Fill in the checks!"

"But you've increased their own appraisal! You're giving them more than they've asked for!" Harlan was careless of the presence of the three farmers.

"Well, wasn't it your own suggestion that we use these men right?" demanded his grandfather. He gazed benignantly on the claimants. "I'm square, myself, when it comes to my debts, boys. You all know that. But Harlan argued your case last night in a way that's worth the extra money. If he can do that here at home, first crack out of the box, when it's our own money at stake, don't you think he'll do a pretty good job for you down at the State House, where it'll be a case of the public money?"

His grandson had gone into the house. He had found himself at a loss for words, suddenly.

"Harlan is as straight as a stilya'd, and allus has been," admitted one of the men, gratefully. He was wondering how much the Duke had added to the amount.

"All of you think now that a fellow like that will make a pretty good sort of a representative, don't you?"

They muttered assent.

"Well, why did you back-district chaps come in here yesterday and try to lick him in the caucus?"

They had no answer ready. They looked at the porch floor, and rasped their hard hands together and cracked their knuckles in embarrassment. The old man kept his complacency.

"I'll tell you how it was, boys. You got fooled, now, didn't you? You let 'em use you like old Samson used the foxes. Now, the next time one of those disturber fellows ties a blazing pine knot to your tail, you sit right down and gnaw the string in two before you start to run. Because a man holds office it's no sign he's a renegade. You'll usually find the renegades standing outside and slandering him and trying to get his office away for their own use. They got you going, didn't they, when they went around telling that I thought I owned you in this district, body and soul? Got you jealous and suspicious and mad? Can you afford to be jealous and mad when you've got a fellow like Harlan Thornton willing to go down to the legislature and work for you? Do you want one of those blatherskites to represent you? Now tell me!"

"Poor men that have to work all the time don't have the chance to look into public things as much as they ought to," said one of the men, apologetically. "And sometimes when a fellow comes around who can talk smooth we get fooled."

"You've bought a lot of fake things from travelling agents in this county. Now don't buy fake politics," He took the checks from his grandson's hand. Harlan had brought them, and a pen. He cocked his knee and scrawled his signature. They came to him and took their checks. Each stood there, holding the slip of paper awkwardly pinched between thumb and forefinger. The Duke waited.

"I want to say this," stammered the spokesman. "You get fooled sometimes. Most often in politics. But no one can fool us again—not about the Thornton family."

"Pass that word around the district, boys," advised the Duke, complacently. "There's an election coming, you know."

They departed, three new and promising evangelists.

"Campaign expenses, bub," broke in the old man, when Harlan began; "campaign expenses! It's a soggy lump of dough out back there. That kind of yeast will lighten it."

He looked across at the hills, squinting reflectively again, and at last glanced up at his grandson, who stood regarding him with thoughtful hesitation.

"Say it, boy!" he counselled. "A little more bile left over from yesterday?"

"No, sir! Not that. But I think I'll send Ben Kyle in with the crews and let him locate the new camps."

"I didn't intend to have you go back—not if you'd listen to me. We've got men enough to attend to that sort of work, Harlan. I want you with me for a while. I've got some plans for you."

"And I've got a few plans for myself. Now that I'm in this, I propose to be in it in earnest."

"You wouldn't be a Thornton if you didn't get at it all over," commended the Duke. "You see, I understood you, boy!"

"I'm going to call on every man in this district and tell him where I stand. I'm going to tell him that if there are honest men in that legislature I propose to be counted in with them. I may be a very humble helper, but I'm going to lift with all my strength, grandfather, on the square-deal end of every proposition that I find to lay hold of."

"Good politics, boy, all good politics!" declared the old man. With humor that had a little malicious fun in it he avoided endorsing this impulsive zeal as anything except shrewd playing of his own game. But his eyes told the young man what his lips did not utter. There was pride in them, encouragement, joy that would not be hidden—and something else: wistful regret, perhaps; it seemed to be that—the regret that age feels when it has lost its illusions and beholds them springing again in the heart of fervent youth; regret conscious that in its turn this new faith in things present and things to come will be dead and cold, too.

"I don't think we have to worry much about the election, Harlan. Go out and tackle the boys. You'll make good. Take two days. That'll be time enough. And then I want you."

Harlan's eyes questioned him.

"You know I opened up a little to you last night, bub. You're all I've got, you know. I've not been much of a hand to talk. I don't believe you've realized just how I've felt. But we'll let it stand as it is. I've got plans for you, boy, better than the little pancake politics of this district. I know a few things in politics. I'm old enough to understand how to put you in right. It's one thing to know how, and it's another thing to find occasion just ripe and ready."

He rolled his cigar to the centre of his mouth and lifted the corners in an illuminating grin.

"Bub, in two days be ready to come with me. I'm going to put you in right!"

CHAPTER X

A POLITICAL CONVERT

For two days Harlan Thornton rode about over the Fort Canibas district. He talked to men at their doors, in their shops, over the fences of their fields. He knew that some sneered at him behind his back. Some even dared to arraign him, boldly and angrily, and flung his motives in his face, accusing the grandfather of inciting the grandson to this attempt to catch votes.

He realized that most of the voters did not understand him aright. They did not understand sincerity in politics. But his own consciousness of rectitude supplied his consolation and provided his impetus. Till then he had employed the Thornton grit only in his business efforts; he employed it now with just as much vigor in his proselyting. Once in the fight, he was awake to what it meant. His frank earnestness impressed those with whom he talked. He did not lose his temper, when men assailed him and tried to discredit his protestations. Here and there, in neighborhoods, knots of farmers gathered about him and listened. He began to win his way, and he knew it. The knowledge that Harlan Thornton was a square man in business needed no herald in that section.

