"Think the women can?"

"Not a doubt of it if they get wise to him, and they are so naively unscrupulous, bless their hearts, that they'll do some things to accomplish their purpose a man can't afford to do."

"And if they settle Mike, you'll run on the crinoline ticket, I suppose?" Coleman answered.

"Can't say yet, Stark; don't want to give myself away, but I'm buying my collars at the Co-Citizens' Cooeperative League Emporium!" he said, winking his eye and drawing up the corner of his mouth in a most offensive manner.

This reference to the women's cooeperative store was far from being a joke.

The first floor of the old Mosely residence had been divided in half with a partition. The walls between the rooms on each side had been fitted up in a modern and expensive manner with shelves and counters, middle-aisle showcase, and so forth. The right-hand division was a drygoods and millinery department, with such a display of hats and finery as never had been seen before in Jordantown. The left division contained everything necessary to thrifty existence, from horse collars to hams, sugar and molasses, flour and corn meal.

The upper rooms of the house were used as offices for the female trustees of the Fund, and for the various committees, of which there were an amazing number in order that as many women as possible should have prominent and executive relations to the Co-Citizens' movement.

The whole front of the place was ablaze every night with electric signs. "The Co-Citizens' League Headquarters," winked across the front of the upper story. Beneath that "The Women's Cooeperative Department Stores" winked in blue, red, and white light splendour.

This was not the worst of it: Susan Walton, aided and abetted by John Regis, had secured the services of foreign female talent, expert saleswomen, bookkeepers, and a general manager, also a female. With the assistance of these experienced persons they had purchased such a stock and assortment of goods as no merchant in Jordantown could afford. They paid cash, and counted the discount as part of the profit. They figured to a cent the cost of the stock and the expense of running the store, and they sold without reference to making any profit at all. What they lost or failed to collect was charged up as "campaign expense" against the Foundation Fund!

"This store is a kind of suffragist flypaper put out to catch as many as we can by offering bargains and credit to possible voters," said Susan to Judge Regis.

"But, my dear woman, bribing voters is a penal offence," exclaimed the Judge, laughing.

"This is not bribery, John. This is a premium we are offering to get men to vote on this measure at all. That is going to be the great difficulty. Even if we get enough of them to sign the petition to hold the election, they may outwit us by remaining away from the polls. When men have employed every other argument to get their way with women, they cease to argue, back their ears, plant their fore feet, and balk. We shall cause it to be known that credit can be had at this store only by persons who furnish sufficient assurance that they will vote in the election!" she explained.

"But in case they vote against suffrage?" he asked, smiling grimly.

"Before time for the election we shall have convinced the men of this county of so many financial disasters to follow upon such perfidy, that the majority will not dare cast their ballots against us," she retorted.

"Intimidation is also a penal offence at the polls, Susan!"

"Do you think men will ever admit that they have been intimidated politically by women? Never! It was you yourself who said influence is not influence, it's power! We've got that. Before the spring season is over, we shall have forced all the merchants in this town into bankruptcy, or we shall have proper assurance of their support. When Acres and the rest have kicked against the pricks long enough to realize the situation, we will let them know upon what conditions only this store will charge regulation prices for goods. We may offer to sell out to them. The mercantile life does not appeal to me. This store is not a financial venture. It is a political guide to the polls of the county!"

"Well, you must hurry the issue, Susan. Twenty thousand dollars will not last six months the way you are spending it. That suffragist motor car we bought last week cost twenty-two hundred dollars!" he warned.

"If we win at all we shall do it in less than six months," answered the valiant old termagant.

Meanwhile all was confusion in the stores on the avenue. Drays piled high with boxes and barrels were drawn up before the doors of the League store. A perfect thunder of industry went on within, while the ladies of the town crowded the street from one end of the block to the other. They talked, they inspected, they matched samples as fast as the laces and dress goods were placed upon the shelves and counters. They compared prices; they were excited, elated beyond measure. On the square trade was not exactly languishing yet, but it stood with hands raised in dumb astonishment. Business men had not been informed of the projected store. They did not conceive of such outrageous competition until the thing was actually ready to open its doors. Even then they were not prepared for the cut in prices. Acres continued to sell fifteen pounds of sugar for a dollar a week after the Cooeperative Store began to sell twenty pounds for the same price. Percale that could be bought for ten cents a yard on the avenue, sold on the square for fifteen cents.

"They can't keep it up!" Acres predicted. "Just shows how unfit women are for business."

"But a damphule ought to know that ham can't be sold for twelve and a half cents per pound!" cried Thad Bailey furiously.

They had both failed to get the usual spring loan from the National Bank, due entirely to the fact that at the first directors' meeting, the new director had demanded to know exactly how much they owed already, and she refused to sanction the advance of another dollar to any merchant in Jordantown.

"Gentlemen, I have reason to know that these men will not be able to pay the interest upon the loans this bank has already made to them. We cannot afford to risk another advance," she explained.

Fortunately, the two victims had absented themselves from this meeting. But no argument or appeal from the others could move her.

Every one suspected the worst, but no one really knew what was on foot, for up to this time not a word was heard of suffrage for women.

Only one man besides Judge Regis seemed to know what was going forward. This was Magnis Carter, and he refused to tell what he knew. He merely explained that he was preparing certain announcements for the Signal, which would of course include an advertisement of the new store. If anybody wanted to know what was going on, let them read the Signal. It always contained the news. He was tremendously puffed up. He was inclined to snub the curious. Lord save us! did anybody think he was going to give away his own scoop?

He was also silent about a certain transaction between him and Susan Walton.

Three days before the formal opening of the Cooeperative Store, she surprised him at his editorial desk. This was a deal table in a corner of the printing office. It was littered with proof, scratch paper, scissors, mucilage, pencils, inkwells, and a case of "pie." He was engaged in sorting this. His collar and cravat hung upon a nail on the wall above the table. He was in his shirt sleeves. His hair was rumpled, his fingers inky.

But the first thing he thought of when he saw the old lady picking her way between bales of paper near the door of the office, was his socks. The day was very warm, and he thought he remembered pulling them down to cool his legs. It was impossible to make sure. You cannot pull up your socks in the presence of a woman, even an old woman. Besides, she had her mouth primped severely and her eyes fixed with a soap-and-water expression upon him.

He leaped from his chair, showing a purple rim around each ankle and the bare skin above. He cast a despairing glance at his collar, and made a dive for his coat.

"Oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Walton! Excuse me," he exclaimed, thrusting his arms in the sleeves. "I was not expecting this honour, as you see!"

She advanced and deliberately seated herself in the chair he had vacated.

"Don't trouble to put on your coat, Mr. Carter. It's very warm in here," fanning herself. "I think we shall have to move the Signal to the Woman's Building on the avenue. There is still the kitchen and pantry we could use—very large pantry—make an excellent private editorial office."

"I beg pardon, Madam, what did you say?"

He had forgotten his socks. His eyes protruded. She laughed—it was the triumph of mind over matter—that laugh, an old woman's cackle, he being the matter. He did not like it. He stood waiting for an explanation, seeing that she occupied the only chair. He felt that it would take a good deal to explain how and why she thought she could induce him to move the office of the Signal into the kitchen of that female rat trap on the avenue.

She came immediately to the point, a thing you never do in business unless you are sure you have the drop on the other fellow.

"The Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund holds a mortgage on the Signal, Mr. Carter?" She put this affirmative in the form of a question.

"Er—I believe there was a small mortgage held by the Mosely Estate," he admitted.

"And with the four years' interest due, I believe it covers the value of the property now, doesn't it?" She had taken out another pair of spectacles and adjusted them upon her upturned nose.

"About," he added, dazed.

"We shall be glad to retain your services. That is what I am here for this afternoon, to make arrangements with you, if possible."

Carter raised his hand, scratched his chin through his beard, squinted one eye, and took sight along the barrel of his personal interest at Susan.

"We are prepared to bear all the expense of publication and offer you a salary of one hundred dollars a month to conduct the paper; but of course we should expect to control the policy of it absolutely. We purpose to make it the organ of the Woman's Suffrage Movement here. I should myself dictate most of the editorials."

"You should, Madam?" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

"And where would I come in?"

"Oh, we should want you to do the work, get up advertisements, write special articles along such educational lines for the movement as we should suggest. You would 'come in' a great deal, Mr. Carter. You would be the busiest man in Jordantown."

"But, good Lord—beg pardon! You want me to become a woman suffragist, Madam—and I'm a man!"

"We should certainly require you to work for it. Suffrage for women is not a matter of sex. It's a question of common justice."

"At what salary did you say?" he asked after a thoughtful pause.

"One hundred dollars a month, and we pay the expense of publication," she answered.

Carter had never cleared a dollar as editor of the Signal. He could not even have supported himself if he had paid the interest on his mortgage. Still he hesitated. He was not sure that this offer did not mean the sale of his manhood, on the installment plan, at so much a month. He wondered what the men would think of this arrangement. His wit in the paper had long consisted in humorous comments upon the modern woman, and the Suffrage Movement in particular.

"Give me time to think it over," he said.

"Until to-morrow morning," she said, rising. "In case you accept the position we shall expect you at nine o'clock. There is some advertising stuff for the next issue, and I shall want to dictate an editorial."

