The doctor's wife heaved a sigh of relief.

"Well, I guess that won't hurt Doc any if he does read it," she laughed. "I thought it was some new-fangled religion or other, and I allus keep sich things out of Doc's reach. Mebby you'll think I'm crazy, but when you know Doc as well as I do, you'll find out mortal quick he is to take up with new notions, and it would be jist like him to give up his sittin' in church and go and be a Physical Culture, if there was any sich belief. I don't mind much his bein' a Socialist, or any of them politercal things, if he wants to,—and goodness knows he does,—'cause they keep his mind busy; but since I got him to jine church I'm goin' to keep him jined, Physical Culture or no Physical Culture. I seen them pictures, and they riled me right up, to think of Doc's goin' round wrapped up in them sheets, or whatever it is on them folks in the pictures. Mebby it's all right for Physical Culturers, but I don't ever hope to see Doc so."

Eliph' Hewlitt laughed a thin little laugh, and Mrs. Weaver smiled.

"Now, you do think I'm foolish, don't you?" she inquired. "But I had sich a time with Doc 'fore I married him that I'm scared half to death every time I hear a long word I ain't right sure of. I was 'most worried out of my wits last Summer when Miss Crawford was lecturin' on Christian Science. It was jist about even whether Doc 'ud git in line or not. He had an awful struggle, poor feller, 'cause he can't bear to have nothin' new to believe in com round and him not believe in it. Religions is to Doc jist like teethin' is to babies; they got to teethe, and seem like Doc's got to catch new religions. He ain't never real happy when he ain't got no queer fandango to poke his nose into. But he didn't git Christian Scientisted.

"I says to him, 'Doc, ain't you an allopathy?' And he says, 'Yes, certainly.' 'Well,' I says, 'if you go and be a Christian Science you can't be no allopathy, Doc. Christian Science and allopathy don't mix,' I says, 'and you'd starve, that's what you'd do. I leave it to you, Doc, if you quit big pills, how'd you ever git a livin'? There ain't no big pills set down in the Christian Science book.'

"Well, he poked his eyes up at the ceiling, and says, 'I might write, Loreny.' 'Yes,' I says, 'so you might. And what 'd you write, Doc Weaver?' I says. 'Shakespeare?' And Doc shet right up, and never said another word. It was a mean thing for me to say, but I was awful worried."

"Shakespeare?" inquired Eliph'.

"Yes, that's the word—Shakespeare," said Mrs. Weaver. "It come purty nigh keeping me from marrying Doc. You see, Doc ain't like common folks. Don's got sich broad ideas of things. Lib'ral, he calls it, but I name it jist common foolish. He's got to give every new-fangled scheme a show. I guess, off and on, Doc's believed most every queer name in the dictionary, and some that ain't been put in yet. I used to tell him they didn't git them up fast enough to keep up with him. He's got a wonderful mind, Doc has.

"I hain't no notion how ever Doc got started believin' things, but mebby he got in with a bad lot at the doctor school he went to. Doc told me hisself they cut up dead folks. Anyhow, he come back from Chicago a regular atheist; but that was before I knowed him. He lived up at Clarence, and he didn't come to Kilo 'til about ten years after that, and he'd got pretty well along by then, and had got right handy at believin' things.

"Well, when Doc come to Kilo pa had jist died an' ma an' me had to take in boarders to git along; so Doc come to our house to board. That's how Doc an' me got to know each other. I was about as old as Doc, and we wasn't either of us very chickenish, but I thought Doc was the finest man I'd ever saw, an' exceptin' what I'm tellin' you, I ain't ever had cause to change my mind.

"I'd never sa so many books as Doc brought—more'n we've got now. I burned a lot when we got married—Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll, and all I wasn't sure was orthodoxy. Why, we had more books than we've got in the Kilo Sunday School Lib'ry. 'Specially Shakespeare books, some Shakespeare writ hisself, an' some that was writ about him. Doc was real took up with Shakespeare them days.

"'Most all his spare time Doc put in readin' them Shakespeare books, and sometime he'd git a new one. One day he come home mad. I ain't seen Doc real mad but twice, but he was mad that day and no mistake. He'd got a new book, an' he set down to read it as soon as he got in the house; but every couple of pages he'd slap it shut and walk up an' down, growlin' to hisself. Oh, but he was riled! That night I heard him stampin' up an' down his room, mad as a wet hen, and by and by I heard that book go rattlin' out of the window and plunk down in the radish bed. So next morning I went out and got it, 'cause I liked Doc purty well by then, and it made me sorry to see sich a nice, quiet man carry on so.

"I couldn't make head nor tail of the book, nor see why it riled Doc up so. It was jist another Shakespeare book, only this one said that it wasn't Shakespeare, but some one else, that wrote the Shakespeare books. I thought Doc was real foolish to git so mad about it, but I had no idea how much Doc had took it to heart.

"Well, I do run on terribul when I git started, don't I? An' them supper dishes waitin' to be washed! But I guess it won't hurt them to stand a bit. You see, when Doc begun to take a likin' for me, the poor feller started in to talk about what he believed in. Most fellers does. First he begun about greenbacks. He was the only Greenbacker in Kilo; but that was jist politercal stuff, and while I'm a good Republican, like pa was, I didn't see that it would hurt if my husband did think other than what I did on that, so long as he wasn't a saloon Democrat. That was when they was havin' the prohibition fight in Ioway, you know. But when Doc begun lettin' out hints that he didn't think much of goin' to church, I was real sorry.

"I was sorry because I couldn't see my way clear to marry an outsider, bein' a good Methodist myself; but I didn't dream but that he was jist one of these lazy Christians that don't attend church lest they're dragged. There is plenty sich. I thought mebby I could bring him round all right once he was married; so I jist asked him right out if he would jine church.

"Well, you'd have thought I'd asked him to take poison! He didn't flare up like some would, but jist sat down and explained how he couldn't. I guess he must have explained, off an' on, for three weeks before I got a good hang of his idea. Seems like he was believing some Hindoo stuff jist then. I don't know as you ever heart tell of it. It's about souls. When a person dies his soul goes into another person, and so on, until kingdom come. R'inca'nation's what they call it."

"Yes," said Eliph' Hewlitt, "it is all given in 'India, Its Religions and Its History,' in Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art."

"Jist so!" said Mrs. Weaver. "Well, I guess by the time Doc got done explainin' I knew more about r'inca'nation than what your Encyclopedia of Compendium does, because night after night Doc would sit up and explain till I'd drop off asleep.

"But it wasn't no use. So far as I could see, r'inca'nation was jist plain error and follerin' after false gods, and I told Doc so. Anyhow, I knowed there wan't nothin' like it in the Methodist Church, an' I jist up and let Doc know I wouldn't marry anybody that believed such stuff. Doc reckoned to change my mind, but my argument was jist plain 'I won't!' and that settled it. I believe a man and wife ought to belong to the same church,—'thy God shall be my God'—and I wasn't goin' to give up what I'd been taught for any crazy notions Doc had got into his head. I told him so, plain.

"Then Doc took a poetry-writing spell, but he wasn't no great hand at it. I told him in plain words he would be better off rollin' allopathy pills. I used to git right put out with Doc sometimes, foolin' away good time that way, sittin' round by the hour spoilin' good paper. I reckon he started close onto a thousand poems, but he didn't git along very good. 'Bout the their line he'd stop and tear up what he'd wrote. When I wasn't mad I used to feel real sorry for Doc, he tried so hard; but feelin' sorry for him didn't help him none, and it was kind of ridiculous to see him.

"One day I asked Doc why he didn't tell ma and the rest of Kilo what he believed in, and he said that Kilo folks couldn't understand sich things, bein' mostly born and bred in the Methodist Church, and not lib'ral like he was. I seen he was payin' me a compliment, because he had told me, but I couldn't swaller r'inca'nation, for all that. And so we didn't seem to git no further.

"But one day Doc says, 'Well, Loreny, WHY can't you marry me? They ain't no one can love you like I do, and you know I'll make you a good husband, and I'll go to church with you reg'lar if you say so.'

"'Goin' to church ain't all, Doc Weaver,' I says. 'I jist won't marry a man that believes sich trash as you do.'

"'Well, tell me why not,' he says.

"'I'll tell you, Doc Weaver,' I says, 'since you drive me to it. I'm willing enough to marry YOU, but I ain't willing to marry some old heathen Chinee or goodness knows what!'

"'Doc was took all aback. 'Why, Loreny!' he says, 'Why, Loreny!'

"'I mean it,' I says, 'jist what I say. How can I tell who you are when you say yourself you ain't nothing but some old spirit in a new body? Like as not you're Herod, or an Indian, or a cannibal savage, and I'd like to see myself marryin' sich,' I says, 'I'd look purty, wouldn't I, settin' in church alongside of a made-over Chinee?'