That this integrity would extend to his politics grew into belief more and more as he went about.

The distrust of him, because of his associations, a suspicion fostered by the paid agents of the opposition, began to give way before his calm, earnest young manhood. But in every knot of men he found a few bitter irreconcilables still. They were those whom change invites, and the established order offends. One man, unable to provoke him by vituperation, and in a frenzy of childish rage because Harlan's calm poise was not disturbed by his outpourings, ran at him and struck him. He was a little man, and though he leaped when he struck, the blow landed no higher than the shoulder that Harlan turned to him. And when he leaped again the young man caught him by the wrist and smiled down on him, unperturbed.

"If that's the way you talk politics, Sam, I'll have to adjourn the debate," he said, quietly. And the story of that went the rounds, accompanied by much laughter, and the big, sturdy, serene young man who was master of his own passions met smiles wherever he went.

Another story preceded him, too. "Fighting" MacCracken, of the Jo Quacca neighborhood, smarting ever since that day in the yard of "The Barracks," jealous of his prestige as a man of might, offered obscene and brutal insult to the name of Thelismer Thornton in the hearing of his grandson. It had been hinted previously along the border that the six-foot scion of the Thorntons was a handy man in a scrap, but now his prowess was surely established. MacCracken went about, a living advertisement of how effectually righteous anger can back up two good fists.

Therefore, respect attended on good-humor and went with, or ahead of, the candidate.

He wondered at himself sometimes. He hardly understood the zeal that now animated him, so sudden a convert. But the zest of youth was in him; the spirit of the toil of the big woods, of the race with drought when the drives are going down, the everlasting struggle with nature's forces, the rivalry between man and man where accomplishment that bulks large in the eyes of men is the only accomplishment that counts—all these spurred him to make good, now that he had begun. In the open arena of life his training had been that of man to man, and the best man taking the prize. And his reading during the long evenings had been more in the way of education in public matters than he had realized. As for ideals, he had followed the masterful men who preached a gospel that appealed to him, living the life of the open, battling for the weak against the selfishly strong—so it seemed to the one who studied their achievements on the printed page. With his own opportunity now thrust upon him, Harlan Thornton determined to make candor his code, honesty his system. He entertained no false ideas of his personal importance. But his lack of experience did not daunt him. He simply made up his mind that he would go forward, keeping soul and heart open, as well as eyes and ears. He believed that the square deal could not be hidden from those who entered public life in that manner.

He did not discuss all this with his grandfather. If he had, Thelismer Thornton would have been vastly interested. He might have been amused. Probably he would have been more amused than interested, for hot youth and glowing ideals have humorous phases for the man who has lived among men for more than eighty years.

But that he had unloosed a bottle imp in his own family would not have occurred to the old man, even after he had listened, for he still had the cynical belief that circumstances must control, interest convert, and personal profit kill the most glowing ardor in reform.

Lacking the gift of divination, Thelismer Thornton watched the rapid development of this bottle imp with much complacency. "Whispering" Urban Cobb brought him reports from the field. Talleyrand Sylvester was trying to place bets on Harlan Thornton, but there were no takers. It was even stated that Enoch Dudley was finding it hard work to secure pledges enough to warrant his running as an independent candidate.

Harlan Thornton, looking in from the outside, had found politics, as managed for him, an abhorrent mess. Now, plunged in, he was embracing his opportunity, and finding good in the contest.

On the other hand, Harlan Thornton, making his own plea and his own pledges as a candidate, was embraced by the voters. He was not a mere legatee forced on them by a boss—he was speaking for himself, and the sincerity of the young man made itself felt.

At the end of the appointed two days he knew that his prospects were safe. One of the other towns in the district and three of the plantations had endorsed his name in caucus. If Thelismer Thornton had been responsible for his candidacy, so was his own personality responsible for this clearing away of difficulties. He felt his self-respect returning. That cruel wound to his pride was healing.

He was riding home in the evening of the second day, past the end of the long bridge, finding comfort in this thought.

A white figure, framed in the black mouth of the bridge, startled rider and horse.

"It's only Clare," she said. "I heard you were up the river to-day, and
I've been waiting for you."

He rode closer. It was a new and strange Clare who was revealed to him in the dim light. She was gowned and gloved, and her broad hat hid her boyish curls. She walked out of the gloom and leaned against the bridge rail.

"Ah, the little playmate did ride away from me forever!" he cried, looking her up and down. "But this young lady—why, she takes my breath away!" He took off his hat and bowed to the pommel.

"You needn't make fun of me, Mr. Harlan Thornton," she returned, crisply. "And a real young lady wouldn't come down in this bridge and wait for you. I wanted to tell you I'm glad. I hear all about your success. When I was a little girl I didn't want you to go away and be a big man. But now that I'm a woman I'm glad you're going. I wanted you to realize, Mr. Harlan Thornton, that I'm a woman, so if you'll reach down your hand I'll shake it and congratulate you."

He took her little hand in both his own.

"You were a real little woman two days ago right here in this place," he said, gratefully. "I didn't realize it at that moment, but it was what you said to me that put some real sense into my head, after all. It set me to thinking."

"What kind of laws are you going to make?" she demanded.

"I don't think I'll have much to do with making laws, Clare. All I can do is listen and try to be on the right side when the voting comes."

"Can't you make a law to oblige old men to stop fighting each other," she demanded, petulantly—"fighting each other, and making all their folks uncomfortable?"