"And if I do not accept?" he put in as she advanced toward the door.

"In that case we shall take charge of the Signal as soon as we can foreclose the mortgage," she answered without looking back.

"Er—good afternoon, Mrs. Walton!" he suddenly called after her.

"Good afternoon. Remember, promptly at nine o'clock!" she returned, still without looking back.

Carter sat for an hour after her departure scratching his chin. He crossed his legs, shook his elevated foot, showed every sign of profound concentration. He was making up his mind to become a decimal point in the Woman Suffrage Movement. It was like making up his mind to be born again, and not so well born at that!

But "promptly at nine o'clock" the following morning he appeared at Susan's office in the Woman's Building, accepted the nominal editorship of the Signal, and submitted to the indignity of taking down the editorial which she dictated.

On Saturday the Signal appeared. It was a wonder. The entire front page was taken up with an advertisement of the Women's Cooeperative Store. The quality of everything was the best. The prices quoted were far below what they had ever been before in Jordantown.

But that which paralyzed the whole male population in the square was this announcement at the top of the editorial page:

Owned and Controlled By the Co-Citizens' Foundation. Susan Walton, Managing Editor. Magnis Carter, Assistant Editor. Price $1.00 a year. Advertising rates reduced one half to all women and to friends of the Suffrage Movement in Jordan County.

This was bad enough, but the crowning affront was the leading editorial.

"The Signal has become the property of the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund, bequeathed by the late Sarah Hayden Mosely for the purpose of obtaining suffrage for women in Jordan County," was the opening sentence. "Henceforth the paper will be published in the interest of the Suffrage Movement and in any other interests which do not conflict directly or indirectly with this movement. No matter containing adverse criticism of suffrage for women will be published. And no advertisements from any source not known to be friendly to the movement will be accepted. For this reason all those which have not been paid for in advance have been excluded. Business men who desire the use of our columns for advertising should call at the office of the Signal at their earliest convenience, to give assurance of their support of the policy of this paper in order that they may still use its columns as an advertising medium."

The paragraph which followed stated brazenly that the majority of the citizens of Jordan County were heartily in favour of suffrage for women, and that they were determined no longer to endure "taxation without representation," and so forth and so on. There was no hysterical railing about the partialities of men for men in the administering of law and the interpretation of the rights of citizenship.

The astonished readers understood for the first time, however, that Jordantown and Jordan County were in the grip of something stronger than feminine sentimentality or even the Democratic party.

The office of the Signal had actually been moved to the Woman's Building. The transit took place some time during the night. No one knew when. Carter came and went through a side entrance formerly used by delivery wagons when they brought Sarah Mosely her meagre household supplies. He remained in seclusion there, as modest as a girl, and only Susan Walton knew with what diligence he laboured. No man dared to seek him in the seclusion of that place. And when Mike Prim called him over the 'phone, after the first issue of the Signal under the new management, demanding that he should come to his office at once, Carter declined to obey the summons. This was incredible. For years he had been the henchman of Prim. He had received from time to time modest sums for publishing copy prepared under Prim's supervision and designed to influence public opinion in proper Prim channels.

However, late one night when Carter slipped into the quiet side street with a roll of proof under his arm, he walked not exactly into the arms of Mike Prim, who was standing in the shadows just outside, but it would be more exact to say that he slipped directly in vocative range of Mike's rage.

"Look here, Carter, what the —— do you mean by selling the Signal to these blankety-blank-blank women?" he exclaimed as the editor started back astonished and for the moment disconcerted.

"Didn't. The Mosely Estate owned a mortgage covering the paper; you know that!" he answered quickly.

"And you know the Signal was the official organ of our party. And you've betrayed like——"

"Stop!" hissed Carter, lifting his roll of proof over Prim's head as if it had been a policeman's billy. "Don't you insult me, Mike! I don't have to take any more of your damn impudence and I won't!"

"Well, what did you sell out for?" growled Prim.

"I tell you I didn't. They owned the paper. They'll own this town inside of six months. They've got the last one of you like 'possums with their tails in a split stick! And you'll find it out. Don't talk to me about selling the Signal! The people who own a paper always control its policies."

"And what's become of your political convictions, Magnis, with your apron-string editorials?" the other sneered.

"A really intelligent, progressive editor, Mike, moulds public opinion. He don't get it from a village boss. I'm becoming intelligent. I'm following the trend of our times."

"The hell you are! You're sitting on that old she-cat's footstool taking dictation!" he snorted, turning upon his heels and slumping off down the street.

If there is anything more exasperating than a Republican to an old Adam Democrat of the South, it must be the little political Eve-rib in his side turned into a maverick female suffragist with no traditions and no fears of consequences to keep her inside established party lines.

The scene which Jordantown presented by the 1st of June is as difficult to describe—the mere physical changes—as it is to interpret these changes. The square was practically deserted; the Acres Mercantile Company was not even able to hold its country trade. Every farmer made straight for the Women's Cooeperative Store. The avenue was filled from morning till night with wagons and buggies and a slow-moving procession of men in hickory shirts, and their wives and daughters. They were drawn by curiosity and cupidity. Both were gratified. They received more in barter for their country produce; and, besides that, there was always a "committee of ladies" on hand to show them through and to enlighten them upon many things besides the price of commodities.

There is a theory to the effect that women follow men. It is based upon one-sided experience for the most part. The reason they do is because so far they have never had the opportunity to lead. The present situation in Jordantown afforded this opportunity. Women were rarely seen now upon the square, but the avenue literally teemed with men. They crowded the aisles of the stores; they blocked the sidewalks. Only the victims held aloof. Acres, Thad Bailey, and the other merchants remained bitterly faithful to the square. The usual groups of loafers occupied the courthouse veranda. Colonel Marshall Adams had apparently retired from public life. He spent his days on his farm, which lay upon the outskirts of the town. He could be seen returning late in the evening, seated upon an old pacing horse like a wounded warrior barely able to keep in his saddle.

There was a report in Jordantown to the effect that real estate had fallen in value, that the workingmen were leaving, that bankruptcy and starvation stared every man in the face. But if this was so, there was no way to warn the people. The Signal published every week glowing accounts of the prosperity of the town. The most amazing information appeared from week to week concerning the growth of sentiment in favour of suffrage for women. The locals were filled with complimentary notices of the comings and goings of country matrons and country belles who had never seen their names in print before. And there was an occasional interview from some woman prominent in the suffragist movement.

Martin Acres reached the infuriated end of his patience when he saw the following quotation from Mabel, who had permitted herself to be interviewed.

"Do you think women know better how to buy and sell than men?" Mrs. Acres was asked.

"Of course they do. Isn't it women who have to cook, or see to it? Then why shouldn't they know better than men what is proper food for their families? And isn't it women that make the clothes and who wear most of them? So we naturally know better what stuffs we need for clothes. If you could see the ugly dimities and ginghams and calicoes we have worn in this town all our lives, chosen by colour-blind merchants who do not know what is becoming to us! Things are different here this spring, our groceries are of a better quality, and our frocks are infinitely more becoming."

There was more in the same tenor. But Acres was too angry to read further. He rushed into his wife's room with the Signal in his hand.

"Did you say that, Mabel?" he shouted, thrusting the offensive page beneath her nose.

"What, Martin?" she exclaimed, lifting her hand to thrust it aside as she stared up at her husband.

"Did you give out this scandalous interview criticising me and my business?" he insisted.

"Why, Martin, how could you think such a thing! I never uttered a critical word of my husband in my life!"

"Then you didn't say it?"

"Let me see what you are talking about," she said, craning her neck to see the print. "Oh that! Yes, Mrs. Walton asked me to say something to show how natural it is, and how right, you know, for women to keep a store, do the sedentary things while men do the hard things—till the ground, and all that. Did you read——"

"No, by Gad! I didn't read far enough to see that you wanted me to become a day labourer!"

"Oh, I wasn't speaking of you, dear, I was just promulgating one of the theories of our movement. I was so flattered when Mrs. Walton asked me——"

"Your movement be damned, Mabel! Enough of a thing is enough. You will resign to-morrow from this plagued movement which is carrying us all to the devil!"

"But, Martin, I can't; I'm chairman of the Finance Committee. Mrs. Walton——"

"Don't let me hear that old viper's name again in this house. She's the serpent in this town tempting the last one of you to——"

"I can't have you speak disrespectfully of our chief, dear," said Mabel with frigid dignity.

"And what's your husband, I'd like to know!"

"Why, you, you are just my husband, Martin, as I used to be just your wife!"

"Good Lord, Mabel, you are crazy! Don't you know you are helping that gang to drive me into bankruptcy!"

Mrs. Acres was the living feminine likeness of Pin Money. She was very small, very fair, with faded blue eyes. Her clothes were always too tight, and she wore narrow ruffles like the hope, the mere hope, of feathers and wings to come.

She looked up now into her husband's face with a curious little white smile.

"I know that I am all that stands between you and ruin, Martin. I've been waiting to talk to you, to give you a hint, but our affairs are not entirely in shape. We are not ready to show our hand."

"To show her hand! And this from my own wife!" groaned Acres, beginning to stride up and down the room.

"Listen, dear," said Mabel, rising and following him. "I ought not to do it, but I will give you just one little hint."

"All right, hint!" he sneered.

