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

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

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

The last of the stragglers followed them up the stairs.



CHAPTER VI

A CAUCUS, AND HOW IT WAS RUN

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

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

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

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

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

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

The man gave him a cautious wink before replying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Duke was not ruffled by the interruption.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presson went along grumbling.

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

"I'm paying the freight, Luke."

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

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

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

The State chairman had his eyes on the fire again.

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



CHAPTER VII

WITH THE KAVANAGH AT HOME

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER VIII

THE MANTLE OF THELISMER THORNTON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They drew rein at the end of the bridge.

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

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

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

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

But she would not loose his hand just then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harlan pulled his hand away, and began to eat.

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

He chuckled significantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thelismer Thornton heard him coming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do not."

"You'll allow that I do?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The three of them sat in silence for a while.

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

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

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

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

Harlan took his grandfather's hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The State chairman seemed much amused. He chuckled.

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER IX

IN THE CENTRE OF THE BIG STATE WEB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thornton fingered his clippings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You haven't got your crowd."

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

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

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

The chairman's patience left him then.

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, you won't."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They muttered assent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They departed, three new and promising evangelists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harlan's eyes questioned him.

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

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

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



CHAPTER X

A POLITICAL CONVERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He took her little hand in both his own.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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