"I think it would be a good law, especially in one case I know about.
But sometimes the best laws don't get passed."

"I'll come down and make a speech for it. You said I talked like old folks the other evening."

"A speech from you would convert them all," he returned, indulging her in this childish banter. "You see, you converted me with only a few words, and I was a hard case just then."

"Then I'll come down to your legislature and we'll make it into a law, and the punishment shall be, if they don't make up and allow their folks to be comfortable and friends, they must have their old heads bumped together—bumped harder and harder till they shake hands and make up and live happy ever after. Old folks haven't any business to stay mad. They won't get into heaven if they do."

She withdrew her hand, and went away into the black mouth of the bridge.

"That's all, Big Boy!" she cried. "It was some business, you see, that I waited to talk over with you. And a grown-up young lady mustn't stay after her business is finished."

"But I'll walk home with you!" he called.

"No, I'll not be frightened at the dark until I get old enough to be called an old maid," she said, mischievously. "Good-night!"

He waited by the side of the river until he saw her white figure safely through the dark bridge, and on its way up the quiet hillside past the church. Then he rode to "The Barracks," his mind dwelling a bit more particularly on the vagaries of womankind than it ever had before.

He joined his grandfather on the porch after he had eaten his supper alone.

"The fences, so I hear, Harlan, will pass the inspection of the most expert fence-viewers," he chuckled. "So I suppose you'll be ready to leave with me to-morrow."

"If you think it's necessary to have me go anywhere with you, grandfather, I'll go."

There was silence for a time. The young man was waiting. The old man smoked placidly.

"Is there any reason why you can't tell me where we are going?" inquired
Harlan.

"No especial reason—only I'll be wasting time telling you. You'll see for yourself. We'll meet a big man or so—that's all!"

"The man I'd like to meet," began the young man, fervently, "is one that every young chap in this country can follow and ought to follow, if he's got red blood and honesty in him. I wish I could meet him now when I'm starting out, if only to shake his hand."

"You'd better not meet any man so long as he's wearing a halo, where you're concerned. You'll find political halos, bub, when you get too near to 'em, something like restaurant doughnuts—holes surrounded by poor cooking. Better keep away a spell. That's why I'm not going to tell you where we're going—not just now. I might go to cracking up the man too much. I'll let you build your own halo for him—and then maybe you can eat your own cooking, provided you find the halo a doughnut."

They left Fort Canibas the next morning, travelling humbly by mail stage to the railroad terminus. The branch line took them to a populous junction, and by that time Harlan Thornton began to appreciate that his grandfather was rather more of a figure in State politics than he had dreamed. He had made many trips with him through the State in years past, but never before when men understood, some dimly, some fearfully, that a political crisis was on. Thelismer Thornton's seat in the train, his room at the hotel, was besieged by those who respectfully solicited his opinions. They seemed to realize that some of the wisdom of the fathers in State politics, of the patriarchs with whom he had trained, had fallen to him by natural inheritance. But though he listened patiently, he said but little. Harlan noticed, however, that he did take especial pains to deprecate some of the suppressive movements advised by the more hot-headed managers.

"Let things swing as they're going," he advised. "She'll take care of herself, give her free run right now. But you can't pinch up a line gale by putting a clothespin on the nose of the tempest. Let her snort! Brace the party and face it like a hitching—post! Don't try to choke off Arba Spinney. Let him froth."

His grandfather was so insistent on this point that Harlan took notice of its frequent repetition and the earnestness with which it was pressed. He began to understand that some plan lay back of his grandfather's silence to him and to others as to his private reasons for this appeal. He began to take lively interest in the ramifications of practical politics as played by the hand of a master.

CHAPTER XI

A MAN FROM THE SHADOWS

There was a provoking flavor of mystery about Thelismer Thornton's early movements the next day. His grandson became still more interested. This element in politics appealed to him, for he was young.

They left the city by an early train. The Duke secluded himself and his grandson in a drawing-room of the car.

It was an express—train which did not stop at way stations. But when the conductor came for the tickets the old man inquired whether orders had been issued to have the train held up at a certain siding.

"Yes, sir, to leave two passengers," said the conductor. He was courteous, but he winked at the old politician with the air of one who thought he understood something. He exhibited his telegram from the dispatcher. "Can't be much politics there, Mr. Thornton," he remarked, by way of jest.

"I'm on a fishing-trip," explained the Duke, blandly. And the conductor, who knew that the siding had no fishing water within ten miles of it, went away chuckling in order to applaud the joke of a man of power.

A few hours later the two were let off at the siding and the train hurried on.

There was a farm-house near the railroad. They ate dinner with the farmer and his wife, who seemed to realize that they were entertaining some one out of the ordinary, and were much flustered thereby. Especially did the farmer struggle with his vague memory of personalities, asking many round-about questions and "supposing" many possibilities that the Duke placidly neglected to confirm.

The only definite information the farmer received was that the big elderly man wanted himself and his companion conveyed to Burnside Village by wagon, starting in the late afternoon.

"I'll take you," said the man; "but what sticks me is that you didn't stay right on board that train. It stops at Burnside regular, and it don't stop here at all."

"But it stopped to-day," remarked the Duke.

"I know it did, and that's what sticks me again."

The old man rose from the table and smiled down on him.

"Here's a good cigar, brother. I've often worked out many a puzzle while having a bang-up smoke."

He invited Harlan by a nod of the head, and they went out and strolled in the maple grove behind the house.