"Call on Judge Regis to-morrow, and tell him you are very much interested in suffrage for women in this county. Say that you'd like to take your part in bringing it about. Just that, no more. And you'll see what happens." She turned her head to one side and looked at him with treacherous sweetness.

"I'll be hanged if I do!"

"Be reasonable, Martin!"

"Don't talk to me about being reasonable. I'm one of the few reasonable beings left in this town."

"Well, that kind of reason is out of fashion now. You've got to share our reasons, Martin. Women have a rationality you men do not recognize; now you've got to."

"I will not! But suppose I do?"

"You'll get immediate relief from your present financial pressure, for one thing."

"Tell that to the marines!"

"Very well. I'll stand between you and—and ruin as long as I can, but if you don't give in I can't save you!" she whimpered.

"And what about Thad Bailey and Baldwin and Saddler and all the other merchants?" he asked curiously, with his nose pointed like a terrier who smells a rat.

"The sooner you or somebody persuades them to go to Judge Regis and make the same agreement, the sooner you'll get what you want," she replied.

"And what we don't want! Do you think for a moment the men in this county would give women the vote even if they could, Mabel?"

"I don't think about it, Martin, I know you are going to be forced to do it, and I want you to give in before it is too late to save your credit; you'll be a day labourer before you know it if you don't listen to reason," she concluded tearfully.

"Reason! Reason! A set of crazy women dictating to men. What is reason?" shouted the furious little merchant as he rushed from the room.

The domestic atmosphere of Jordantown from one end to the other was charged with thunderstorm possibilities. The wives of all the citizens were attending hurriedly to their household affairs, and then attending to other affairs which were not household. Every day some council or committee met in the Woman's Building. They even met in the evenings. Putting on their hats and taking the latchkey, they went out as nonchalantly as ever their husbands had gone. They weathered the rage of these husbands with singular calm, very much as mothers cheerfully witness the tantrums of their growing children. The fact that they went out in the evenings was not remarkable. The women of Jordantown were pious. They attended prayer meetings regularly: they made up the congregation on Wednesday evenings. But now they neglected this service and gathered in the upper chambers of the Woman's Building. The community was going to the dogs. Every man said so to every other man he met on the square, but no man confided to the other that his wife had been out until half-past ten o'clock the night before.

One evening Stark Coleman was in the library reading the Signal. His wife came in, seated herself, and overflowed the low rocking-chair on the other side of the table with her voluminous skirts. She was tall and very large. Her face was as placid as that of a clock which has just marked the last hour of the day and has nothing to do but tick-tock until bed-time.

This was the one hour of the day when they were alone together after the children had been put to bed. They usually spent it in silence. Probably no two people in the world have as little to say to one another as a husband and wife after they have been married a dozen years. Each knows all the other thinks. They become fearful mind readers of one another's most secret thoughts. Long ago they settled all their differences in the struggles of their first ardent loving years. Henceforth one commands while the other obeys. Everything is finished between them but their lives. These go on like weary vegetation from which their children gather the fruit.

Coleman had enjoyed several years of this kind of peace. It never occurred to him to wonder if his wife did. She had the children. He liked the quiet evenings after the noise and bustle in the bank, with his wife for a mere presence. And without being aware of the fact, he liked the diffidence with which she always awaited his pleasure, never breaking in rudely upon his rest with her feminine affairs unless he signified his willingness to listen.

During the past two months, however, he was aware of a different quality in Mrs. Coleman's silence. She held to it even when he wished to talk, answering him in monosyllables. She was preoccupied. The senseless turmoil in which the town had been thrown by the Co-Citizens' agitation was foreign to all he had ever known of her nature and retiring disposition, and he was loath to connect her with it. But he could not help knowing that she was interested, to what extent he did not know, owing to this growing reserve. Still he did his best to defend her in his thoughts. She had spent the whole of her married life bearing children very much as a tree puts out leaves every spring. This year it seemed to have occurred to her that she would not have a baby. At least she did not. Instead of that she had taken a verdant new lease on life herself, apparent in the figured muslins which she got from the Cooeperative Store. Coleman attributed her activities, which he called "social," to the fact that she could "go out."

She looked now in the soft lamplight like an enormous azalea in full bloom. She sat with folded hands humming a tune, not any known air, but one of those nasal harmonies women sometimes accomplish through their noses as a cat purrs to signify content.

The humming annoyed Coleman. Everything annoyed him these days. He fidgeted, slapped one knee violently over the other, and jerked the Signal open as if he would rend it sheet from sheet.

"Hu-u-m, hu-e-e-u-m hum!" droned Mrs. Coleman, her eyes fixed upon a large chromo of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus hanging upon the opposite wall.

Perspiration broke out in beads upon her husband's brow. He uncrossed his legs and brought his foot down with a bang on the floor. Surely she would understand that he was disturbed. She did not. She went on.

"H-u-m, hu-e-e-um, hum——"

He leaped from his chair, strutted into the hall and out upon the veranda.

"Hu-u-e-e hum!"

It followed him through the windows of the library, which were open.

He rushed back, his hands clenched behind his back, his whole body inflated with rage.

"Agatha!" he exclaimed, planting himself squarely in front of her. "Will you stop making a trombone of your nose?"

"You must be nervous," she said, looking up at him serenely.

"I am nervous, I'm nearly crazy. This town is going to hell!"

"Your language, Stark! If——"

"Don't talk to me about my language, Agatha! The native speech of hell is blasphemy, and I've been in it for two months. I should think you would have noticed the condition I'm in."

"I have."

"Then why do you make that infernal noise through your nose?"

"I suppose it's because I am happy." She said that!

"Happy! Look here, I must prepare you for what's coming. The bank's going to fail."

"Oh, no!"

"Yes, it is. We haven't made a loan in six weeks. We've been obliged to turn down nearly fifty thousand dollars' worth of investments since that woman became director. She represents a majority of the stocks and she refuses to lend a dollar or to risk a single cent on anything in this town. The bank might as well be a miser's box. Business is at a standstill."

"Not on the avenue. We are doing splendidly in the Cooeperative Store."

"We? Are you in that thing, too?"

"Nearly every woman here is, except Mrs. Sasnett, even the poorest. You have no idea how interested they are. I never dreamed so many women of all classes wanted the ballot."

"Agatha, I must insist upon your withdrawing from that bedlam in the Woman's Building. I did not suspect that you were really interested. It is unwomanly."

"I can't, Stark. I'm chairman of the Income Committee, and——"

"Who's chairman of the Dead Cat Committee?" he sneered.

"Mike Prim, we think," she laughed.

He gasped. It was a kind of pollution for a woman even to know of Prim's existence.

"And I'm enjoying the work so much," Agatha went on.

"You are enjoying ruining your husband! That's what you mean, even if you do not know it," he accused.

"On the contrary, I'm saving you, Stark. If it was not for the prominent part I've taken in this movement, and the influence I'm expected to exert over you, you would not now be president of the bank."

"Upon my word!"

"I've been waiting to talk to you, dear, to explain. I've only waited until you should realize the situation. I knew you wouldn't listen before," she went on kindly.

"Very well, the first thing I want you to explain is what good you think this damnation Foundation will accomplish by destroying the business and credit of this town?" he said, drawing up a chair and seating himself belligerently in front of her.

"We shall induce you to favour the cause of suffrage——"

"Even supposing it is possible according to the constitution of this state for us to give women the ballot, don't you know that you are only exciting antagonism, making an enemy of every voter in the county?" he interrupted.

"Until you understand, yes, possibly. But when you do realize that we hold the situation in our hands, your common sense will compel you to surrender in order to escape the pressure. It's so simple," she smiled.

"It is! It's damn simple! Only a set of foolish women could have devised such a plan! Think I'm going to knuckle to that old Walton cat! She's taking all of the cash out of the bank as fast as it comes in to run her schemes, and——"

"She is only taking the rent and interest on the property of the Foundation as it is deposited. I suppose you were in the habit of lending it."

"Of course, what do you think a bank is for?"

"You'll never have the use of another dollar until you give in."

"It's all nonsense this ballot for women, Agatha; we can't give it to you, and God knows I don't want to!"

"Why?"

"It's against nature. Women lack the wisdom, the experience, the er—the shrewdness to conduct the affairs of government. You have no idea how many wheels within wheels there are."

"Yes, we have, Stark, we know all about Mike Prim! If you are wise you will not drive us to deal with Prim!" she said, looking at him queerly. "And besides," she went on, "we have had the shrewdness, as you call it, to block the business of this town. You'll never be able to do anything so long as we hold you up."

"You can't stop the commerce of a whole county with twenty thousand dollars, Agatha. You may inconvenience us for a time but——"

"It isn't the interest we count upon, you see—that's the smallest part of it. It's the way we have our capital invested. It's the land beneath your feet, the boards above your head, the stock in your bank, the goods in your stores. We've got most of it! I wish you would listen to reason, Stark!" she concluded.

He had not heard half of it. He was wondering what she meant by that reference to Prim. But he caught the last sentence.

"And suppose I do listen to reason, as you call it. How would I go about it?" he asked as he would have tested the strength of an enemy, not that he had the remotest intention of following her advice.