"Doc ain't very pale, ever, but he got as red as a beet, and I see I'd hit him purty hard. Then he kind of stiffened up.

"'Loreny,' he says, 'I'd have thought you'd have believed my spirit to be a little better than a heathen Chinee's,' he says, 'though there's much worse folks than what they are.'

"I seen he was put out, an' I hadn't meant to hurt his feelings, so I says, more gentle, 'Well, Doc, if you ain't that, what are you?'

"I s'pose, Mr. Hewlitt, you've noticed how sometimes something you find out will make clear to you a lot of things you couldn't make head nor tail of before. That's the way what Doc said did for me. There was that poetry writin' of his, an' the way that Shakespeare book made him mad, an' how he read those Shakespeare books instead of his Mateery Medicky volumes.

"Well, I asked Doc, 'If you ain't a heathen Chinee or some sich, what are you?' an' when he answered you could have knocked me down with a wisp of hay. You'd never guess, no more than I did.

"'Loreny,' he says, solemn as a deacon, 'I didn't reckon never to tell nobody, an' you mustn't judge what I tell you too quick. I ain't made up my mind sudden-like,' he says, 'but have studied myself and what I like and don't like, for years, and I've jist been forced to it,' he says. 'There ain't no doubt in my mind, Loreny,' he says, an' he let his voice go way down low, like he was 'most afraid to say it hisself. 'Loreny, I believe that Shakespeare's spirit has transmigrated into me.'

"Well, sir, I was too taken aback to say a word. I thought Doc had gone crazy. But he hadn't.

"When I kind of got my senses back I riled up right away. 'Well,' I says snappy, 'I think when you was pickin' out someone to be you might have picked out someone better. From all I've heard, Shakespeare wasn't no better than he'd ought to have been. He don't suit me no better than a Chinee would, and I hain't no fancy to marry Mister Shakespeare. Maybe you think it's fine doin's to be Shakespeare, Doc Weaver, but I don't, and I ain't going to marry a man that's like a two-headed cow, half one thing and half another, and not all of any. When you git your senses,' I says, 'you can talk about marryin' me' and off I went, perky as a peacock. But I cried 'most all night.

"Him an' me kind of stood off from each other after that, and I made up my mind I'd die before I'd marry Doc so long as he was Shakespeare, and Doc had got the notion that he was Shakespeare so set in his mind it seemed likely he would.

"I hadn't never took much stock in poetry readin' since I got out of 'Mother Goose,' but I begun to read Shakespeare a little jist to see what kind of poetry Doc thought he had writ when he was Shakespeare. Well, I wouldn't want to see sich books in the Sunday School Lib'ry, that's all I've got to say. Some I couldn't make sense out of, but there was one long poem about Venus and some young feller—well, I shouldn't thing the gov'ment would allow sich things printed! I jist knowed Doc couldn't ever have writ such stuff. There ain't so much meanness in him. But I couldn't see clear how to make Doc see it that way.

"I'd about given up hopes of ever curing Doc, when one day a feller come to town and give a lecture in the dance room over the grocery. He was one of these spiritualism fellers, and as soon as it was noised around that he was comin', I knowed Doc would be the first man to go and the last to come away, and he was. Thinks I, 'Let him go. If Doc jines in with spiritualists, it will be better'n what he believes in now, and if he begins changin' religions, mebby I can keep him changin', and change him into a churchgoer." And so, jist to see what Doc was like to be, I coaxed ma to go, an' I went, too. It wasn't near so sinful as I expected.

"The feller's name was Gilson, an' he was as pale as a picked chicken, but real common lookin', otherwise. He was a right-down good talker and seemed real earnest. He wasn't the ghost-raisin' kind of spiritualist, and them that went to see a show, come away dissap'inted, for all he did was to talk and take up a collection. He said he was a new beginner and used to be a Presbyterian minister. Doc stayed after it was over and had a talk with Gilson, and of course he got converted, like he always did. He told ma so.

"I hadn't been havin' much talk with Doc one way or another, but when ma told me he had jined the spiritualists I eased up a litt, and one day I made bold to say, 'Well, Doc, I s'pose now you have give up that Shakespeare foolishness, ain't you?'

"'No, Loreny,' he says, 'I ain't.'

"'Land's sakes!' I says, 'do you mean to say you can be two things at once in religion, as well as bein' Shakespeare and Doc Weaver?'

"'Yes, Loreny,' he says. 'The spirit has got to be somewheres between the times it has got a body,' he says, 'That stands to reason. It's always puzzled me where I was between the time I died two or three hundred years ago and the time I entered this body,' he says, 'and spiritualism makes it all clear. I was floatin' in space.'

"That's jist how fool-crazy Doc was them days. There he was believin' with all his might that r'inca'nation business and that spirit business at the same time.

"I says, 'Well, Doc, some day you'll see how deep in error you are,' and I didn't say no more.

"Of course Doc wouldn't let well-enough alone. There was a big spiritualist over to Peory, Illinoy, a reg'lar ghost-raisin' feller, and what did Doc do but write over and git him to come to Kilo and give a seance. That is a meetin' where they raise up ghosts. Doc wanted the feller to stop at our house, but I wouldn't have it, so he had to put up at the hotel. Doc said it was a shame, but as soon as I seen the man I said it served him right, and that he was a fraud, but Doc swallered him right down, hide an' hoof.

"They had the seance in the hotel parlor, and no charge, so me and ma went, thought we wasn't jist sure it was right; but I says it wasn't as if it was real—we knowed it was all foolishness; so ma and me trotted along. I found out afterward that Doc paid to have the feller come to Kilo. His name was Moller, an' he was one of them long-haired greasy-lookin' men.

"I must say it was real scary when they turned the lights down an' Moller made tables jump around and fiddles play without anybody playin' on them. There wasn't many folks there, but ma held my hand, an' I held ma's, and Doc was right in front of us.

"Moller did a lot of tricks sich as I hear they always do, an' then he said he'd bring up any spirits anyone would like to have come up. That was what Doc was waitin' for, and he popped right up.

"'I should like to talk to Bacon,' he says.

"'Bacon?' says Moller. 'There's a good many Bacons in spirit-land. Which one do you want to speak to, brother?"

"'The one that lived when Shakespeare did,' says Doc. 'The one that wrote the essays and sich. Sir Francis Bacon.'

"'Ah, yes!' says Moller. 'I'll see if he's willin' to say anyting to-night.' And down he set into a chair. Well, you'd have died! In a bit his head and legs begun to jerk like he had St. Vitus dance, and then he straightened out, stiff as a broomstick. It was the silliest thing ever I seen. I felt real sorry for Doc, he was so dead earnest about it.

"In a minute Moller opened his jaw and begun to talk. It was all sort of jerky-like.

"'I'm sailin' through starry fields,' he says, 'explorin' the wonders of the universe. Why am I called back to earth this way? Doth somebody want to question me about something?'

"Doc was all worked up. He held onto a chairback, an' he was so shakin' I could hear the loose chair rungs rattle.

"'Is this Bacon?' he says.

"'It is,' says Moller, his voice jerkin' like a kitten taken with the fits.

"'Well,' says Doc, like his life was hangin' on what Moller would say, 'did you, or did you not, write Shakespeare's plays?'

"'I did not,' Moller jerked out; 'Shakespeare did.'

"You could hear Doc sigh all over the room, it was sich a relief to his mind. Doc was awful pleased. He was smilin' all over his face, he was so pleased to have Bacon own up, an' he turned to ma and me and says, 'Ain't it wonderful!'

"Then Moller come out of his fit an' set still a while, like he had jist woke up from a long nap. Then he says he's goin' into another trance, an' if any in the room wants to hold talk with any of their lost friends or kin, they should ask for them, an' he jerked again, and jerked out stiff.

"That old back-slider, Pap Briggs, popped up, but Doc was ahead of him, 'cause Pap always has to regulate his store teeth before he can git his tongue goin', and Doc says, 'I desire to speak with Richard Burbage.'

"I guess Moller didn't now any sich feller. Anyways he jist lay still an' so Doc says, 'Mebby there's several Richard Burbages. I mean the one that owned a theater with Shakespeare.' But Richard Burbage didn't feed like talkin' that evenin'. I reckon Moller didn't know nothin' about Richard Burbage, and was frightened that Doc would ask him something that he couldn't answer. There ain't nobody slicker than them fake fellers. It's their business.

"But Doc was so worked up he would have swallered anything, and I guess Moller thought he had to make up to Doc for payin' his expenses, so he says, smilin', 'I see, doctor, you are interested in literature, and I'll try to get somebody in that line that's willing to talk.' So he jerked into another trance.

"Purty soon Moller says: 'From the seventh circle I have come, drawn by the will of somebody that knows and loves me. It's a long way. Billions of miles off is ny new home, where I spend eternity writin' things that make what I writ on earth look like nothin','—or some sich nonsense. Doc looked back at me once, proud as sin, an' then he swelled out his lungs, an' run his hand over his whiskers, like you've seen him do. He was gittin' wound up for a good talk.