"I suppose you think by this time, bub, that I'm in my second childhood, and playing dime novel. But there are some things in politics that have to be done as gentle and careful as picking a rose petal off a school-ma'am's shoulder." The Duke chuckled and smoked for a time. "When I've had a job of that sort to do I haven't even talked to myself, Harlan. So you mustn't think I'm distrustful of you because I don't tell you what's on."

"I'm willing to wait," said his grandson.

"Learn your lesson, Harlan—the one I'm trying to teach you now. I never knew but one man who could keep his mouth shut under all circumstances when he felt it was his duty to do so. That was old Ben Holt. He's dead now. He fell off a bridge on his way to church and didn't holler 'Help!' for fear of breaking the Sabbath. You don't find any more of that kind in these days—not in political matters. I'm not distrusting you, I say, but I'm teaching you the lesson. Keep your mouth shut till it's time to open it. I'm drawing this thing here strong on you, so as to impress it. As for the other fellows—if I had got off the train at Burnside to-day the news would have been in every afternoon paper in the State. They'd only need that one fact to build fifty stories on—all different. Most of those stories would have hurt; there'd have been one guess, at least, that would kill the scheme. Sit down here, and let's take it easy."

He sat at the foot of a tree, his broad straw hat beside him. He leaned his head against the trunk, and gazed upward and away from his grandson. When the question came it was so irrelevant, so astonishing, that the young man gasped without replying.

"Harlan, how do you stand with the Kavanagh girl?"

The old man smoked on in the silence without removing his gaze from the leaves above his head.

"I want to confess to you, my boy, that your old grandfather made rather a disgraceful exhibition of himself the other day. But as I said then, a man will thrash and swear at a hornet and make an ass of himself, generally, in the operation. The impudent little fool didn't realize what a big matter she was trifling with."

"Grandfather," protested Harlan, manfully, "that's no way to speak of a young lady. You ask me how I stand? I stand this way—I'll not have the child mentioned in any such manner—not in my hearing; and that's with all respect to you, sir."

"Young lady—child? Well, which is she?"

"I don't know," confessed Harlan, ingenuously. "And it doesn't make much difference."

"Sort of ashamed of me, aren't you?" inquired his grandfather. "A man that you've seen all the politicians catering to the last day or so, and small enough to bandy insults with a snippet of a girl! Well, bub, there's a lot of childishness in human nature. It breaks out once in a while. Cuss a tack, and grin and bear an amputation! We'll let the girl alone. I don't seem to get in right when she is mentioned. But I wanted to have you tell me that you don't intend to marry Dennis Kavanagh's daughter. You can't afford to do that, boy! Not with your prospects. And now I'm not saying anything against the girl. We'll leave her out, I say. It's just that she isn't the kind of a woman—when she gets to be a woman—that I want to see mated with you." He burst out: "Dammit, Harlan, I can see where you're going to land in this State if you'll let your old gramp have free rein! And the right kind of a wife is half the battle in what you're going into."

"Have you got that right kind picked out for me—along with the rest?
You talk as though you had."

It was said almost in the tone of insult. It might have been the tone—it might have been that the taunt touched upon the truth: Thelismer Thornton's face flushed. He did not seem to find reply easy.

"There's only this to say, grandfather. I know you're interested in me and in seeing me get ahead in the world. You pushed me into politics, and I'm trying to make good. I'm glad you did it—I'll say that now. I see opportunities ahead if I stay square and honest. But don't you try to push me into marriage. I'm going to do my own choosing there. And that doesn't mean that I'm in love with Clare Kavanagh, or intend to marry Clare Kavanagh, or want to marry her—or that she wants to marry me. That's straight, and I don't want to talk about it any more."

He stood up, and his tone was defiant.

"You'd better take a walk, bub," commended the Duke, quietly. "I'm going to nap for a little while. We may be up late to-night."

He picked up his hat and canted it over his face. "Get back here as early as five o'clock," he said, from under its brim.

They were away in the farmer's carryall at that hour, after a supper of bread-and-milk.

In the edge of the village of Burnside the Duke ordered a halt, and stepped down from the carriage. The evening had settled in and it was dark under the elms.

"Here's five dollars, brother. You've used us all right, and now so long to you."

"But I hain't got you to nowhere yet!" protested the farmer. He had finally decided in his own mind that these were railroad managers planning projects, with an eye on his own farm. He wanted to carry them where he could exhibit them to some one who could inform him.

But the Duke promptly drew Harlan along into the shadows, and a farmer hampered with a two-seated carriage is not equipped for the trail. They heard the complaining squeal of iron against iron as he turned to go back home.

"We've come here to call on a man," stated the Duke, after they had walked for a little time.

"On ex-Governor Waymouth, I suppose," Harlan suggested, quietly.

The old man chuckled.

"How long have you been suspecting that?"

"Ever since I heard Burnside mentioned, of course."

"Good! You guessed and kept still about it. You've got the makings of a politician, and you are learning fast. Now what do you suppose I'm sneaking up on Varden Waymouth in this way for?"

"You said I'd see for myself when the time came. I'm in no hurry, grandfather."

The Duke patted Harlan's shoulder. "You're one of my kind, that's sure, boy. I haven't got to put any patent time-lock onto your tongue. And I can't say that of many chaps in this State. You're a safe man to have along. Come on!"

The house was back from the street a bit—a modest mansion of brick, dignifiedly old. Tall twin columns flanked the front door and supported the roof of the porch. Harlan had never seen the residence of General Waymouth before, but that exterior seemed fitted to the man, such as he knew him to be.