"Go to Judge Regis in the morning and tell him that you are interested in suffrage for women. Say that you are heartily in favour of it and——"

"I'll be hanged if I do! I'll——"

The telephone bell rang. Coleman went out in the hall to answer the call.

"Yes, I'm here," his wife heard him say.

"What's the matter? Oh, all right, be glad to see you."

He returned to the library still frowning, very angry, but really thankful for any diversion which seemed to lead from an offensive discussion.

"Wonder what's up now. Stacey has just called. Wants to see me at once. Coming right over," he explained.

"Church business. I'll go up and see if the children are comfortable. It's very warm," Agatha said innocently as she left the room.

Five minutes later Stacey came in. He looked like a good man whose salvation had been mortgaged for its full value. He parted his long coat-tails and sat down. He regarded Coleman with a watery expression. His mouth was pulled up in the middle and drawn down at the corners.

"I suppose Mrs. Coleman has already informed you?" he began in sepulchral tones.

"About what?" asked Coleman, who warily avoided admitting that he was not in Agatha's confidence.

"About what happened this afternoon at the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary meeting."

"My wife is still upstairs with the children," he evaded.

"I saw Mrs. Sasnett as soon as it was over. She came straight to me and told me all that had occurred. Really I could not have believed such a thing could happen in a Christian community!" he groaned.

"What did happen? Has that Walton woman garnisheed the missionary collection?" asked Coleman impatiently.

"Worse than that! I fear there will be no collection," he answered, wagging his head. Then he went on:

"Mrs. Sasnett, as you know, is a very loyal worker. She's president of the society here. She did what she could to prevent the catastrophe, but she was powerless. Then she resigned. This was Rally Day, you know. The women from all the county churches came in. There must have been two hundred of them. We looked forward to a very profitable meeting. I prayed the opening prayer myself. Then I had some calls to make. It was after I went out that it happened," the inference being that had he remained it could not possibly have happened. "The minutes were read. Mrs. Sasnett made an address. Then, as is the custom, she opened the meeting for general discussion.

"She said that before any one else had time to get up, Mrs. Walton arose and began to speak. As president, Mrs. Sasnett told me she tried to stop her when she realized the iniquitous trend of her remarks. But she was unable to do so. The women in the congregation actually clapped their hands and insisted that she should be allowed to go on.

"That woman— I can hardly bring myself to speak of her with respect—began by saying that she had long felt called as a Christian citizen—she used the term citizen—to inform the women of our church of the mistake they were making with their missionary dues. She had too much confidence in their motherhood to believe they would be guilty of such heathen conduct if they really understood.

"The report Mrs. Sasnett gave was so vivid I'm able to quote the very words of Mrs. Walton's outrageous assault upon the church.

"'This state ranks third from the bottom in the United States in illiteracy, and Jordan County ranks third from the bottom in this state! We have a public school system which lasts only five months in the year!' That was her opening sentence.

"'Do you know what this means, women of Jordan County? That your children will be the bond servants of the next generation. That they will not be fitted to hold any but the lowest positions in society and in the industrial world. If your daughters marry they must marry ignorant men. If they do not marry and seek to better their condition in the world, they cannot do so, they must enter factories, become servants. They will not know how to spell well enough to be stenographers even. If your sons remain on the farms, they will be renters; they cannot hold the land. Ignorance means bankruptcy for the poor farmer now. If they leave the farm for the cities, they will become street-car drivers, porters, janitors, day labourers. The time has passed when a country boy without education can go to the city, make a hit, and become President of the United States. Instead of that they are forced to accept the lowest society the city affords. They are the victims of its vices.

"'Now listen to me. The women of this state pay more to home and foreign missions in the various churches than the state does for the common school fund. Where does your money go? To found schools in Soochow, China, and Yokohama, Japan, and in Kobe, and in Siam, and in Africa. You do not know it, but you women pay two thirds of all the money that goes to support the church. You do that much toward building churches, supporting connectional officers, prelates, pastors, missions, the whole thing, and you are not even allowed a voice in determining the way your money shall be spent. You do the "Lord's work," and the men profit by it. You pray most of the prayers that are prayed properly in secret. You furnish four fifths of all the piety—and your own children grow up in ignorance. Do you think the Lord blesses such labour and sacrifice? I tell you He will not. Look at your children, mothers, you women from the farms, who left them this very day working in the fields, when they should be in school!'

"Mrs. Sasnett says that she wrought so upon the emotions of those women that they actually wept.

"She went on reminding them of the sacrifices they made to raise their missionary dues. She even went so far as to call attention to their clothes, their hats that were so old-fashioned. She calculated what they contributed one way and another to the church, Coleman, as if that were a crime. Then she concluded by telling them that they could have schools nine months in the year for their own children with the best teachers if they would only do the Lord's work and pay the same amount for this purpose. And when Mrs. Sasnett tried to interrupt her, she grew violent.

"'Hold up your right hand, every woman present who is willing to pledge herself to give never another dollar to foreign missions or to the support of the church until her children have schools nine months in the year!'

"And would you believe it, nearly all of them held up their hands. Some of the old women shouted! Mrs. Sasnett said it resembled a love-feast. She said they crowded around Mrs. Walton as if—well, as if she'd been a preacher!"

He sighed and looked at Coleman, who made no comment. He was chairman of the Board of Stewards in the Jordantown church, and he was making a rapid mental calculation of the deficit that was likely to occur.

"Of course," Stacey went on, "they were excited. There will be a reaction when we remind them of their vows to support the institutions of the church. But what am I to do, meanwhile? I have not taken any collections for this year."

"Don't take them now!" said Coleman quickly.

"It may be worse later on. You know that Miss Adams has been canvassing the county for weeks, arranging those Co-Citizens' Leagues in every voting precinct. I hear that she has made capital out of that failure in Porter County where they tried to float a bond issue to secure a full school term. The men voted it down, especially the farmers. Claimed that they needed the children to work the crops and gather them. She's using that to prove that we need compulsory education in this county and that we'll never get it until the women can vote."

"I don't know what Marshall Adams can be thinking of, allowing his daughter to get into this mess!" said Coleman.

Stacey looked at him. He wondered if this man knew how deep his own wife was in the same "mess."

"I suppose you have heard that they are getting ready for a big mass meeting here?" he ventured.

"That so?"

"Going to announce their plans, I hear."

"Well, I hope they do. When we know what they are up to, we will know how to stop them."

"You think we can?"

"Certainly! Can women force us to the polls, or compel us to vote for this silly measure? Besides, the state constitution is a perfect protection; only males can vote. This is all a form of feminine hysteria, Stacey; it's bound to pass. Just sit tight in the boat and wait. I don't mind telling you that the trustees of this—d—er—this Foundation are spending their income like water. When that gives out, they'll be at the end of their tether. They can't touch the principal."

"But they might borrow on it," Stacey put in doubtfully as he arose to take his departure.

This was a devilish possibility of which Coleman had not thought. He was angry with Stacey for suggesting it.

"Damphule to leave the church with Susan Walton in it!" he grumbled as he went upstairs.

Agatha was already in bed. She lay with her hands crossed above the coverlid, her eyes closed, her face resting upon the pillow as serene as the epitaph of a good woman on a large white tombstone.

He undressed stealthily. He would no more have disturbed her than he would have thrust a thorn in his side. He turned out the light and lay down beside her, scarcely allowing himself the relief of a sigh.

Instantly Agatha's eyes flew open. She lay very still watching him. She could make out his nose in the dark. It was a powerfully built, upstanding nose which even the shadows of the night did not entirely conceal. Slowly she divined his features one by one. A man, even the ablest, looks very helpless in his sleep. She saw his chin drop, his mouth open. Then the silence was parted by a certain sound, exactly the same sound she had heard every night since she had married—"Ha-a-w-s-ah! Ah-ha-a-w-sah." It was a cross between the bray of an ass and the excruciating grief of a cat.

Most men come down to this the moment they sink into the unconsciousness of slumber. It is a kind of reversion to type which they suffer without knowing it.

Agatha had often lain awake resenting the blasts which Coleman sent through his nose. But to-night the sound touched some cord of tenderness. It reminded her of the years and years they had lived together as they could never live again. She laid her hand gently upon his breast. He gave a terrific snort, then groaned. Even in his sleep he was troubled. She, his wife, had failed him in some dear intimacy of the soul. She wondered how she would be able to hold out against him. It was no use to pretend that she was not against him. She knew that she was, that nothing but an incredible change in the order of things could unite them again as they had been; that even then they would be different. They would spend the remainder of their lives adjusting themselves to strange conditions. She began to weep softly. She was glad that at least nothing could change Stark's snore!

* * * * *

One reason why more men do not join the oldest order in the world—the Brotherhood of Man—is because its constitution and by-laws are neither secret nor cryptic. Everybody knows what they are, and everybody knows what they mean. "Love thy neighbour as thyself," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again."

There is a whole Book filled with these regulations for the governing of this ancient order. But it has the largest circulation of any book in the civilized world, and any one is eligible to membership by some profession of faith. So you cannot choose your brethren. This is directly opposed to one of our strongest instincts as social animals: the instinct of election and selection in this present world. The Brotherhood does what it can, of course, to segregate the different classes and caste of men into creeds and missions and saints and sinners. But it is not successful, and the failure has resulted, especially among men, in the founding of innumerable secret orders—to say nothing of adolescent college fraternities, where youths are trained in snobbishness, and to all the traditions and mysteries which mask these orders. There is no more virtue in being a Mason, or a Knight of Pythias, or an Elk, or an Odd Fellow than there is in being a Christian gentleman, but there is more distinction among men. So they are complimented to be chosen and elected to one of these goat-riding organizations.