"If I do say it myself, Doc's a good talker, an' I figgered he'd make Moller hustle. I see Doc was goin' to spread hisself to do credit to Shakespeare. He hadn't no doubt that one spirit would recognize another, so he says, like he was makin' a speech, 'You know who I am?'

"'I do,' says Moller.

"'Then,' says Doc, 'since my spirit eyes are blinded by this mortal body, may I ask who you are?' He didn't hardly breathe. Then Moller jerked. 'I am Shakespeare,' he says, sudden-like.

"'What's that?' says Doc, short and quick.

"'Shakespeare,' says Moller—'William Shakespeare.'

"Poor Doc jist dropped into his chair, and run his hand over his forehead and his eyes, like he had bumped into the edge of a door in the dark. I ain't never seen Doc real pale but once, and that was then. Then he turned round to ma an' me, weak as a sick baby, an' says, 'Come, Loreny; this lyin' place ain't nowhere for you and me to be,' and we went out.

"'Well, Doc,' I says, when we was outside, 'seems to me like there is two of you,' and that was all I says to him about it, then; but I guess he see what a fool he'd been, 'cause the next night he says, 'Loreny, I wisht you'd git me a set of the articles of belief of our church. I'd like to look them over.'

"'Well,' I says, 'who'll I say wants them, Shakespeare or Doc Weaver?'

"'You can say an old fool wants them,' says Doc, 'and you'll hit it about right.'

"So Doc jined church, an' he's leadin' the singin' now; but you can see why I keep sich a lookout lest he gits started off on some new religion."

Mrs. Weaver glanced at the clock.

"Mercy me!" she exclaimed. "Doc'll be home before I git them supper dishes washed up. Now, you won't feel hurt because I don't want you to talk new religions to Doc, will you? You can see jist how I feel, and you wouldn't want no husband yourself that was a philopeny, as you might say. I don't believe I could git on real well with Doc if he had kept on bein' Shakespeare. I'd always have felt like he was 'bout three hundred years older than me. But there's jist one thing I dread more than anything else. If Doc should take up with the Mormon religion and start a harem, I believe I'd coax him to be Shakespeare again. It's bad enough to have a double husband, but, land's sakes, I'd rather that than be part of a wife."



CHAPTER XII. Getting Acquainted

Althought Eliph' Hewlitt was not making much progress in his courtship he was far from idle in the succeeding weeks. He had taken many orders for Jarby's great book in the county, before he arrived in Kilo, and as a shipment of the books arrived from New York he spent much of his time behind old Irontail making his deliveries and collecting the first payments, and some time in the immediate neighborhood making new sales. One of the copies he had to deliver was the one purchased by Mrs. Tarbro-Smith, but although he delivered it to her at Miss Sally's, he did not have an opportunity to speak to Miss Sally, for she hid herself when he approached the door, and did not come down stairs again until he had left the house.

Mrs. Tarbro-Smith received the book with a lady-like enthusiasm, and immediately placed it upon Miss Sally's center table, where its bright red cover added a touch of cheerfulness to the room, suggestive of the knowledge, literature, science and art the book was guaranteed to irradiate in any family. But Miss Sally never so much as looked inside its covers. She avoided it as if the thought the book itself might seize her and sell to her, against her will, one of its fellows. Mrs. Smith said openly that she wished she might see more of Eliph' Hewlitt, and that she thought him a most remarkable book agent, particularly after she had heard of his selling the Missionary Society a wholesale lot of Jarby's Encyclopedia, and after glancing through the book she admitted that it was really an excellent thing of its kind, but Miss Sally merely remarked that she didn't like book agents, and that she hated this one more than most, he was so slick.

The energetic spirit of Mrs. Smith was sure to carry her into anything that partook of a social nature, and she had arrived in Kilo in the midst of the festival season, when out-door festivals of all varieties were following one after another almost weekly for the benefit of the church, which had a properly clinging and insatiable debt. In these festivals she took a prominent part, for the brought her in contact with the people of Kilo as nothing else could, and if she enjoyed the affairs, so did Susan. Susan bloomed wonderfully. She sprang at once from childhood to young womanhood, and Mrs. Smith was pleased to have her protegee appear so well and receive so much attention, for she felt that she had had the revision of her. She already saw in her the heroine of the novel she meant to write, with the plot beginning in Kilo and Clarence, and carried to New York and, perhaps, Europe.

The attorney and the editor were particularly nice to Susan, and attentive to Mrs. Smith at all the festivals, and it amused the New Yorker to find herself and her maid on and equal social plane. It is quite different in New York. But lady's maids in New York are not all like Susan. Maids in New York do not spend their spare time studying Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, and Susan did. Even Eliph' Hewlitt could not have read the book more faithfully than Susan did, nor have believed in it more trustfully. Often when the editor or the attorney sought her at one of the festivals they would find her talking with Eliph' Hewlitt, exchanging facts out of Jarby's Encyclopedia.

For Eliph' never missed a festival. He haunted them, standing in one spot until his eyes fell upon Miss Sally, when he would make straight for her with his dainty little steps, and she, catching sight of him—for she was always on the lookout—would move away, weaving around and between people until he lost sight of her, when he would stand still until he caught sight of her again. It was like a game. Sometimes he caught her, but before he could have a word with her she would make an excuse and hurry away, or turn him over to another. Usually she shielded herself by keeping either the Colonel or Skinner beside her, if they were present, and they usually were.

"Land's sake!" she exclaimed to Mrs. Smith, one evening, as they were walking home after an ice-cream festival at Doc Weaver's, "I wish somebody would tell that Mr. Hewlitt that I don't want to buy no books. He pesters the life out of me. I can't show myself nowhere but he comes up, all loaded to begin, and if I'd give him half a chance he'd have me buyin' a book in no time. It don't seem to make no difference where I am. I believe he'd try to sell books at a funeral." Mrs. Smith laughed.

"I know he would!" she said. "He is delightful! Why don't you do as I did, and buy a book, and then he will be satisfied, and leave you alone."

"Well, I won't!" declared Miss Sally. "I ain't done nothin' all my life but buy books an' then fight pa to get money to pay installments on 'em, an' I won't buy no more! I declared to goodness when I bought them Sir Walter Scott books that I wouldn't buy no more, an' I won't. If I buy this one off of this man, there'll be another, an' another, an' so on 'til kingdom come, an' one everlasting fight with pa for money."

"Couldn't you pay for it with the money you got for those fire-extinguishers?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"Pa borryed that to pay taxes with, long ago, an' that's the last I'll ever see of the money," said Miss Sally. "Pa ain't the kind that pays back. He's a good getter, an' a good keeper, but he's about the poorest giver I ever did see, if he is my own father. There ain't nothin' in the world else that would drive me to get married but just the trouble I have to get money out of pa for anything. I ain't even got a black silk dress to my name, and there ain't another lady in Kilo but's got one. I guessed when we moved to town I would have the egg money same as on the farm, but since pa had his teeth out an' got new ones he won't eat nothin' but eggs, an' I don't get any egg money. Pa eats so many eggs I'm ashamed to tell it. I wonder he don't sprout feathers. I don't believe so many eggs is good for a man. It don't seem natural. That encyclopedia book don't say anywhere that eatin' too many eggs makes a man close fisted, does it?"

Mrs. Smith said she could remember nothing to that effect in the book, and for a minute they walked in silence. Suddenly she looked up and spoke.

"Miss Sally," she exclaimed, "I know what to do! I will make you a present of y encyclopedia. I will give it to you, and the next time you see Mr. Hewlitt you can tell him you have a copy, and then he will leave you alone!"

That was how it happened that at the next festival Miss Sally did not run when she saw Eliph' Hewlitt approaching, but stood waiting for him. He stepped up to her with a smile that was half pleasure and half excuse.

"I don't want to buy a book," she said quickly. "I've got one. Mrs. Smith gave me the one she had. So you needn't pester me any more."

"I didn't want to sell you a book," said Eliph' gently, "although I am glad to learn you have one. No person, whether man, woman or child, should be without a copy of this work, including, as it does, all the knowledge of the ages and all the world's wisdom, from A to Z, condensed into one volume, for ready reference. It is a book that should be on every parlor table and——"

"Well, I've got one," said Miss Sally, "so it's no use wasting talk on it. One's all I want. Another one wouldn't be no good but to clutter up the house."

"Just so," said Eliph'. "I don't want to sell you another. To sell this book is the smallest part of my trouble. It is a book that sells itself. I only need to show it, to sell it. Wherever it falls open it attracts the attention with a gem of thought or a flower of knowledge, perhaps the language of gems, or the language of flowers, how to cure boils, how to preserve fruit, each page offers something of value to the mind. A copy of this book in the house is a friend in sickness or in health, a help in business and a companion in pleasure; to the agent it is a source of steady and continuous income. One copy sells another."