He admitted them himself, when they had waited a few moments after sounding alarm with the ancient knocker. Framed in the door, he was a picturesque figure. His abundant white hair hung straight down over his ears, and curled outward at the ends; his short beard was snowy, but there was healthful ruddiness on his face, and though his figure, tall above the average, stooped a bit, he walked briskly ahead of them into the library, crying delighted welcome over his shoulder. His meeting with Thelismer Thornton had been almost an embrace.

"And this boosting big chap is Harlan—my grand-baby, Vard! Guess you used to see him at 'The Barracks' when he was smaller. Since then he's been trying to outgrow one of our spruce-trees."

The ex-Governor gave Harlan his left hand. The empty sleeve of the right arm was pinned to the shoulder.

"The old Yankee stock doesn't need a step-ladder to stand on to light the moon, so they used to say."

He rolled chairs close to each other and urged them to sit, with the anxious hospitality of the old man who has grown to prize the narrowing circle of his intimates.

"Smoke, Thelismer," he pleaded. "Stretch out and smoke. I always like to see you smoke. You take so much comfort. I sometimes wish I'd learned to smoke. Old age gets lonely once in a while. Perhaps a good cigar might be a consolation."

"So you do get lonesome sometimes, Vard?" inquired the Duke.

"It's a lonesome age when you're eighty, comrade. You probably find it so yourself. There are so few of one's old friends that live to be eighty."

Then they fell into discourse, eager, wistful reminiscences such as come to the lips of old friends who meet infrequently. The young man, sitting close in the circle, listened appreciatively. This courtly old soldier, lawyer, Governor, and kindly gentleman had been to him since boyhood, as he had to the understanding youth of his State, an ideal knight of the old régime. And so the hours slipped past, and he sat listening.

The calm night outside was breathlessly still, except for the drone of insects at the screens, attracted by the glow of the library lamp. A steeple clock clanged its ten sonorous strokes, and still the old men chatted on, and the Duke had not hinted at his errand.

The General suddenly remembered that he had in the cellar some home-made wine, and he asked the young man to come with him, as lamp-bearer.

"The good wife would have thought of that little touch of hospitality long ago, my son," he said, as they walked down the stairs, "but a widower's house with grouchy hired help makes old age still more lonely."

On their return they found the Duke, feet extended, head tipped back, eyes on the ceiling. He was deep in thought, and told Harlan to place his glass on the chair's arm.

"Varden," he said, "eighty isn't old, not for a man like you; and it shouldn't be lonely, that age. I'm still older, and I propose to wear out instead of rust out."

"I don't feel rusty, exactly," returned the General, smiling into his glass. "But when I think of all the marches, Thelismer, of the campaigns, the heartbreaking struggles of the war—of all the cases won and cases lost, the nights of study and days of labor in the law—the fuss and fury of politics—of all the years behind me, I feel as though I'd like to be used as my father used his old boots: Before he took his bed for the last time he went up into the garret of the old farm-house and laid his boots there on their sides. 'Let 'em lie down, now, and rest,' he said. And I've never allowed them to be disturbed."

The Duke still stared at the ceiling.

"Varden, you and I have known each other so long that you don't need as much talk from me as you would from a stranger. When I've asked a thing from you in the past I didn't have to sit down and talk to you an hour about the reasons why I wanted it. You understood that I had a good reason for asking. I'm going to ask just one more thing from you in this life. I'm going to ask it straight from the shoulder. You and I don't need to beat about the bush with each other. I want you to say 'yes,' for if you don't you're abandoning our old State as though she were a widow headed for the almshouse."

Thornton leaned forward, grasped his glass and drained it at a gulp, and then looked the amazed General squarely in the eyes.

"You're going to be nominated as Governor of this State in the next convention, and you've got to accept," he declared. "Now hold on! Just as you understand that I've got good reasons for asking you to do this, just so I understand all that you're going to say in objection. I discount all your objections in advance. I know you haven't lost run of affairs in this State—you know all the mix-up the party is in right now. They're going to beat Dave Everett in convention, General, just as sure as the devil can't freeze his own ice. It's going to be 'Seventy-two all over again. People gone crazy for a change and jumping the wrong way, like grasshoppers in front of a mowing machine. Spinney means the whole rotten thing over again—State treasury looted, tax rate reduced to get a popular hoorah, a floating debt that will make us stagger and keep enterprise out of this State for ten years, petty graft in every State office, and every strap on the party nag busted from snaffle to crupper. Now I want to ask you one question: Do you want Arba Spinney for the next Governor of this State—sitting in the chair that you honored? You know him! You've heard his mouth go. You understand his calibre. Do you want him?"

"No," admitted General Waymouth.

"Well, you're going to get him if you don't accept that nomination. You're going to get him, blab-mouth, mob-rule, mortification, and merry hell—the whole bagful! Do you want that for this State, Vard?"

"Our State can't afford to have such a man," agreed General Waymouth, "but—"

"I'd, myself, rather see a Democrat win at the polls!" shouted Thornton. "But the Democrat that they've got in line is worse than Spinney. It's a popocratic year, and they're all playing that game. But they can't overcome our natural plurality, Varden. It means Spinney if he goes to the polls! It's up to you to stop him. You've got to do it!"

The General rose and walked around the room. His shoulders were stooped a bit more. Then he came and put his hand on Thelismer's shoulder.

"Your faith in what I am and what I might do is worthy of you, my old comrade, even if it exalts my poor powers too much. And I thank you, Thelismer. But I know what I am. I'm only a stranded old man. The younger generation will not think as you do. Go and find some good man there. I'm too weary, Thelismer, too old and too weary—and almost forgotten. Find another man!"