Women have never been accepted as members of these orders, though they are sometimes annexed under a separate "star," for example, or as mere useful "Rebecca" appendages. Enough "Eastern Stars," or "Rebeccas" in a town will do all the drudgery, bake all the cakes, and get ready generally for the annual celebration of the real order to which they have been annexed, you understand. But they never share the inner shrine privileges with their lords. They do not wear the royal purple, nor the red-and-gold-lace uniforms of the Knights, nor carry banners. If you see them at all they will be tacked on to the end of the parade, with cotton-ribbon badges pinned to their bosoms just to show that they sustain a meek cup-bearing culinary relation to the Sons of Heaven prancing in front.

Still, if they could, women would indulge in the same vanity of secret orders. The trouble is that they are so situated in life that they cannot hold together, unless they are in a shirtwaist factory and join a labour union. The great majority are confined, one in a house, or in the innocuous desuetude of society, where there is no bond of common interest, but violent feminine competition. They have no issue which unites them; they do not hold together. They do well to hold the men. This keeps them anxious, tearful, deceitful, and busy, besides being dear and sweet for the same purpose.

But of all creatures they do crave mysteries. And they do love secrets—something to whisper.

Selah Adams, by virtue of the fact that during her college years she had belonged to a sorority with Greek letter coverings and many gruesome rites within, was the one person engaged in the suffrage campaign who recognized the advantage to be derived from secrecy in organizing the women for the struggle. She perceived the appeal that this would make to their pride and ambition. It was at her suggestion that all the work of committees in Jordantown should be conducted as quietly as possible. The women were pledged not to betray plans to any one but women belonging to the League. So when women of all classes discovered that they would be received most cordially in an organization fostered by the leading ladies of the place, they hastened to join. For the first time social lines in Jordantown disappeared. The banker's wife walked down the steps of the Woman's Building arm in arm with the grocer's wife. In their first stages of growth all political movements are divinely democratic. It is not until the thing has been reduced to a working formula that some boss seizes the formula and the tyrannies of monarchical methods begin.

Selah adopted the same plan of secrecy in organizing women's Co-Citizens' Leagues in the country neighbourhoods. This was her part of the work. She was not only beautiful in a grave and dignified fashion, she had the adorable gift of youth when it came to relating herself to elder women.

She was one of the sensations, blessing the eyes and stimulating the imagination of all travellers along country roads as she passed in her car from one neighbourhood to another. She was invariably accompanied upon these expeditions by some farmer's wife who was already an officer in some other League. She wore white linen tailored clothes and a three-cornered white turban, with a pair of white wings spread and lifted high at the back of her head, which is the one proper place for wings on a mortal. The brain of a man or woman is the only soaring part of them. Sublimated spiritual bodies may look naturally supernatural with wings attached to the breastbone or between the shoulders behind, but the fairest, most spiritual, woman would appear a trifle ludicrous with them anywhere else unless she should be dancing a ballet with no skirts on worth mentioning. Selah achieved a sort of glorified presence very grateful to the eyes of the farmers' wives and daughters, who did not understand how much of it was due to the wings on her hat.

Her method was simple after she had made the first round of the county, visiting the women in their homes and explaining the purpose of the Co-Citizens' Leagues. Each week the Signal published her itinerary. She would meet the women of Possum Trot on such and such a day. She would address the Co-Citizens' League of Sugar Valley on Tuesday afternoon. She would meet with the Co-Citizens of Dry Pond on Friday afternoon—always at the schoolhouse.

In addition to this the Signal invariably gave glowing accounts of the progress of the suffrage sentiment everywhere. There was no means of proving that the Signal was lying. It was the only paper published in the county, and it was sent free of charge to every woman in the county. But never was there a single line reporting what transpired at any of the meetings. The Odd Fellows, who were exceedingly plentiful all over the county, were almost open books compared to the secrecy and mystery attending these meetings of their women.

It is not generally known, but nearly all farmers' wives are in favour of suffrage for women. It is not known, because almost without exception they deny that they are if there is a man within earshot of their protestations. The patriarchal hold upon them is stronger in the country places, because the economic necessities of the situation uphold the patriarch and not his wife. She obeys, not only her husband, but the laws of the seasons with the labour of her hands.

There were at first many timid souls whom Selah Adams could not draw into her conspiracy. But these were strengthened from week to week with the amazing assurances they read in the Signal, to the effect that Jordan County was coming out of the dark ages: "Men as well as women are impatient to see their wives and mothers and daughters exercise the inalienable right of every freeborn American Citizen!" And so on and so forth.

"Who are the men?" asked every man.

Echo answered:

"Who?"

No one believed there were any such cowardly males among them, but they could not prove it. The men were growing more and more silent, partly through anxiety and partly with grim confidence that no way could be found to force this issue of suffrage on the voters of the county. The women remained maliciously silent on this point. If they had any plan, not the most ingratiating persuasions from their nearest mankind could induce them to reveal it.

The lives of most women on remote farms are tragic beyond belief. They appear natural and commonplace only because the victims are trained in endurance, not in the vocabulary of expression. There are thousands of farmers' wives in every rural community who endure hardships undreamed of in the sweatshops of commerce. There are no laws to protect them from long hours, nor any to protect their children. They average sixteen hours a day, while the hardest working man takes at least two hours at noon in which to rest. They may complain of backache, of rheumatism, of any number of stitches in their sides, but they never complain of the long, long day's work. On the contrary, if the worst comes to worst, especially during the harvest season, they think they will get up an hour earlier the next morning and maybe "get through" what they have to do.

When one of them dies of the strain, she just dies. The obituary notice of her as the wife of so-and-so never tells how she just "gave out," having borne eight children and having done the cooking, washing, ironing, and sewing for the family, besides "helping in the fields."

It was to these women that Selah came with her definite plans for better conditions for them and their children. She brought them the refreshment of social intercourse, and united them in a secret common cause. It was difficult to accomplish against the order and very nature of their lives. Sometimes she failed.

One day she called at a little farmhouse hidden away from the public road in one of the mountain coves. There were no children about, no noisy cackling of cocks and hens, no flowers in the yard, not a sound to break the awful silence of the accompanying hills. It was as if life died there long ago and left behind only the rickety skeleton of a house as a mournful epitaph.

But inside, an old woman sat mending bags. She wore a gray calico slip, tied in around the waist with her apron strings; both were ragged, abominably soiled. Her hair was white; strands of it hung around her neck from a little knot twisted tight on the back of her head. Her face was ghastly white, wrinkled, toothless, but the pale blue eyes, rolling wildly, senselessly, in the cavernous sockets, gave her an expression so terrible that Selah started back involuntarily as she lifted her head, stared at her, and went on with her mending on the ill-smelling meal sack. This was the wife of Jake Terry.

The Terrys had had nine children. They all worked in the field. None of them had ever gone to school. They were poor with a desperation of poverty undreamed of even in the slums.

But Terry had a sawmill. At last when his sons were old enough to work, he began to make money. The wife and daughters did the farming. Then, quite inconveniently, Mrs. Terry took leave of her senses. She was violent in her efforts to throw herself in the mill pond. She was sent to the asylum and remained there three years—until she was no longer violent. Then she was brought home, still witless, but able in a mechanical way from long habit to do the things she had always done. Terry thought that this was better than hiring some one. His children had married or "run off" and left him. So the old wife went back into the treadmill. She was obsessed with the idea of work. She would not sleep. Sometimes she would spring out of the bed in the dead hours of the night, kindle a fire in the slatternly stove, and "start breakfast." She was always hurrying from one task to another.

"How do you do, Mrs. Terry?" Selah ventured, still standing in the doorway.

"My hens is all dead!" cried the old woman.

"I've come to see you about something," Selah said, advancing.

"No, you ain't; nobody ever comes here. My children are all dead, too!" she wailed.

"They are not dead, they are married," Selah said soothingly.

"My hens is all dead, and my children is all dead, and I'm dead, too. Women don't live, you know, they jest work." This last in a low, confidential tone as she stretched the wrinkles of her face into a ghastly grin. "I've heard of you," she went on. "You think you are going to make the women live same as men. You can't do it. We ain't for ourselves, we are jest made for them. I wouldn't mind it so much if my hens hadn't all died!"

Selah fled from the house, climbed into the car, and commanded the chauffeur to drive on.

"I knew it wasn't any use for you to go in there," said Mrs. Deal, staring at the girl's stricken face. "Did she tell you all her hens were dead?"

"Yes, but it wasn't that, nor her forlorn condition; it was something else. She said she was dead, too: 'Women don't live you know, they just work!' Ah, it was awful!"

"We've had four women from this settlement sent to the asylum just like that," Mrs. Deal added after a pause as they moved swiftly along the fragrant June road.