"I said before that I don't want another," said Miss Sally shortly.

"Let us talk about something else," said Eliph' Hewlitt, coughing politely behind his hand. "I'll be glad to, but I do not blame you for bringing up the subject of the work I am selling. I make it a rule never to talk book out of business hours, but I am not sensitive, as some book agents are. When Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art is mentioned I am not offended; I am not ashamed of my business—I enjoy it. I could talk of the merits of this unequaled work day and night without stopping and yet not do it full justice, but I don't. When my work is done I stop talking book. I might, to enliven conversation, quote from the 'Five Hundred Ennobling Thoughts from the World's Greatest Authors, Including the Prose and Poetical Gems of All Ages,' containing, as it does, the best thoughts of the greatest minds, suitable for polite and refined conversation, sixty-two solid pages of the, with vingetty portraits of the authors, and a short biographical sketch of each, including date and place of birth, date and place of death, if dead, et cetery. Or I might, to brighten a passing moment, propound one or more of the 'Six Hundred Perplexing Puzzles,' page 987, including charades, conundrums, quaint mathematical catches, et cetery, compiled to brighten the mind and puzzle the wits, suitable for young or old, for grave or gay. It is a book that meets every want of every day, is neatly and durably bound, and the price is only five dollars."

Miss Sally turned as if to run away, but Eliph' put out his hand and touched her arm lightly.

"But I don't," he said. "I don't quote, and I don't propound. I put the book aside and I forget. When my work is done I relax my mind. I enter into the pleasures I find most congenial, such as festivals, sociables, fairs, kermesses, picnics, parties, receptions, et cetery, rules and suggestions for conducting all of which are to be found in this book, which is recommended and esteemed by the leaders of society, both in the Four Hundred and out. Or I read a good book, a list of five hundred of which may be found on page 336, 'The Reader's Guide,' giving advice in selecting fiction, history, philosophy, religious works, poetry, et cetery, the whole selected by eight of the most eminent professors of literature in our colleges and universities, both at home and abroad. Or I indulge in conversation, in which what better guide than is to be found on page 662, 'The Polite Conversationalist,' including gems of wit, apt quotations, how to gain and hold the attention, how to amuse, instruct and argue, et cetery? When it is remember that all this, and much more, can be had for only five dollars, neatly bound in cloth, one dollar down and one dollar a month until paid, what wonder is it that—that——"

Suddenly one of the paper lanterns that hung from the wire above them burst into flame, and Eliph' saw on Miss Sally's face the look of fear with which she was regarding him, fear and fascination mingled. The smile faded from his lips, and his gentle blue eyes became troubled. He dropped the hand that had been lightly resting on her arm, and his dapper air of self-confidence wilted in abashment.

"Was I—was I talking book?" he asked weakly. "I was! Pardon me, Miss Briggs, pardon me, I didn't know it. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

For a moment Miss Sally studied his face, and she saw only a genuine contrition there, and a regret so deep that she was sorry for him. There could be no doubt of his sincerity.

"Well!" she exclaimed, with a breath of relief; "I do believe you didn't know you was! I believe that book's got so ground into you that you can't help but talk it, like Benny Tenneker, who got so used to climbin' trees an' fallin' out of 'em that he used to climb the bedposts an' fall of of 'em in his sleep without wakin' up. Mrs. Doc Weaver's his aunt, an' when he visited her he nearly got killed fallin' out of bed when he was tryin' to climb a bed post when there wasn't not on the bed. He'd got so he could fall out of any high place an' light safe, but he wasn't used to fallin' off of low ones. He was such a nice boy. All Martha Willing's children were nice. Mebby you've met her. She lives out Clarence way."

"Willin?" said Eliph'. "Yes, I sold her a—I mean to say, I met her."

"Well, her husband's dead, and her and her boys is runnin' the farm," said Miss Sally, "an' doin' right well, so I guess she ain't afraid of book agents. She can afford to buy. I don't know as I'm afraid of 'em either, or hate 'em as such, but I can't afford. Pa don't approve of books much, an' he can't see why he should pay out money for what he don't approve of. Books an' taxes he don't care much for. That's why I was so scared of you."

"I didn't want to sell you a—to sell you anything," said Eliph' meekly. "All I wanted was to get acquainted, to get well acquainted."

"I guess that's all right then," said Miss Sally. "There ain't anything more natural than that you should wish that, bein' intendin' to make your home here. I hope you like the place an' make lot of acquaintances, but if I was you I'd try not to talk book any more than you have to. I don't think it'll help to make you popular, as I may say. That Sir Walter man sort of gave everybody an overdose of book, an' folks feel kind of mad at book agents ever since. Like father Emmons, when he had one of his sick spells, an' nothin' would do but he was goin' to die, so he got up before sun-up an' drove to town to see Doc Weaver. He let Doc know he felt he was dyin' an' told him the symptoms, an' all Doc says was, 'All you want is salts. You stop at the drug store an' get a pound of salts, an' I'll warrant you'll be as well as ever.' So when his daughter—she's Mary Ann Klepper—went into the house after carryin' lunch to the men in the field, there was her poor old father settin' at the table with the big yeller bake-bowl in front of him, an' him eatin' away at what was in it with a big spoon. 'Eatin' bread an' milk, father?' she asks, an' her pa looks up with tears in his eyes, an' swallers down another spoonful. 'No,' he says, as cross as a bear, 'I'm eatin' a pound o' salts Doc Weaver told me to git, but hang if I can eat another spoonful, an' I ain't above half done.' So I guess Kilo folks kind of gag when they think of books."

"If I so much as mention books," said Eliph' pleadingly, "I wish you'd stop me. Don't let me. Mebby I do sort of get in the habit of it, thinking it and talking it so much. But I never meant to sell you one. I only wanted to get acquainted."

Miss Sally laughed.

"Well," she said cheerfully, "there's different ways to do it, but I guess you an' me have got well acquainted different from what most folks does. Ain't you been over to the ice-cream table yet? Or was you waitin' to be primed; that's what us ladies is here for, to start folks spendin' money, like Mrs. Foster's little nephew that come up from the city to visit her last summer. He wanted to know what everything was for that was on the farm or in the house, that he wasn't used to, an' when they told him they always had to leave a dipper of water in the pail to prime the pump with so it would give water, he wanted to know if the reason they had the pans of milk in the spring-house was so they could prime the cows so they would give milk."

Eliph' laughed heartily, for his heart was light. He was making progress; Miss Sally admitted that they were well acquainted, and now he could proceed to the second step advised in "Courtship; How to Win the Affections; How to Hold Them When Won."



CHAPTER XIII. "Second: A Small Present"

The next morning Eliph' Hewlitt purchased the two-pound box of candy in the pictured box that had long been considered by the druggist a foolish investment. For months it had reposed in the end of the toilet soap case awaiting a purchaser, and had acquired a sweet odor of scented soap mingled with the plainer odor of cut castile, and no one had been so extravagant as to buy it. Once the druggist had tried to persuade the candy salesman to take it back in exchange for more salable goods, but after taking it from the show-case and smelling it the drummer refused. At the opposite end of the case the druggist kept his plush manicure and brush-and-comb sets, with a few lumps of camphor scattered among them to discourage moths, but the odor of camphor did not hurt the candy. The scented soap protected it from the camphor. When Kilo buys scented soap she likes to have it really scented.

Miss Sally, when the small boy Eliph' secured as a messenger had delivered the box of candy, knew well enough what it meant. The neatly written card, "From Yours very truly, E. Hewlitt," did not suggest much, perhaps, but in Kilo friends do not scatter two-pound boxes of candy recklessly about. To receive a two-pound box on Christmas would have been a suspicious circumstance, for a smaller box would have done quite as well between friends, but to send a two-pound box on a day that was no holiday at all, but just a plain day of the week, could stand for but one of two things—the giver was insane, or he had "intentions," and Miss Sally knew very well that Eliph' Hewlitt was not insane. Unless on the subject of Jarby's Encyclopedia.

She carried the box of candy to Mrs. Smith, and showed her the card.

"How lovely!" cried Mrs. Smith, an exclamation which might have meant either the box of candy or the sentiment that inspired the sender, and then added, "How odd! It smells like soap!"

"That's a sign it's good candy," said Miss Sally. "The candy Rudge sells always smells of soap, an' he handles only the best, so when you see candy that smells that way you know it's good. This is Rudge's candy, sure enough, for I know this box by heart. Rudge has had it in his show case ever since the firm was Crimmins & Rudge. It must be some stale by this time, but the box is pretty."

"I don't suppose Mr. Hewlitt knew it was stale," said Mrs. Smith, "He evidently tried to get the best he could."