"What's that? Find a man for Governor of this State, groom him, work him out, score him down and shove him under the wire of State Convention a winner inside of two weeks? Varden, you know politics better than that! You forgotten by the younger generation of this State? Harlan, what have you to say to that?"

The young man stood up. He had listened well and listened long that evening. In the presence of this gracious old knight of the heroic days of history he had felt his heart swelling as he remembered the record that all men of his State knew.

The fervor of his admiration showed so plainly in his glistening eyes that General Waymouth was touched, and waited indulgently.

"General, it's only because my grandfather is your old friend and has commanded me that I dare to speak. I simply have a hope. It has become dear to me. I'm hoping for a privilege. I honestly believe that outside of all party preferences there are thousands of young men in this State who will feel proud to have that same privilege—will esteem it one of the honors of their lives. Their fathers had the same honor. And that's to go to the polls and cast a ballot for Gen. Varden Waymouth. It will make politics seem worth while to us, sir."

"Good!" ejaculated the Duke. "You're hearing the voice of the young men of this State now, Varden." He stood up. "Here's my boy for your service. He'll be in the next legislature. Use him. Depend on him. You're old—you've earned your rest. I know it. But here's a loud call for a sacrifice. This boy and such as he can lift a lot of the load. Varden, give me your hand. Say that you'll do it!"

"Let's sit down a moment," said the General, solemn gentleness in his tone. "I have something that it's in my heart to say."

He drew his chair even closer to them. They waited a few moments for him to speak. In that room with its dignity of ancient things, with the silence of the summer night surrounding, that waiting was impressive. Harlan felt the thrill of it. Even his grandfather was gravely anxious. The General leaned forward and put his thin hand on the elder Thornton's knee.

"Thelismer, you yourself link the past with the present, so far as the politics of this State go. You link them even more than I do, for you are active in the present. You have been a strong man—you are strong to-day. But I want to say to you, and this is as friend to friend, you haven't always used that strength right. I know what reply you'd make to that. We've talked it all over many times. You say that you've had to play the game. That's right. And I've played it myself, too. But in the years since then, while I've sat at one side of the arena and looked on, I've had a chance to meditate and a chance to observe. I don't think matters have been running right in this State—and now I'm not speaking of Arba Spinney or his ilk. You come to me to-night and you ask me to be the Governor of this State once more. You want me to come back into the game. You ask me to appeal to the suffrage of the young men who admire what little I've accomplished. I want to warn you. I may be putting it too strong when I call it a warning. I have some ideals to-day. You may not find them to your liking in politics."

"I'm willing to trust in your good judgment and your sense of what is square for all concerned," protested the Duke, stoutly. "In the hot old days I was hot with the rest, Vard. I've mellowed some since."

"You may not find me a safe man, Thelismer. I shall come back out of the shadows with a firm resolve to merit the approval of the young men of this State—and the young men see more clearly than their fathers did."

"I'm not here to-night with bridle or bit or halter, Varden. We need you. The party has got to have you. I know what your name will accomplish in that convention. You shall be Governor of this State without making pledge or promise. Will you stand?"

"I ask you again, Thelismer, if there is no other way?"

"Any other way means Spinney and mob rule."

General Waymouth turned to Harlan. "Go out and tell the honest young men of this State that I will try to satisfy their ideals. That's the only pledge I'll give. I'm afraid I haven't any promise for the old machine, Thelismer." He smiled.

"We don't need any," returned the Duke, briskly. "We know Vard Waymouth. But there's one pledge I do want from you. This whole thing is to be left in my hands so far as announcement goes. My plan of campaign makes that much necessary. We don't want to flush that bunch of birds till we can give 'em both barrels."

"I consent. I'll live in the lingering hope that at the last moment you'll find I won't be needed."

He rose and gave his hand to each in turn, bringing them to their feet.

"Now for bed. Of course, you'll remain here the night."

"No," declared Thornton, decisively. "Out o' here on the midnight! I want to dodge out of Burnside in the dark. We'll walk down to the station now. It's settled. I'll keep you posted."

At the door the General gave Harlan the last word, grasping his hand again.

"You brought me a message from the young men that touched me."

"I spoke for myself, but I believe that all of them would like to have the same opportunity that I had," faltered Harlan. "I know they would. Will you let us come to you at the right time and make it plain?"

"I shall depend upon you in a great many ways in the months to come. You know it's to be a young man's administration by an old man made young again. I'm proud of my first volunteer!"

"He's a good boy, and he's got the makings in him," declared the Duke.

"I've been too long with men not to appreciate a good chief of staff when I see him," laughed the General.

Framed in the big door, with the dim glow of light behind him, he watched them depart.

The Duke walked in the far shadows of the station platform in silence, smoking, until the train whistled.

"Bub, you remember that I told you I'd put you in right," he said, climbing the car steps. "Now follow your hand."

But Harlan Thornton, fresh from that presence, understood that he had pledged a loyalty deeper than the loyalty of mere politics or preferment.

CHAPTER XII

DEALS AND IDEALS

There was no one in the smoking-room of the car, so the Duke discovered with relief. It was late, and the passengers were in their berths. There was no one to spy, ask questions, or guess.

"Complete!" he grunted, satisfiedly, as he sat down. "We've come through with the job in good shape, Harlan. It'll have to be a mind-reader that finds out what I've put up to-day."

He swung his feet upon the seat opposite and sighed.