It was Saturday afternoon; they were on their way to a meeting of the Co-Citizens' League at Possum Trot. Mr. Deal, a prosperous farmer, was also the justice of the peace in the tiny mountain village; and this also happened to be the day when he retailed justice in small sentences in the usual neighbourhood squabbles.

Court had adjourned as they entered the village. Men stood in groups before the one store, talking in undertones as women passed—all going in the direction of the schoolhouse, which stood exactly opposite. Deal was "dressed up"—that is to say, he wore his coat, collar, and tie. He stood combing his whiskers and looking over his steel-rimmed spectacles at Mrs. Deal, who descended from the automobile and followed Selah into the house.

Presently another man flirted his head to one side, spat on the ground, and looked at Deal, whose face above his whiskers was puffed out in a fat smile.

"Helendamnation, Squire! what does all this female gaddin' and gittin' together and whisperin' mean?" he snickered.

"Nothin'!" answered Deal.

"What we goin' to do about it?"

"Nothin'!"

"But they tell me they're fixin' to vote or bust."

"Well, they won't! it's just a piece of devilment started by Susan Walton to pretend she's earnin' her salary as trustee of that fool Fund the Mosely woman left. She's puttin' the Adams girl up to this. 'Tain't nothin'. Susan Walton ain't the husband of my wife nor the head of my family. What I say goes in my house!"

"I don't know, things is gittin' mighty queer, especially the women. My wife's quit talkin'! I hear they're fixin' to boycott us durin' the harvest season if we don't vote for 'em!"

"I've been married twenty years, and my wife's never refused to do what I tell her yet. I don't reckon she'll begin now by refusin' to cook for me and them that sets at my table."

During this exchange of opinions both men had made their way slowly across the street and entered the group of men who were gathering about the schoolhouse door.

Far down in the cool brown shadows within, Selah Adams was standing upon the teacher's rostrum. She was speaking in low terms which could not be heard from the door, which had been left open for coolness. Fifty women sat below her in creaking split-bottom chairs, with faces as rapt and attentive as if they had been listening to a revival sermon. Some of them were mature maidens of thirty years; some were young wives who had reached that stage of feminine dissolution when women cease to curl their front hair and permit their short back locks to hang down in a doleful fringe upon the back of their necks. The majority of them, however, were elderly matrons. Their shoulders had that noble giving droop which only women show who have reached the sublimity of nurturing many children at their breasts. They were all moving palmetto fans with the serene air of fat, ugly old goddesses who had passed out of the desire of man and had now returned to their own woman's sanity.

"Squire, I don't like them goings on in thar!"

"What you talkin' about?"

"That gal, she looks damn dangerous seditious. I can't hear what she's sayin', but them women they can, and they look like they was bein' converted. They got the same expression females always have durin' a revival, when they've made up their pra'r-meetin' minds to do what the preacher tells 'em if they burn at the stake for it! I tell you that gal's got 'em. They'll follow her as if she was a 'pillow' of cloud by day and of fire by night, leadin' 'em through the Red Sea to the Promised Land!"

"I'll show you who one of 'em will follow!" exclaimed Deal, advancing to the door.

His long forked shadow fell across the silent figures in the audience as he thrust his head in and craned his neck until he caught sight of Mrs. Deal seated at the far end of the first row.

"Molly!" he called sternly.

The even rhythm of Molly's fan did not change. She did not so much as turn her head. Her large blue eyes upturned beneath their thick lids never wavered from Selah's face.

"Molly, come out! I'm waitin' for you!" shouted the Squire in a louder, unmistakable voice of command.

Selah paused, nodded to a young girl, and murmured, "Close the door, Mary," very much in the same preoccupied tone she might have used if she had said, "Mary, shoo the chickens out!" It was a splendid triumph for Selah.

The next moment a roar of laughter went up in the street beyond the closed door. A red spot flamed upon Molly Deal's cheeks, but her fan went on swinging gently to and fro. Her eyes were still fixed upon Selah's smiling face.

The meeting was important. The day and even the hour was fixed when the women would announce the plans by which they were determined to obtain suffrage in Jordan County. So far the men had not received a hint as to what these plans were. The whole movement seemed senseless and hopeless, merely causing furious antagonism and outrageous embarrassment; for Mrs. Walton's perversities as director of the bank had been felt far and wide in the country districts, where farmers were not only unable to secure loans, but many who had mortgaged their land to the Mosely Estate now found themselves facing the possibility of foreclosure.

There was to be a mass meeting in Jordantown the first Saturday in July. Selah informed the Leagues of this as she made this tour from one community to another. The purpose of the great mass meeting was fully explained, and plans were laid for getting as many people to attend as possible.

At last, as the shades of evening fell, the women filed out of the schoolhouse, strange, exasperatingly potential figures to the Odd Fellow husbands who had waited impatiently outside for them. Molly Deal climbed silently into the red-and-green spring wagon beside her equally silent husband. Selah waved her hand prettily from the car as she passed up the road in the direction of Jordantown. She was fairly contented with the progress made in the County Leagues. She had worked indefatigably for nearly three months, organizing, teaching, and inspiring the proper spirit of life and hope, as she called it, in the women.

But the test was yet to come. All depended upon the success of the mass meeting, its effects upon the men. Would they understand the gravity of refusing to cooeperate with the women? She refused to contemplate the disasters, the bitter suspense and disappointment if they did hold out. It seemed strange that not a single man had guessed the method the suffragists would adopt to win. She was excited, elated, hopeful, and at the same time she was sad. She thought of her father, so bereaved by her conduct. Her eyes filled with tears at the vision of him mournfully silent in the evenings, too much cast down to even reproach her with her perfidy. Then she began to laugh as a certain thought came to her. He had ceased to show his diminished head on the streets of Jordantown. He had been sober for two months, spending all of his time attending to his farm. He was like a good soldier, who in the face of a decisive battle indulges in no weakness, keeps his wits about him. She was sure he was camping in the spirit beneath her walls, waiting for the citadel to fall. They practised the fine honour of noble enemies. He never asked her any question about what was going forward in the suffrage ranks. He even broke his own eggs at breakfast with the proud air of a man who neither asks nor gives quarter.

"Father," she would say at the breakfast table, "let me break your eggs!"

"No, Selah, I'm an old man, I've come upon evil days in my own house, but I am still able to attend to my simple wants. Pray don't let me detain you"—seeing that she wore her hat, and that the abominable car would be purring at the curb.

"Very well, then, I'll be off, but expect me back before night," she would say, kissing him on the forehead.

"No, I do not expect you home before night. I never do. It would not surprise me if you didn't get in before midnight. I'm prepared for anything now!" he would answer without looking up.

Nevertheless, she made it a rule always to get back from her engagements before he came in.

"Is that you, father?" she would call down the staircase.

"Yes, just came in, but I didn't expect to find you here," he would answer accusingly.

It could not be said that they kept the peace. Rather they kept a truce, smiling on the part of Selah, coldly dignified on the part of the Colonel.

One evening she came down unexpectedly, and surprised him sneaking in with one enormous bunch of June roses which he had brought in from the farm.

"How lovely, and how sweet of you to think of me!" she exclaimed.

"I did not think of you, and these are not for you. If I'd been gathering flowers for you, Selah, I should have brought bachelor buttons!" he answered as he passed out into the darkened avenue, still carrying his posy ludicrously upside down.

It was another month before she or any one else knew what he did with them.

She had tried to put Bob Sasnett out of her thoughts, but not very successfully. Love is the finest logic nature ever achieves. Nothing, no argument however reasonable and expedient, can withstand it. She thought continually of him as an enemy she must face sooner or later. She loved him—at least she feared that she did. But she was still so young that she longed for sacrifice. She wished to give the whole of her life to women. She could not do that and give the whole of her heart to Bob. She did not reflect that this is the law of women's hearts with which no privilege of citizenship can interfere, and that all the other women for whom she sacrificed herself would be doing just this thing if there should be enough men about to receive their hearts. One thing was certain: she had "grown." She was no longer the girl she had been, shrinking, timid, yet filled with longings to live her own life, to do things. Three months ago she had but one outlook, that of marrying Bob Sasnett and spending the remainder of her days as Mrs. Sasnett's daughter-in-law—that is to say, in total eclipse. Now, she reflected, as the car rolled silently toward the distant courthouse dome, showing gray above the trees of Jordantown, now some day she might become a lawyer and plead a case beneath that very dome!

"Good evening, sweet Goddess of Liberty! Deign to bend your far-seeing eyes upon your humble slave!"

"Mr. Sasnett!" exclaimed Selah, as he advanced from the deep shade of an elm tree beside the road, where he appeared to have been standing.

"No, not 'Mr. Sasnett!' I left him an hour since, vainly contending with Susan Walton, in the effort to gain her consent for the bank to extend the loan to the Acres Mercantile Company another six months, and——"

Selah laughed.

"Don't interrupt, Minerva! I say that I left this fellow Sasnett imploring her, paying her undue compliments with this charitable end in view, while Acres waited outside the door of the directors' room. This poor adventurer whom you behold bound at present to your chariot wheel, is none other than 'Bob,'" he concluded, smiling up at her with whimsical audacity.

"But what are you doing out here at this hour? It's almost tea time," she exclaimed with well-simulated innocence.

"Waiting for you," he replied, accusing her innocence with a stare so bold that she blushed.