"Yes," admitted Miss Sally. "He wouldn't know this box of candy so well as we town folks do, him bein' a newcomer here. I suppose Rudge gave him a discount off the price on account of the box bein' soiled a little. I hope to goodness that man wasn't so foolish as to go an' pay straight sixty cents a pound for it. He got cheated if he did, an' I'll tell him so when I see him next." She slowly untied the red ribbon that bound the box, and rolled it neatly around the fingers of her left hand, to lay away for future use. "Now, what do you suppose that man sent it to me for?" she asked.

Mrs. Smith smiled, for she knew Miss Sally was asking the question merely that she might have her own belief made sure by the words of another.

"Because he's in love, of course," said Mrs. Smith. "Because he is desperately in love. It is a romance, my dear."

Miss Sally looked doubtfully toward Susan, who was curled up on the old sofa in the corner of the room. She was not sure that such matters should be discussed before one so young, but Susan would have refused to leave the room, even if asked, and she resented the questioning glance that Miss Sally had thrown at Mrs. Smith.

"'Courtship—How to Make Love—How to Win the Affections—How To Hold Them When Won,'" she said gaily. "'First, get acquainted; second, make small presents, such as flowers, books or candy; third, ask for the lady's hand.' You needn't look at me that way, Miss Sally; I know all about it. I read it in Jarby's Encyclopedia."

"Lands sakes!" exclaimed Miss Sally. "And me and him only got well acquainted last night at the festival. I never heard of such a thing!"

"It's love at first sight," teased Mrs. Smith. "He will probably be around this afternoon to propose, and we can have the wedding this evening."

"Well, he needn't come this afternoon, if he's got it in his mind to come," said Miss Sally shortly, "for I won't be at home. I ain't goin' to be rushed that way, not by no man. I don't say but Mr. Hewlitt is a clever spoken man, Mrs. Smith, when he ain't talkin' books, but I ain't in the habit of bein' courted like I was a Seidlitz powder, and had to be drunk down before I stopped fizzin'. That may be some folks way of doin' it, but it ain't mine."

"Nor Colonel Guthrie's," suggested Mrs. Smith.

"If the Colonel's slow it ain't his fault," said Miss Sally. "He'd be quick enough if I'd let him, but I can't see no hurry, one way or another. I don't say but that a husband is a good thing to have, mind you! I guess I'm like all other women and want to have one some time, but so long as I've got pa I'm in no hurry. He's as much trouble as a husband would be, and as grumpy when things don't go to suit him. Sometimes I feel like in the end I'd choose to marry the Colonel, since it wouldn't be so much of a change, the Colonel bein' like pa in some ways, such as bein' economical; and then again I feel like I'd prefer Skinner, just because he'd BE a change. I'd be always sure of gettin' good meat, for one thing, and I'd insist upon it. I can't a-bear tough meat.

"Shoemakers' children go without shoes," suggested Mrs. Smith.

"They wouldn't if I was their mother, an' I'll tell Skinner so, if I choose to marry him an' he tries to send home any but the best meat he's got in the shop," said Miss Sally firmly. "That's one man, if I marry him, I won't take no foolishness from. When a man is castin' his eyes my way, an' then has to have a city ordinance made to compel him to do me the favor of buyin' four fire-extinguishers off of me, that ain't no earthly use to me, I'll let him know I'm going to have my way about some things when we're married. I know well enough I ain't such a beauty that Skinner an' the Colonel is what you might call infatuated with me, and I don't expect 'em to be. Pa's got money, and if he didn't have I guess the Colonel an' Skinner wouldn't bother their heads about me much; but if they like me for pa's money now I guess they'll like me for it just as well after they marry me, for I'll have it well known that money don't go out of my name. And I'll let this book agent man know it too. If it's pa's money he's in such a hurry to get, he'll find out his mistake."

"I rather like the book agent," said Mrs. Smith. "He doesn't seem to me at all the adventurer type."

"His whiskers do make him look like a preacher," said Miss Sally, "if that's what you mean; but if he means business he ought to know I ain't the kind of bird to be caught with boxes of candy. Neither Skinner nor the Colonel is so silly as to think that."

She smoothed her apron across her knees, and looked at its checked pattern.

"Seems to me," she said, with a touch of regret, "this ain't no time or age for such foolishness. It ain't as if I was a girl like Susan there. Boxes of candy an' Susan would match up like pale blue an' white. I guess the safe thing is to make choice of one that ain't a stranger. I've done business with Skinner years an' years, sellin' him calves an' buyin' meat off of him; an' as for the Colonel, I guess I know all his bad points as well as his good ones. The Colonel has been a friend of pa's a long time."

So it happened that when Eliph' Hewlitt called at Miss Sally's that afternoon he did not find her at home. Mrs. Smith received him and tried to make up by her kindness for the disappointment Eliph' evidently felt. She thanked him in Miss Sally's name for the beautiful box of candy—although Miss Sally had left no such word—and drew him on to talk of Jarby & Goss, the publishers of the Encyclopedia, and of his own adventures. The longer she talked with the little man the better her opinion of him became, and she saw that he was gentle, shrewd, capable and sincere—sincere evening his wildest enthusiasm for Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art. When he arose to go he stood a moment hesitatingly with his hat in his hand. He coughed apologetically.

"I hope Miss Sally like the little token of esteem; the box of candy;" he said, looking up into Mrs. Smith's face anxiously, "it isn't as if I was used to such matters. My preference would have been a book; a good book; a book that I could recommend to man, woman or child, containing in a condensed form all the world's knowledge, from the time of Adam to the present day, with an index for ready reference, and useful information for every day of the year. It was my intention to have given her such a book, which would have been a proper vehicle to convey to her my—my regard, but I learned only last night that she already had a copy of that work, without which no home is complete, and which is published by Jarby & Goss, New York, five dollars, bound in cloth; seven fifty, morocco. I learned that she already had one."

"She told you I had given her my copy?" asked Mrs. Smith.

"Yes," said Eliph' simply. "So I could not present her with a copy of that work. My preference was to give a work of literature; I am a worker in the field of literature, and it would have been more appropriate. But I could give her nothing but the best of its kinds, and where find another such book as Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art? Nowhere! There is no other. This book combining in one volume selections from the world's best literature, recipes for the home, advice for every period of existence, together with one thousand and one other subjects, forms in itself a volume unequaled in the history of literature. No person should be without it."

"I know, Mr. Hewlitt," pleaded Mrs. Smith, smiling, "but I have already bought two copies. Don't you thing you ought to let me off with that?"

"I was not trying to sell you one," said Eliph' with embarrassment. "I hoped——" He paused and coughed behind his hand again. "You know my intention in sending a present to Miss Briggs," he said bravely. "I admire her greatly. I—to me she is, in fact, a Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art among women."

"Dear Mr. Hewlitt," said Mrs. Smith, taking his hand, "I understand. And I wish you all the good fortune in the world. I shall do all I can to help you."

"Thank you," said Eliph', shaking her hand as if she was an old acquaintance he ad met after long years of separation. "So you understand that I can feel the same to no other woman. Not even to—to anyone." He wiped his forehead with his disengaged hand. "So I feel that you will not misunderstand me if I ask you to accept a copy of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, bound in morocoo, seven fifty. I mean gratis. No home should be without one."

"Why, it is very kind of you to suggest such a thing," said Mrs. Smith, "and I'm sure I'll be glad to own a copy."

"I'm glad to have you," said Eliph'. "I wanted to give you one, but I didn't want you to think I meant it in the way I meant what I sent to Miss Sally. I was afraid you might, or that Miss Sally might. But I don't mean it that way."

"I know you don't," said Mrs. Smith heartily. "And if Miss Sally is jealous I will tell her she is quite mistaken. But if you will let a woman that has had a little experience advise you, do not be too hasty. Do not try to hurry matters too much. It would spoil everything if you pressed for an answer too soon and received an unfavorable one. And I'm afraid it would be an unfavorable one if you put it to the test now."

Eliph's countenance fell. It said plainly enough that he understood her to mean that the Colonel and Skinner were more apt to be favorably received.

"I'm afraid so," said Mrs. Smith regretfully. "You know they are older acquaintances, and Miss Sally is not one of those who think new friends are best."

"I was coming again to-night," said Eliph'. "Perhaps I'd better not say anything to-night. Perhaps I had better wait until to-morrow."

"Wait until next month, or next year," advised Mrs. Smith. "There is no hurry. Something may turn up."



CHAPTER XIV. Something Turns Up

Something turned up the very next day. It turned all Kilo upside down as nothing had for years, and created such a demand for the TIMES that J. T. Jones had to print an extra edition of sixty copies, and he would have printed ten more if his press had not broken down.

Across two columns—the TIMES never used over one column headlines except for the elections—blazed the work "GRAFT," and beneath, in but a size or two smaller, stared the "sub-head" "OFFICIAL OF KILO CORRUPTED. CITIZENS' PARTY ROTTEN TO THE CORE. PROMINENT CITIZEN IMPLICATED." Beneath this followed the moral of it, "The City, as Predicted in These Columns, Suffers for Departing from The Beneficent Rule of the Republican Party."