"I'm a pretty old man to be tearing 'round nights in this fashion, bub, but I feel younger by twenty years just this minute. Now I didn't tell you my plans this morning. Reckoned I'd wait till I had a clear view ahead. I've got it now. I'll wire ahead to the junction for our baggage to be brought from the hotel and put on board this train. We'll stay on. State capital next. Down to Luke's place. We'll stay there till State Convention. Finger right on the pulse after this."

He called the porter and arranged for his berths, and ordered the telegram sent from the next station.

He began leisurely to unfasten his necktie and collar.

"Got to tell Luke, you know. A close corporation of four—that's enough to know it. Can't trust the rest. We'll let 'em keep their old political hen sitting on their china egg. We'll hatch the good egg in our own nest. Then for a glorious old cackle! Vard Waymouth will be the next Governor of this State! Sure!"

"And this State will have the right man on the job with him as Governor!" cried the young man, enthusiastically. "I'm proud of what you did to-night, grandfather. I don't believe he would have listened to anyone else."

"Friendship, comradeship, mean something when you get old, my boy."

"I hope they'll all know who did it when the time comes right. Some of the men who have been growling about you behind your back will have their mouths shut for them."

"You've been hearing the old man cussed thoroughly and scientifically, eh?" drawled the Duke. He squinted, quizzically. "Well, a man who stays in politics fifty years and doesn't make enemies, stays too close to the ground to be worth anything. Good, healthy, vigorous enemies are a compliment."

"I wonder whether his party will say that when General Waymouth starts out in his reforms."

"What reforms?" demanded the old man, tugging off his collar.

"You heard what he said—about what he intended to do—the warning, as he called it."

Thornton looked at his grandson serenely and with a glint of humor in his eyes.

"You don't have any idea, do you, that Vard Waymouth is going to play politics with sugar-plums instead of with the chips he finds on the table? Get your wisdom teeth cut, young chap. That's another branch of the science for you to learn."

Harlan protested, his loyalty a bit shocked.

"I believe that General Waymouth meant what he said."

"Well, what did he say?"

"You know what he said. I saw you listening pretty closely, grandfather. He intends a square deal for this State. I may be young, and I probably don't understand politics, but I know an honest gentleman when I see one."

"My boy, there's no question of dishonesty here. Don't pick up any of the patter that the demagogues are babbling—and they don't know just what they mean themselves. He is an honest man. Have I known him all my life without finding that out? But he isn't going to start out and clinch any reputation for honesty by turning his back on his own party and its interests—not for the sake of having the cheap demagogues of the other side pat him on the back and pick his pockets at the same time. He knows politics too well. But we won't sit up here to-night and discuss that. Keep your faith in him. He's worth it."

With his coat on his arm he started for his berth.

"The idea is, then, the party is going to make him stand first of all for things that will help the party, without much regard for what will help the people of this State as a whole? That's politics according to the code, is it, grandfather?"

"That's politics, my boy," stated the Duke with decision. "Once in a while you find a fellow splitting off and trying to play it different, but he doesn't last. Why the devil should he? It's his party, isn't it, that puts him on the job?"

"It's the majority of the people that do it, if he's elected."

"Don't get fooled on this 'people' idea, Harlan. The people are no good without organization—and organization is the party. I don't want to discourage you, son. You'll see some opportunities where you can grab in and turn a trick for the general good of all hands. But you can't dump your friends. You've got to stand by your own party first. You do anything else, and you'll simply get the reputation of being a kicker and an insurgent. And then you can't spin a thread. Your own party doesn't want you and the other side is afraid of you. Ideals are blasted good in their way, but in politics cut out the I and attend to the deals. It's the only way you'll get anywhere."

Harlan sat alone for a while and thought. Rebellion seethed in him. But it was rebellion against something vague—protest that was more instinct than actual understanding. He still lacked the prick of party enthusiasm; party, as he had seen its operations, stood for some pretty sordid actualities. One thing comforted him: he had not lost his faith in General Waymouth. His grandfather's cynicism had not destroyed that. He realized that his youth and his lack of experience would make him a very humble cog in the legislative machinery. But he had youth and high hopes, and his creed from boyhood had been to do everything that he had to do resolutely and to the full measure of his ability.

When he looked at his watch he decided that he would not go to his berth. The train would reach the State capital shortly after four in the morning. He dozed in his seat, the grateful breath of the summer night fanning his face through the screen. The Duke found him there, appearing as he had departed, his coat on his arm, his collar in his hand. He was full of the briskness of the dawn in spite of his short rations of sleep.

"You mustn't think because you've found sins in the party that you've been picked out for the atonement, boy," he chided, jocosely. "Get your sleep—always get your sleep. I wouldn't have been alive to-day if I'd been kept awake by worry and wonder."

A cab took their luggage to the hotel. They walked up the hill. It was the old man's suggestion.

"It'll do us good. This air beats any cocktail you can get over Luke's bar—and they serve as good a one as you'll get anywhere, even if this is a prohibition State."

"Wasn't it Governor Waymouth who signed the first prohibition bill in this State?" asked Harlan.

"Still dwelling on visions of reform, eh?" inquired his grandfather, smiling broadly. He did not reply immediately. He stepped ahead, for they were obliged to walk in single file past a man who was sweeping sawdust across the sidewalk. In the windows that flanked the open doors of his shop dusty cigar boxes were piled. The shelves within were empty. Harlan recognized the nature of the establishment. It was a grog-shop in its partial disguise. He got the odor of stale liquors from the open door as he passed.