"That was kind of you. Get in!" she said, thrusting the door of the car open and making room for him on the seat.

"It is not my idea to return to the er—goddess-ridden metropolis of Jordantown as the obvious captive of Minerva," he replied, backing off. "I ventured to hope that you would descend and walk back with me," he explained.

"I can't," she objected, "I always try to be home when father comes, and it's already late."

"Old boy won't be in for another hour. He's having his wheat thrashed; met one of the men taking more sacks out just now. He says it will be nine o'clock before they finish."

Still she hesitated, looking down at him.

"Come!" he insisted, "I've something very important to tell you."

"Are you sure it's important?" she asked waveringly.

"Absolutely! Whole future of your movement, as you call it, may depend upon it!" he assured her with suspicious gravity.

"Very well, then, I'll come," she agreed, allowing him to assist her down into the road.

"Drive on, Charles!" Sasnett commanded, surreptitiously placing a dollar in the negro's hand to insure a quick departure.

The car sprang forward, disregarding all speed limits, leaving the two lovers veiled in yellow dust, which lifted presently, wind blown, rolling out over the fields beyond like dried sunlight. The road lay before them, a golden band between widespreading trees, fading into the shadows of evening.

They walked in silence, Selah waiting for what he should tell her, wondering vaguely if at last the men had divined their plans, and if this was the news he brought. She feared it might be something disagreeable, since he was in no hurry to begin. She looked at him surreptitiously, and flushed to find that he was also regarding her in the same sidewise, secret manner.

"Well, what is it?" she demanded quickly to cover her embarrassment.

"What is what?" he asked innocently.

"The important something that you have to tell me."

"That I love you," he answered shamelessly.

"Oh!" exclaimed Selah, looking unutterable reproach.

"Isn't that important? Do you think the ballot will satisfy your whole heart and nature, make life one glad song? Will women cease to love men when they can vote? Not on your life, dear! Look at your Co-Citizens now. Didn't Susan Walton have a husband who honoured and obeyed her till the day of his death? Doesn't the fact that they have husbands add to the interest Mabel Acres and Agatha Coleman have in the suffrage question? Do you think poor Miss Mary Heath would refuse a proposal of marriage, even if she controlled every man's vote in the town? Believe me, those little adolescent Citizenesses-to-be, the seminary girls, do not primp and pile their curls bewitchingly over their ears because they want the ballot. It's the daily petition they make of themselves for lovers!"

"That is your egregious masculine conceit, Bob, imagining every woman is thinking of winning lovers and husbands. We love ourselves. We do our best to look well because we have a satisfaction in our own appearance!" Selah exclaimed with indignant heat.

"Of course, and I must say you bear charming witness to your own sweet perfection, dear," he laughed, "but you don't see my point."

"I will not! It is not a point anyway, it's—it's—a joke you make at our expense!" she accused.

"No, beloved, it really is well taken, my position. But your mind is so obsessed, all of your thoughts are so focussed upon one of the mere incidents of life, that you are missing the real issue of happiness. Let me explain."

"You can't do it, but you may try," she conceded.

"Love, Selah, is the one thing that must always come to pass in the hearts of men and women. It doesn't matter under what conditions they live, they must love or die unfulfilled in the very purpose for which they were created. It is a season in the life of us, dear, a season, you understand—the time when nature blooms in us, when the fragrance of our very spirits ascends in tender emotions, in the perfume of language, in looks such as the gaze with which I now behold you, and which makes your cheek one anthology of roses!" he concluded, as the warm colour rose like a red wreath beneath her ivory skin. "But listen, dear, the season passes. The rose fades. The strength of man changes, passes into the strength of achievement or into the dead leaves of failure. Then where will we be, Selah, you and I?"

"Well be doing our share of the world's work, sanely and well, I hope," she answered quickly.

"Granted, though it's an awful gamble. But suppose you succeed. Suppose you win everything and more than you are now contending for. Suppose at forty you are nominated for Congress from this district, do you think I'd ask you then to be my wife? Not if I had failed as much as you had succeeded! I would not, because I could not love you as I love you now. Don't cry! But I swear I will not marry you then!" he ended, laughing.

"And do you think I'd want to marry you then?" she asked, amazed.

"Yes, I know you will; if not me, some other man. You will have discovered that doing the world's work even well is a thankless job, and that fame and success are the husks that swine do eat compared with even the tears and griefs of love. But you will not be lovable then, Selah; you will only be horribly intelligent and capable. I can see that, the way you are tending now. You will have gray hair, thin, too. You will draw it back like a conviction, and wind it in a knot at the back of your head as tight as a narrow-minded conclusion. You will have lost the damask flush of youth. I think your cheek bones will stick up, too prominent, you know, as if your character had knobbed up under your eyes. There will be a staircase of political wrinkles upon your forehead. Your eyes—— Oh, my God! I cannot bear the vision I see of you, with your eyes showing like gray stones casting eddies of wrinkles! And you'll be lank, the skeleton left by the passing of a great and successful movement undertaken for the emancipation of woman!"

"And if I married you, how should I look at forty?" asked Selah with shrewish shrewdness.

"Oh, my beloved, I don't know. I should not know even then. You would be my wife, the mother of my children—as sacred as that—the memory of my youth distilled, the citadel of my mature years, the alabaster box of my hopes and faith in the life to come! I couldn't see you at all, Selah, for you would have become everything to me, and a man can't see or foretell that much."

She looked at him, her eyes shining behind her tears like distant windows of light through the rain on a dark night. How could she keep faith with the Cause of Woman while the Cause of Man stood before her so gallantly portrayed!

"Bob," she whispered, "I—you are so dear. You cannot know how dear you are to me. I've just found out myself, but——"

"But what?" he cried impatiently.

"You must wait. I can't, I just can't give you my whole heart now. It seems to have gone from me, some fierce energy of life. I've got to do this thing that we've set out to do before I can promise, before I'll know myself."

"Well, for God's sake, hurry then and do it," he answered, not pleased.

"You'll help, won't you?" she asked softly.

"There are times when I fear I'd help you commit murder if the victim stood between us, Selah, but really I don't know how I can help you win this fight for suffrage in Jordan County. The whole thing seems so far fetched. I can't see what you are driving at. You have effectually tied up things for the men, but what good will that do? I don't want to discourage you, but I can only think harm will come of it without your having accomplished your purpose."

She was singularly serene under this discouragement. She even changed the subject.

"When do you begin your campaign as candidate for representative?" she asked as they entered the avenue.

"Two bodies cannot revolve in the same orbit. I'm waiting until you quit revolving in the county. I hear you make the Co-Citizens write their names in their own blood when they sign the vow not to reveal the secrets of the League. Is that so?" he laughed.

"Not quite so bad as that. But they do keep the vow, don't they? Not one of you will know our plans until we reveal them ourselves at the mass meeting. But you are going to run for the legislature?" she insisted, returning to that.

"I'm not sure; I'm waiting to see what Prim's going to do. I——"

"We will take care of Prim," she put in.

"Oh, you will? And which one of you has been chosen to murder him, you or Susan? Nothing short of death, I think, will rid this town of him."

"We shall not resort to capital punishment unless it is absolutely necessary," she laughed, "but I think I can assure you of one thing: Prim will not be a candidate."

"Thanks!" he said, but without conviction. "Does Prim know he is not to run?" almost sarcastically.

"Not yet," she laughed.

"Good night, Minerva!" he murmured, kissing her hand.

"Good night, Bob, and remember you can go ahead. Prim will not be in your way."

"I'll wait, thank you; I'm young; I can afford to take my time gathering county laurels for my brow. And no decent man could oppose Prim without getting smeared with political slime. Sticks, too!"



CHAPTER III

One very hot morning early in July Mike Prim came up the staircase of the National Bank Building. He stood for a moment in the hall, breathing heavily from the exertion of bearing his great weight up the steps. He took off his straw hat and mopped his red face. Then he glared at the door of Judge Regis's office.

"That's the long-legged old devil's horse who's put the women up to all this damnation!" he growled as he entered his own office and closed the door.

He took off his coat, then his collar and tie, flung them with his hat on a chair, and sat down to his desk. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. He placed his elbows on the desk and his enormous folded chin in his two hands. So he sat, a monstrous figure, with his great paunch filling his white shirt like a concealed balloon, with his hideously hairy arms naked halfway, and his thick hands purple beneath the weight of his amorphously fat face, his little reptilian eyes staring at the opposite wall.

He was at his wits' end. He was not making good at his business, and he knew it. What was worse, everybody else knew it. He had had few callers of late. Campaign collections had dwindled to almost nothing. They were getting bold in their refusals to contribute at all. "Why didn't he do something?" "What were they paying him for if it was not to do something?" "Was he going to let a set of fanatical women down him and take things in their own hands?" These were some of the questions they asked him which he could not answer satisfactorily. In vain he advised patience, and even more vainly he vowed he could and would stop the women's damphulishness at the proper time. They did not believe him; they pointed out that business had already stopped. From being the one who threatened, he had become the one who cajoled, while every man who came in offered him veiled threats instead of dollars.