Attorney Toole was sitting in his office when the boy from the TIMES delivered the paper to him. He smiled as he opened the damp sheet, for he extracted more amusement than news from the little paper, but as he turned it the headlines caught his eye, and instantly he was deep in the columns. Someone had sprung his mine before he had intended—it had exploded prematurely and with, what seemed to him, as he read on, a futile insipidity.

There were full two columns of it. There were hints and innuendoes, too well veiled, but no names mentioned. The specific act of graft was not brought to the surface. It was as if the writer had a "spread" of some vaguely uncertain rumor, and yet there was not doubt that Colonel Guthrie and Mayor Stitz and the fire-extinguishers were meant. The attorney could see that, and he had an idea that the writer had meant to tell more than he really did tell. The veiled allusions were so thoroughly veiled in words that they were buried as if under mountains of veils. Each slight hint was swamped in morasses of quotations and fine flourishes, overgrown and hidden by tropical verbiage, and covered up by philosophical and political phrases until nothing of the hint could be seen. As he read on the attorney could see Doc Weaver talking, as plainly as if he stood before him; he could see him at his desk in a frenzy of composition, and he recognized the apt quotations from Shakespeare that were Doc's specialty. Doc Weaver had written it.

The attorney laid the paper down and studied the matter. How could Doc have learned of the affair? Skinner, angry as he had been at having to buy the four fire-extinguishers, would never have dared to wreck the party he had helped to create. The Colonel would have been no such fool. Stitz? He would hardly accuse himself. Who then?

One passage set the attorney thinking again as he re-read the article. "'Thinks are seldom what they seem,' as the poet says, which is as true as that 'Honesty is the best policy.' And as Shakespeare says, 'To what base ends,' for all this disreputable graft centers around certain brilliant objects that are not what the guilty bribers and bribees suppose them to be. While we shudder with horror at the temerity of the sinners we shake with laughter as we think of their faces as they will be when they realize that they are mortals to whom the immortal bard refers when he enunciates the truth, 'What fools these mortals be!'"

"Certain brilliant objects" could mean nothing but the lung-testers. Eliph' Hewlitt had that secret, and Eliph' Hewlitt boarded with Doc Weaver. The attorney felt a sudden rush of anger. It was to this intermeddling book agent, then, that he owed the premature explosion of the mine that was to have blown the Citizens' Party to fragments, and to have landed the fragments in the basket held ready by Attorney Toole?

The distribution of that week's TIMES acted like a tonic on the town streets. New life followed in the wake of the boy as he carried the paper from door to door. It began at the corner of Main and Cross Streets, and as the boy proceeded, the merchants, the loafers, and the customers came from the stores and gathered in knots that formed quickly and dissolved again as the parts passed from one group to another, questioning, arguing, and guessing. The attorney looked out of his window. Across the street he could see the office of the TIMES, and T. J. already besieged by questioners, to whom he was evidently giving a kind but decided refusal of further information. The editor was waving them away with his hands. Some of the editor's visitors handed T. J. money, and carried away copies of the TIMES, but all went, gently urged by the editor, and joined one or another of the groups below. The attorney drew on his coat. He would postpone his interview with Eliph' Hewlitt; Thomas Jefferson Jones was the man he wanted to see at that moment.

It was difficult for the attorney to retain his enigmatical smiles as he climbed the stairs to the TIMES office. He was angry, but he knew the value of that irritating smile that hinted superiority and a knowledge of hidden details. He needed it in his talk with the editor.

It is odd how common interests will bring men together. And sometimes how common interests will not. The attorney and the editor had been as one man in polite attentions to Susan Bell, Mrs. Smith's protegee, at first, but as their acquaintance with her grew they seemed to like each other less. They no longer consulted each other on the best methods of bringing Republican rule back to Kilo. They did not consult together at all. The attorney coldly ignored the editor, and his irritation, beginning in this rivalry, was increased by the growing suspicion that the editor dared look toward the leadership of the Republican party in Kilo.

It all angered the attorney. What right had a country editor to compete with a man of talent, with a member of the bar, with Attorney Toole? Was this the thanks a rising lawyer should receive for leaving the superior culture of Franklin and bringing his talents to add luster to the bleak unimportance of Kilo? The very impertinence of it angered him. Toole, a man whose name would one day ring in the hall of Congress and perhaps stand at the head of the nation's officers as chief executive, to be bothered by the interference of a Jones! By the interference of a man who spent his time collecting news of measles and hog cholera! It was about time T. J. Jones was told a few things.

As Toole entered the printing office T. J. was handing a copy of the TIMES to a customer, and the editor turned, and, seeing who his visitor was, held up his hand playfully.

"No use!" he exclaimed. "I can't say anything about it, except what's in the paper. Contributed article, and the editor sworn to silence, you know."

The attorney seated himself on the editor's desk, pushing a pile of papers out of his way.

"That's all right, Jones," he said. "That's for the"—he waved his hand toward the window—"for the fellow citizens; for the populace. This is between ourselves."

"I'd like to," said Jones, "but really, I can't say anything about it. I promised faithfully I would not betray my contributor's confidence."

"Now, do I look so green as that?" asked Toole. "Nonsense! Doc Weaver wrote that rot." He smiled. "He spread himself, didn't he?"

The editor remained motionless.

"I have nothing whatever to say," he remarked, noncommittally.

"Well, I have!" cried the attorney. "I'll tell you that it is poor work for you to steal my thunder and attempt to use it without consulting me! It is poor work, and mean work. You want to be boss of this party in Kilo county, that's what you want. And you haven't the capacity. You have proved it right here, right here in this silly sheet of yours. You hit on a big thing, and you spoil it. You are so anxious that Toole shall get no credit that you rush it into print and make a fizzle of it. I know who the traitors to the party are—you are one. Doc Weaver with his elegant style and his Shakespeare is another. And that miserable intermeddling little book agent is another. You make me sick."

The editor stood like a statue, and his face was as white. The attorney dropped his words slowly from lips that still wore the tantalizing smile.

"The childishness amuses me," said the attorney. "It makes me smile. Why didn't you give names, since you had them? Why didn't you tell it all, and do the party some good, as well as doing me some harm, if that was what you were after—and I don't know what you were after if it wasn't that? Why don't you get a schoolboy to edit your paper for you?"

T. J. ground his nails into the palms of his hands. He meant to retain possession of his temper, but it was boiling within. He said nothing as the attorney indolently arose from his seat on the desk; he was resolved to do nothing, but when the attorney brushed against him in passing, turning his superior smile full in his face, he raised his arm. The next moment the two men were lying beside the press, struggling and gasping, locked fast and fighting for advantage, legs intertwined and each grasping the other by a wrist. The editor was on top, but the heavier attorney was working with the energy of hate, and as they panted and struggled the door opened and Eliph' Hewlitt entered.

There was strength in his wiry arms, and he threw himself upon the upper man and dragged him backward. The attorney loosened his hold and the two men stood up, panting and gulping, and soon began to brush their clothes and look at the floor for dropped articles, as men do who have fought inconclusively and are not sorry to have been parted. The only real damage seemed to have been done to Eliph's spectacles, which he had shaken off in his efforts, and which had been crushed beneath a heel. The attorney presently smiled, but it was a silly smile, and then he went out of the door and down the street.

Eliph' coughed gently behind his hand, as if to excuse his intrusion.

"Quarreling?" he suggested. "I used to wrestle some when I was a boy. But not much. I hadn't then the rules, given on page 554 of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, including "How to Wrestle, How to Defend Oneself Against Sudden Attack, Jui Jitsu," et cetery, with wood cuts showing the best holds and how to get them. All this being but one of one thousand and one subjects treated of in this work, the price of which is but five dollars, neatly bound in cloth."

The editor had turned his back and was staring angrily out of the window—sulkily tremulous would be a better description, perhaps—when he suddenly cried out. Eliph' searched hurriedly in his pockets for another pair of spectacles, found them and put them on, and looked where the editor pointed. Across the street the attorney, backed up against the wall of the bank, was defending his face with one arm, and with his right hand seeking to grasp a ship that was raining blows upon his face and head. Someone grasped the whip from behind and wrenched it from the hand of the attorney's assailant, and as the man turned angrily, the two in the window saw that it was Colonel Guthrie.

They heard him cursing those who had taken the ship from him, ending by loudly justifying himself for what he had done to the attorney, and saw the attorney step forward to quell the Colonel's hot words. The Colonel put up both his hands and shouted, and some from the crowd, grasping the attorney about the waist and arms, as if the feared he was about to attack the older man, hurried him away, speaking soothing words to him.

The Colonel rioted on. Nothing could have stopped him. He pulled a copy of the TIMES from his pocket and slapped it with his hand as he abused the attorney for having given T. J. Jones the facts of the article.