"I was present when he signed it," said the Duke, as soon as they were walking side by side once more. "Something had to be done politically with the Washingtonian movement, you know; it had cut the cranks out of the main herd. You'd think, nowadays, to hear some of the things that are said about conditions in the old times, that every man in this State picked up his rum-bottle and pipe and threw 'em to Tophet and got onto the wagon. You weren't born then. Let me tell you how it really happened. It was mostly politics. The disorganized mob of prohibitionists didn't do it—it was our party. We needed the cranks to swing the balance of power. They were all herded, ready to follow the bell. Needed a shepherd. Didn't know which one of the old parties to run to. It's a crime in politics not to grab in a bunch of the unbranded when it's that size. We put prohibition into the platform and carried the election. Then the boys went to the Governor and told him, privately, that they really didn't mean it, and framed it up that they'd pass the bill in the legislature all right and then he'd veto it—and the party would be saved, and he wouldn't be hurt, because every one knew that he couldn't be accused of acting in the interests of the rumsellers, but only stood on the constitutional law ground—and there was great talk those days, son, of personal liberty and inherent rights. But Vard picked up his pen and told us he wasn't much of a hand for playing practical jokes on the people. He signed it. And he was a license man, at that, those days. Guess he is now."

"I don't see how you can say he has played politics—not after he stood out like that."

Thelismer Thornton laughed silently. They were half-way up the long hill. The bland morning was already growing warm. The old man stopped for a moment, hat off, under a dewy maple.

"Bub, do you think Vard Waymouth, lawyer that he is, didn't know just about how much that act would amount to after it got to operating? About all it did was to proclaim the rum business contraband. No teeth, no claws, not much machinery for enforcement—and public sentiment cussing it, after it began to hit men individually. Reform in politics is popular just so long as it doesn't hit individuals."

"There's teeth enough in the law now", remarked Harlan.

"Oh, it's easier to put 'em in than it is to fight the mouths of the professional ramrodders who come down to the legislature. We put in the teeth right along and leave off the enforcement muscle. The old thing can't chaw! Then the ramrodders have got the law to hoorah about and read over in the parlor, and they'll go right past such a place as we saw down the street there and not know it's a rumshop. After they get all the law they ask for, it's a part of their game to say that the rumshops aren't doing business. They're the kind that believe that just having the law makes every one good—they don't want to go back on their own scheme. Come along!" He went out into the sunshine. "I don't like to get talking prohibition. The play is not to talk it. It runs best when you don't talk about it. It's running good now. Saloons open, and all the prohibitory law-frills the old fuss-budgets can crochet and hang onto the original bush! Both sides satisfied!"

"It may be good politics—it may seem all right to you, because you were in the thing from the start and saw how the tricks had to be played," grumbled the young man. "But I haven't had that kind of training. I've been brought up in business, grandfather. And a State that will do what this State is doing now—I'm not saying who's at fault—but the State that will handle a law in this way is a blackleg. I believe in General Waymouth. I believe he's got something up his sleeve in the way of real reform. I believe he meant what he said. I don't want to see you hurt personally in your plans, grandfather, but I want to tell you frankly I'm with the other side in this thing."

The Duke glanced at him inquiringly.

"I mean, politics or no politics, I want to see a law enforced so long as it's a law. If a party cannot hold together and keep on top with any other system, then the party is 'in' wrong. I don't believe General Waymouth intends to straddle. He'll enforce the law."

"And kill his party?" inquired the old man, sarcastically. "Oh no, my boy. The party has looked out for that. It isn't taking any chances with a man who might get morally rambunctious. The Governor of this State hasn't anything to do with enforcing the prohibitory law. We've kept all the clubs out of his hands. When the W. C. T. U. converted old Governor Levett, he got ambitious and tried it on. And the only thing he found he could do was to issue a proclamation to the sheriffs 'to do their duty.' The most of 'em framed it and hung it up in their offices; it was too good a joke to keep hid."

They walked on in silence. Harlan did not find it easy to continue that line of talk. His deameanor did not accord with the fair face of the morning. But the old man sauntered on under the trees, plainly contented with the world and all that was in it.

"Let's see, you haven't met Madeleine, Luke's girl, since she was little, have you?" he inquired, stealing one of his shrewd side glances at his grandson.

Harlan was occupied with his own thoughts and shook his head.

"I was thinking she'd been away at school whenever you've been down here with me. Beautiful girl, my boy. Brains, too. Polish up your thoughts. These college girls are pretty bright, you know."

"I don't think she will notice whether I've got any thoughts or not," replied the young man, sourly. "She won't pay much attention to a woodsman—not that kind of a girl."

"What kind of a girl?"

"One that's full of society notions and college airs. I know the kind. Unless a fellow has wasted about half his life in dancing and loafing around summer resorts they treat him as though he were a cross between an Eskimo and a Fiji. Life is too short to play poodle for girls of that sort."

"Well, you are certainly on the mourners' bench to-day, front row and an end seat," said the old man, disgustedly. "You'd better go up and take a nap till breakfast-time, and use sleep, soap, a razor, and common sense and smooth yourself off. I reckon I haven't got you out of those woods any too quick."

Only the earliest birds of the hostelry roost were about the big house at that hour. The new arrivals dodged scrub-women and sweepers in the office and on the stairs, and went to their rooms. The Duke, leaving his grandson at his bedroom door, suggested a bit stiffly that he would "call around about eight o'clock and open the den and lead him down to a little raw meat, unless he smoothed up his manners and his appetite in the mean time."

CHAPTER XIII