He was furious, and he was obliged to conceal his fury. He hated these rebellious men even more than he hated the upstart women. He was determined, if the opportunity offered, to be revenged upon them for their insolence. But how? This was the matter he revolved in his snake-licking mind as he stared at the wall, and he was in a hurry to reach a solution of his difficulty. Stark Coleman had called him before he was out of bed that morning to say that there had been a citizens' meeting the night before, and that he, Coleman, would be up to see him at ten o'clock. In the first place, why had he not been notified of the citizens' meeting. He usually presided on these occasions when the tutelary deities of Jordantown gathered in Coleman's office, or more frequently in his own office, to discuss the ways and means by which the principles of the Democratic party could be made to contribute most liberally to the liberty of man, especially in Jordantown. In the second place, the tone of Coleman's voice was cool, offensively so. He detected a note of command in it. Suppose Coleman should be coming up to inform him of certain changes in the policy which would govern the manifestations of the democratic principle? In short, suppose he was about to be dismissed from his office? True, it was an office without a name, but it had been a lucrative position.

There was a knock upon the door. He flung himself back, looked hastily at his watch and saw that it was barely nine o'clock. Coleman must be anxious, he thought, to keep an appointment in such a hurry, which was a good sign.

"Come in!" he shouted, whirling around on his swivel chair to face the door.

It opened with a quick inward thrust and Susan Walton walked in. She carried her everlasting little black reticule in one hand, and in the other she held—of all things in this world—an empty brown-linen laundry bag, swinging by the strings!

"Good morning, Mr. Prim!" she said, looking at him pleasantly over the top of her spectacles, as if it was the most natural thing for her to drop in informally.

He was too amazed to return her salutation. He stared at her, then he bowed his thick neck and stared at the flabby bag. He did not even offer her a seat, but she was in no way disconcerted by that. She chose a chair, drew it up in front of him, sat down, and crumpled the bag up in her lap.

"I came to see you on a matter of business, Mr. Prim," she said, coming briskly to the point. "I suppose you've been expecting me?"

"No," he managed to say.

"I'd given you credit then for more sense than you seem to have, for I'm the only hope you have now."

She said that in tones of conviction.

"You are the last person in the world I'd look upon as a—hope!" he returned slowly, widening his lips into a grin which was also a sneer.

"You are at the end of your rope. You've been so for a month. You can't squeeze another dollar out of this town for your campaign fund. The men have lost confidence in you."

"How'd you come by so much useful information?" he interrupted.

"I have it. That's the point. You'll never dare announce yourself a candidate for representative. You gave that up three months ago."

"What makes you think so?" he asked, fixing his eyes upon her face with deep reptilian concentration.

"I don't think, I know it. You went on with your collections for private, personal reasons. But you did not deposit a single dollar of it in this bank, and you knew from the day Sarah Mosely's will was read up here in Judge Regis's office that you did not have a ghost of a chance to be elected, and you made up your mind that day not to run."

"Your powers of penetration are well known, Madam, but again I must ask you how you have penetrated so far into my secret thoughts, granting of course for the sake of argument that you have done so?" he said, now in complete possession of his faculties, and coolly on guard.

"I saw you listening at Judge Regis's office door the day the will was read, and the day we first discussed our plans for winning equal suffrage for women in this country. You are the only man in it who has known positively from the first that we can do it!" she answered, and showed her nerve by keeping her gaze fixed imperturbably upon him.

He bent forward, his face slowly purpling with rage, his fists clenched, his upper lip skinned back from his teeth as he hissed: "You are a—you did not see me!"

"I didn't see you, that's a fact, but I saw your shadow in the ground-glass door, cast by the light from the window at the end of the hall. Nobody could mistake it for any other shape who'd ever seen you, Mike Prim!"

They sat for the briefest moment measuring each other, he with incredible ferocity, and Susan with her lips primped, grimly fearless.

"Now that we understand each other, let's get down to business!" she began.

"To business?" he snarled.

"Yes, this is the situation: you can't run for the legislature; you don't want to! You have squeezed every dollar you can get out of the Democrats here." She sniffed at the word. "They have lost confidence in you as manager of their political ends. They've begun to suspect your game. It's only a question of hours, I might say of one hour, before you get your walking papers, so to speak; for they are mad, Mike Prim. They are as angry as men always are when they realize that they've been duped and robbed——"

"If you were not a woman you couldn't sit there and say such things to me. Anyhow, I won't stand it! What's your business, as you call it?" he exclaimed, heaving his huge bulk from the chair and coming to his feet.

"Sit down! Sit down, Mr. Prim. I am here to make you a definite proposition!"

"Make it!" he growled, still standing, his feet wide apart, glowering down at her.

"The Co-Citizens' Foundation is prepared to purchase your papers——"

"My papers?"

"Yes, your letters, your political correspondence."

"Think they are valuable?"

"We can get on without them, but we are willing to pay a reasonable price for them. We know that they are valuable to a certain extent."

"How?"

"You remember your conversation with Stark Coleman the day you threatened him with certain letters you had of his and of other prominent citizens here. Miss Adams heard what you said on that occasion."

"So she's added eavesdropping to her other accomplishments?" he exclaimed venomously.

"Not eavesdropping, but Coleman left the door slightly ajar; she had come back up here to get some papers from Judge Regis, and, hearing such interesting conversation going on, naturally she listened. What will you take for these letters?" she demanded.

"I'd have to think about it," he said, sitting down.

"I'll buy them now or not at all'" she said.

"Aim to publish them?" he asked, grinning. He was beginning to be in a very good humour.

"That's our affair, but I don't mind telling you that we do not intend to publish them."

"And if I refuse?" he held out.

"In that case you must abide by the consequences, you and the men who wrote the letters. We shall publish all we know about them, what you yourself claimed for them, and leave the next grand jury to make the proper investigations."

"Humph!"

"Naturally we should try to see to it that you did not escape," she added.

"What will you pay for them?" he demanded.

"Five hundred dollars for every scrap of paper in this desk, and immunity for you—for turning state's evidence you know!"

"They are worth more than that," he said, taking no notice of the insult.

They bargained back and forth. Prim was really in a hurry to close the trade. He wished to be able to handle Coleman when he came in. It was five minutes to ten o'clock when they finally closed the deal.

"But I can't take a check," he objected suddenly.

"I thought as much. I've brought the money. A thousand dollars is too much. This bag isn't half full!" she exclaimed, shaking it down, drawing up the strings, and looking at it. Then she counted out the bills on the desk, every drawer of which was now empty.

Some one came up the stairs and walked briskly forward in the hall outside.

Prim had barely time to snatch the fluttering green and yellow bills before Stark Coleman entered the room, without the ceremony of knocking.

It would be difficult to say which showed the greater surprise at seeing the other, he or Susan Walton, tightly clutching her bulging laundry bag.

"Good morning, Mr. Coleman," she said, waddling rapidly toward the door.

"Good morning, Madam!" he returned.

"Fine large day!" She said this from the door as she went out.

Coleman turned angrily to Prim, who was standing reared back, feet wide apart, hands in his pockets, grinning broadly.

"What's she doing in here?" he demanded.

"Wanted me to help the cause!" he answered shamelessly.

"What'd she have in that bag?"

"Dirty linen—wash day. Taking it to the Co-Citizens' Laundry!"

"Didn't know they had one."

"Yes, they have. She's soliciting patronage!"

"Well, I'll be damned! You don't mean to tell me that woman was up here to get——"

"My soiled office linen," Prim obligingly finished. "She was, and I let her have every scrap of it," he answered symbolically.

He turned, seized his collar and tie, and reached for the button at the back of his neck.

"Look here, Mike, things aren't going right in this town," Coleman began, having lighted a fresh cigar without offering one to Prim, who went on adjusting his collar. "We had a meeting last night and the general opinion was that you are not holding the situation down as we expected you would."

When there was no reply from Prim, who was holding his head back and struggling to make ends meet over his front collar button, he went on:

"We don't blame you, but the fact is we want to make a change."

"Good idea!" said Prim.

"Glad you feel that way. Knew you would, but the boys thought you might be willing to dispose of the records and papers that have accumulated here." Coleman looked up and caught Prim's eye fixed upon him. "They're of no value to you. And we are prepared to offer you, well, more than they are worth. We——"

"Want my memoirs, do you?" laughed Prim, seizing his coat.

"That's it, for the archives, you know. How much will you take for them?"

"I wouldn't sell them to you, Stark Coleman, for all the cash you could rake and scrape out of your measly little old Co-Citizens' Bank!" he answered, thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his coat, hunching it up on his shoulders, and making for the door.

Coleman could not believe his ears, and now he could not believe his eyes. The man was actually leaving the room. He took the cigar from his mouth, and lifted his hand in a commanding gesture.

"Hold on, Prim!"

"Hold on yourself if you can! I'm off! A henpecked town is no place for a man!" he sneered, banging the door.

Coleman stood a moment stupefied. He heard Prim thundering downstairs. Then suddenly he returned to his senses. He rushed to the desk, and pulled out one drawer after another. Not a scrap of paper remained in a single one of them.

"My God!" he groaned, burying his face in his hands. He had no doubt at all as to the quality of the linen in Susan Walton's laundry bag.

Meanwhile Prim was standing on the platform of the vestibule train tying his cravat. He had not taken the trouble to buy a ticket. He had actually swung on board the train as it moved slowly out of the depot along the track which ran directly behind the National Bank Building.