He lit it be plainly known, in his anger, that the article called him a giver of graft. The crowd stood silent, as crowds stand about some drunken man, for the Colonel was drunk with wrath, and wordy with it, talking to himself as drunken men do. He finished, and the crowd opened a passage through itself to let him pass, and Skinner, who, in apron and bare arms, had viewed his rival's wrath from a safe place on the edge of the group, backed away. The Colonel, mumbling, caught sight of him, and with one swift motion of the arm grasped him by the shirt band.

"You!" he shouted, pulling the shirt band until Skinner grew purple in the face. "You! You done it! Why couldn't you buy them fire-extinguishers like a man? You made me buy up that Dutchman. I wouldn't 'a' had to do it but for you."

He gave the choking butcher an extra shake, and raised his hand to strike him, but again the crowd interfered, and seized the Colonel, and hurried him away.

The butcher stood stupidly and rubbed his neck, waiting for the wits that had been choked out of him to return, and far down the street Mayor Stitz, hearing a noise, came out on his front platform and looked up the street. It appeared to him that something was going on, and sticking his awl in the door of his car, he walked blandly up the street to where the remnant of the crowd formed a half circle around the butcher. He crowded through, saying, "Look out, the mayor is coming. Stand one side yet for the mayor!"

The butcher looked and saw before him the round, innocent face of the mayor, topped by the mayor's round bald head. He raised his large, fat hand, and in vent for all his injured feelings brought it down, smack! On the smooth bald spot.

"Ouw-etch!" said the mayor.

He was surprised. He backed away and rubbed the top of his head, and what he said next was a rapid string of real, genuine German; exclamations, compound tenses, and irregular verbs and all that makes German a useful, forceful language. As long as he rubbed his head—with a rotary motion—he spoke German; then he stopped rubbing and spoke English.

"So is it you treat your mayor!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Such a town is Kilo, to give mayors a klop on the head! Donnerblitzenvetter! Not so is it in Germany." He turned to the crowd. "A klop on the head! It is not for klops on the head that I am mayor. No. I resign out of this mayor business. Go get another mayor, such as likes klops on the head. I am no mayor. I am resigned."

He turned and walked slowly back to his car, pulled the awl out of the door, and went inside.

The editor moved away from the window. He seated himself at his desk and leaned his head on his arms and thought.

"Headache?" asked Eliph'.

"No," said the editor, lifting his head. "I'm trying to think this thing out. Guthrie is in it, and Skinner must be in it, and Stitz. And that fellow across the way said you knew something about it, and he said Doc Weaver wrote the article. No," he added hastily, as Eliph' offered to speak, "let me think it out myself."

He leaned his head on his hand, and gazed at the attorney's office. He drew the week's copy of the TIMES toward him and read over the article that had caused all the trouble.

"It might be that fire-extinguishers ordinance," he said slowly. "Stitz pushed that through. And Skinner had to buy them. And—they were owned by Miss Briggs and the Colonel negotiated the sale." He jumped up and turned over the file of back numbers of the TIMES. He found the announcement he had made of the arrival of Eliph', and the report of the meeting of the city council that had passed the fire-extinguishers ordinance. Eliph' had been in town before the ordinance had passed. Eliph' boarded now with Doc Weaver. Again he read the article in the TIMES, seeking for the meanings that Doc knew so well how to hide. He paused at the "Things are seldom what they seem" lines, and considered it. Suddenly he arose and put on his hat.

"Wait here," he said, "I'll be back."

When he returned he was smiling. He had visited Skinner's Opera House and had examined the fire-extinguishers where they sat, each on its bracket.

"Hewlitt," he said, "when you told Doc about the fire-extinguishers did you tell him they were lung-testers?"

The little book agent stared at the editor.

"I never told," he exclaimed. "I have never said a word to Doc Weaver, nor to anyone about them. Not a word. I have kept it as sacred as the secret of the Man in the Iron Mask, a full account of whom, together with a wood cut, is given on page 231, together with 'All the World's Famous Mysteries,' this being but one feature of Jarby's——"

"All right," said the editor. "And you never told him about the graft?"

The blank amazement on the book agent's face was sufficient answer.

"I've got to go out," said the editor. "I've got some reporting to do. You'll excuse me. I want to see Stitz. And Skinner. And Guthrie. I wish Doc hadn't gone to his State Medical Society meeting to-day."

Eliph' went out with the editor, who locked the door behind him.

"Don't say anything," said the editor, "but I think there will be an extra edition of the TIMES out to-morrow."



CHAPTER XV. Difficulties

Eliph' had said nothing to Doc Weaver about the affair of the fire-extinguishers, he had known nothing of the graft matter, and yet it could not be supposed that Doc Weaver could be a confidant of the attorney's. The editor was puzzled, but he was sure he was right in the main, and he was nearer learning the truth than he supposed, as he hurried down the street to the mayor's car-cobbler shop.

He opened the door and stepped inside, but the mayor did not look up with his usual smile; he was sulking, and from time to time he rubbed his head where the butcher had struck him.

"How do, Stitz," said the editor. "How's the mayor?"

The cobbler pulled his waxed threads angrily through a tough bit of leather, and did not look up.

"I am no more a mayor," he said crossly. "I am out of that mayor job. I give him up. I haf been insulted."

"I saw it," the editor assured him. "He gave you a good whack. Sounded like a wet plank falling on a marble slab. Mad about the fire-extinguishers business, wasn't he?"

"And why?" asked the mayor, looking up for the first time, "he has a right to obey those ordinances and not get mad."

"Oh, but he don't like the way folks will laugh at him when they learn the joke you have played on him. That was a good one."

"Joke?" queried the mayor, growing brighter. "Did I play him one joke?"

"You know," said T. J. "Making him buy those lung-testers of Miss Briggs' when he thought they were fire-extinguishers. I should say it WAS a joke!"

"Sit down," said the mayor; "don't hang on those straps when seats is enough and plenty. Sit down. So I joked him, yes?"

"Rather," said the editor, "and Guthrie, too, making him pay that graft."

"Sure!" grinned the cobbler. "I got goot grafts. Apples, and potatoes, and celery, and peas, and chickens! Five grafts for one such little ordinances. Grafts is a good business, but now is all over. I quit me that boss-grafter job. I like me not such kloppings on the head. Next comes such riots, and revolutionings. I quit first." He sewed steadily for a while then prepared another thread, waxing it, and twisting the bristle on either end.

"That fire-extinguishers joke," he said, as he ran the ball of wax up and down the thread; "that was a good one, yes? On Skinner. That makes me a revenge on Skinner for such a klop on the head, yes?"

He adjusted the shoe on his knee, and began to sew again.

"Yes," he said, "I am glad I make that joke on Skinner. What was it?"

"Come now!" said T. J. "Don't pretend such innocence, Stitz. Don't try to fool ME. You knew all the time that those fire-extinguishers were nothing but lung-testers." The mayor looked puzzled, and properly, for he had never heard of lung-testers. "To test lungs," explained the editor. "To show how many pounds a man can blow; how much wind his lungs will hold; a sort of game, like pitching horseshoes. They are not worth anything to Skinner. He paid his money for them for nothing. He will have to buy four genuine fire-extinguishers now. That was what made him mad at you."

When the editor left Stitz's car he had learned all the mayor could tell him, including the undoubted fact that the mayor considered graft a quite legitimate operation, and this particular case a good joke on Skinner and Colonel Guthrie, and that the mayor himself, thinking the joke too good to keep, had told Doc Weaver. The editor easily guessed that Doc had investigated the rest of the affair, and had seen the fire-extinguishers and known them to be not what they seemed. He hurried back to his office to set in type what he had learned.

But others were abroad, too. Attorney Toole, watching the editor, had seen him enter the cobbler-car and leave it again, and he easily guessed the object of the editor's visit. He, too, went to see Stitz, and had a long and confidential talk with him, first frightening him until he was in a collapse, and then offering him immunity and safety, and at length leaving him in a perspiration of gratitude. He held up to him a vision of the penitentiary as the reward of grafting, and when the mayor was sufficiently wilted, rebraced him by promising to defend him, whatever happened, and finally restored him to complacency by showing him that the transaction was not graft at all. When he parted from the mayor, that official was, as opposition papers put it, "a creature of the attorney's."

The attorney found Skinner in his butcher-shop surrounded by a group of friends, to whom he was relating a story of how he had been attacked by the Colonel, and what would have happened to the Colonel if intervention had not come just when it did. Toole entered briskly and pushed his way through the group to where the butcher stood.

"Skinner," he said, "I want half a dozen words with you, at once," and his manner was enough to silence the butcher. Skinner led the way to the back room where the sausage machine made its home, and Toole carefully closed the door.

"Now," he said, taking the butcher by the shirtsleeve," you have had a taste of what comes of taking the political lead away from the party to which it rightly belongs. You have had an experience of what happens when people who know nothing about politics meddle with thing that the natural political leaders should be left to handle. You have been choked, and you have been cheated, and you deserve to be kicked. You pay money to this editor her in town, for an advertisement that you know does you no good, and in return he prints an article to make you laughed at. You form a combination with Guthrie to put in outsiders instead of good party men, and Guthrie uses his pull to have an ordinance passed to make you spend money for fire-extinguishers. You elect a mayor, by your influence as a leading citizen, and he takes a bribe from Guthrie, and passes an ordinance to rob you. And you, like a fool, let him do it. And you let Guthrie, that he may stand in solidly with the very woman you have your eye on, sell you—what? Fire-extinguishers? Not much! Not fire-extinguishers at all, but useless, no-account lung-testers! Lung-testers, that he makes you pay one hundred dollars for, and that you will have to throw away. That is what they are, lung-testers, and you can pocket a loss of one hundred dollars, and buy four real fire-extinguishers now, as the ordinance tells you, and makes you!"

The butcher's mouth opened and his eyes stared. He felt weakly behind him for the edge of the table, pawing uncertainly in the air.

"That's all I have to say to YOU," said the attorney. "If you like that kind of thing, you are welcome. If you are willing to be cheated it is nothing to me. I don't say T. J. Jones set them up to doing all this, just to throw down your Citizen's Party, but you can see in the TIMES who printed the whole thing. If you like to have that kind of man run your only public journal it is no business of mine, but look out for the next TIMES!"

The butcher had found the edge of the table and was leaning back against it. The attorney paused with his hand on the door.

"You ought to be able to make the Colonel pay you back that hundred dollars," he said. "It looks as if he had obtained money under false pretenses and given a bribe. But if you don't care, I don't," and he went out.

Outside of the butcher shop the attorney stopped and looked up and down the street, smiling. He felt that he had done well, so far, setting both the mayor and Skinner against the editor, making a tool of the mayor, and inflaming the butcher against the Colonel. He would have liked to go to the Colonel and set him against the editor and Skinner, but he neither dared nor felt it really necessary. If Skinner attempted to make the Colonel take back the lung-testers the ill feeling between the two would be sufficiently emphasized, and no doubt the Colonel had sufficient reason, in the publication of the article, to hate the editor.

Horsewhipped! His face reddened as he thought of it, but he was too polite to consider a revenge of fists, which would not lessen the insult of the whipping he had received, but would only add the stigma of attacking an older man. That he had led the Colonel into the affair, putting him up to it, did not strike him as being any excuse for the Colonel. He felt that he had done only what he was entitled to do in the pursuit of political leadership. He would revenge himself on the Colonel later. A suit for damages for assault, timed to precede the next election, would be both revenge and politics. He could, at the moment, think of nothing else to do to undermine his opponents, and he had turned toward his office when a fresh idea occurred to him. Should Miss Sally take back the lung-testers, where then would his case stand? Guthrie would return the hundred dollars to Skinner. Skinner was fool enough to be satisfied with that, and Kilo, like many other towns, not wishing to besmirch herself, would hush up the whole affair. Miss Sally must not take back the lung-testers.

The attorney swung around and walked briskly toward Miss Sally's home, tossing tumultuously in his mind the events of the day, his plans and what he would say to Miss Sally. As he turned in at the gate he saw Mrs. Smith and Susan sitting on the porch, and he took off his hat, and walked smilingly up to them.

"Miss Sally in?" he asked, after the customary greetings. "I would like to speak to her if she is."

"She's in" said Mrs. Smith, "but she is engaged at present. Won't you have a seat and wait?"

Toole passed rapidly through his mind all those who might have business with Miss Sally this morning—the Colonel, Skinner, the editor. It could not be Skinner, for he had just left him, nor the editor, for he knew he was still in his office where he had seen him last. Probably it was the Colonel. He took the proffered seat.

"I suppose you saw the TIMES," he said, "and that tremendous article. It amused me considerably. Splendid specimen of local journalism. Our friend T. J. is to be congratulated, isn't he? He has made quite a stir."

"The Colonel was here with a paper," said Mrs. Smith. "He was furiously angry. I couldn't understand what it was all about, except that it was connected with those fire-extinguishers Miss Sally had."

"It was about the meanest piece of business I have ever run across," said the attorney, speaking more to Susan than to Mrs. Smith. "It was the most vindictive thing I ever heard of. Do you know any reason why that editor should want to annoy Miss Briggs?"

"Mr. Jones annoy Miss Sally?" said Susan, with surprise. "I can't imagine why he should."

"That's what puzzles me," said Toole. "There doesn't seem to be any reason whatever, except that he is showing his ill-will. It looks like a conspiracy to throw those fire-extinguishers back on Miss Sally's hands. Probably he has taken an agency for fire-extinguishers, or had made a deal to take some in payment for advertising space in his paper, and wants to sell them to Skinner. I understand there is some cock-and-bull story he has got up about these fire-extinguishers being out-of-date, or useless, or something of that kind, and that he means to make a big stir about the council having been bribed to force them on Skinner. I suppose Jones will get something out of it, someway. I understand he means to keep the thing alive in his paper, and throw ridicule on all concerned, until he forces things his way. Probably he has some political object, too. But I think it is bad that he should drag Miss Sally into it. I don't mind his trying to throw mud on me. I can see his reason for that."

He looked at Susan and smiled.

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Smith, "I couldn't see that he said anything about you this morning."

"Not this morning," said the attorney. "There will be more to follow. Wait until you see the next issue of the representative of a free and untrammeled press. He will serve up all his friends there. I saw him darting around like a hawk-eyed reporter this morning. I went up to plead with him to drop the whole thing, this morning, but he as much as told me to mind my own business. The poor old Colonel was so angry he came at me with a whip—I don't know why—but I did not take the advantage my strength gave me. I can forgive a man who is anger blinded. All I want to do now is to prevent that editor fellow making any more trouble for my friends, if I can. I don't want Miss Sally to TAKE back those fire-extinguishers, and I don't want her to be blackmailed into BUYING them back. I want to put her on her guard against T. J. Jones."

"This is very kind of you," said Mrs. Smith.

"She is a friend of yours, and of Miss Susan's," said the attorney. "That would be reason enough for my doing it."

The door opened and Eliph' Hewlitt came out of the house, and Toole, who had jumped up, in order to be on the defensive had it been the Colonel, assumed an air of indifference. The book agent hesitated uncertainly, glanced toward Mrs. Smith, felt under his left arm where his sample copy usually reposed, and, not finding it, put on his hat and walked toward the gate. Mrs. Smith sprang from her chair and ran after him. She caught him at the gate and laid her hand on his arm. He turned to face her, and she saw that there were tears in his usually clear eyes. He had put the question to Miss Sally, and the answer had been unfavorable.

The interview had been short and conducted with the utmost propriety, as advised by "Courtship—How to Win the Affections," and Miss Sally had been kind but firm. The article in the TIMES had, far from turning her against the Colonel, shown her what the Colonel has risked for her sake, and she had decided in his favor, although he had not yet appeared to claim an answer to the question he had never asked, but had been hinting for years.



CHAPTER XVI. Two Lovers, and a Third

The attorney, when Eliph' walked down the path to the gate, entered the house, and found Miss Sally still sitting in the dark parlor where she had had the painful interview with Eliph' Hewlitt. She still held her handkerchief to her eyes, for she had been weeping, and the attorney was not sorry to see this evidence of the stress of her interview with the book agent. Certain that Eliph' had told Doc Weaver of the lung-testers, he was no less certain that the book agent had been telling Miss Sally that the nickel-plated affairs would be thrown back on her hands, and he hastened to urge resistance.

"Miss Briggs," he said, "I came right in, because I knew what that book agent was here to say to you, and I wanted to warn you against him. I know what he asked, and I hope you refuse him."

Miss Sally gasped.

"I believe," continued the attorney, taking a seat, "that you refused, because you know which side your bread is buttered on. I believe that before the day is over Colonel Guthrie will come with the same question, and I want you to give him the same answer. And if Skinner should come on his knees, I want you to send him away with the same answer, too. They will all have arguments enough, but don't be fooled. They money is all they want."

Miss Sally gasped again. She was astounded.

"I could see," said the attorney, confidentially, "that you have the book agent a pretty sharp answer, and that was right. He had no business to put himself forward at all, and I don't suppose you can guess why he did."

"He said he liked me," said Miss Sally weakly, ashamed to mention the word openly. The attorney laughed.

"My opinion is that it is an conspiracy," he said. "That is just the word, a conspiracy, and T. J. Jones is at the head of it. The book agent has come first; now the Colonel will come; and then Skinner, all asking the same thing, but my idea is that they are all in partnership, and that Jones is engineering the whole thing. They want your money, and that is all they want, and once they get it they will be happy and you will be left with four lung-testers on your hands."