WHAT a fair of American citizenship was on its way to Hillsborough this morning of the Fourth of July! They that now crowded the train were like others travelling on all the main thoroughfares of the county—farmers and their wives, rustic youths and their sweethearts, mill-hands and mill-owners, teamsters, sawyers, axemen, guides, and storekeepers. They were celebrating a day's release from the tyranny of Business, and were not deeply moved by the tyranny which their grandfathers had suffered. History, save that of the present hour, did not much concern them.

They were mostly sound-hearted men. There were some who, in answer to the charge that a local statesman had got riches in the Legislature, were wont to say, "He'd be a fool if he hadn't." He was "a good fellow," anyhow, and they loved a good fellow. All the men of wealth and place and power were in his favor, and had practised upon them the subtle arts of the friend-maker. They would not have accepted "a bribe"—these good people now on their way to Hillsborough—but they could get all kinds of favors from Joe Socket and Pop Migley and Horace Dumay and other henchmen of the wealthy boss and legislator. They had yielded to the insidious briberies of friendship—warm greetings and handshakes, loans, small sinecures, compliments, pledges of undying esteem over clinking glasses, and similar condescension. They loved the forest and were sorry to see it go, but many of them got their bread-and-butter by its downfall—directly or indirectly—and then Socket, Dumay, and Migley were nothing more or less than lumber, pulp, and water-power personified. They were like the lords and barons of the olden time—less arrogant but more powerful. Indeed, Strong was right—the tyrant of the modern world is that ruthless giant that he called "Business," and his nobles are coal, iron, cotton, wool, food, power, paper, and lumber. These people on the edge of the woodland were slaves of power, paper, and lumber. With able and designing chiefs this great triumvirate gently drove the good people this way and that, and there was a little touch of irony in this journey of the latter to celebrate their freedom and independence.

One who knew them could not help feeling that the old martial spirit of the day was wholly out of harmony with their own. They were a peace-loving people, purged of their fathers' hatred, and roars of defiance found no echo in any breast—save those overheated by alcohol.

Some wore flannel shirts and the livery of a woodsman's toil; some, unduly urged, no doubt, by a wife or sister, had ventured forth in more conventional attire. They sat, as if posing for a photograph, galled, hot, gloomy, suspicious, self-suppressed, silent, their necks hooped in linen, their bodies resisting the tight embrace of new attire. In the crowd were a number to whom the reaping of the ruined hills, on either side of the train, had brought wealth and an air of proprietorship. Most of the crowd were in high spirits. The sounds of loud talk and laughter and the rankling smoke of cheap cigars filled the air above them. A lank youth under a dark, broad-brimmed hat, tilted backward, so as neither to conceal nor disarrange a rare embellishment of curls upon his brow, entered the car with another like him. His hair had the ginger-brown, ringletudinous look of spaniel fur. He began to whistle loudly and, as it would seem, prelusively. In a moment he was in full song on a ballad of the cheap theatres, with sentiment like his hair—frank, bold, oily, and outreaching.

As the train stopped at Hillsborough, Strong rose and put on his pack and left with the crowd, coon in hand. The sidewalks were crowded, and Strong took the centre of the street. There, at least, was comparative seclusion.

Silas had not travelled a block when, all unexpectedly, he became a centre of attraction. A group of whining dogs gathered about him, peering wistfully at the coon. They were shortly reinforced by a number of small boys, which grew with astonishing rapidity. Cries of curiosity and derision rose around him. Sportsmen who had visited his camp and who recognized him shouted their greeting to the "Emperor of the Woods." A "swisher" of some prominence in the little school of sportsmanship at Lost River came and dispersed the boys. The Emperor kicked at a dog and ran a little way in pursuit of him. He came back and set down the coon-cage and shook hands with his pupil. Immediately a dog, approaching from behind, sprang at the cage and tipped it over, and leaped upon it and began to claw. Strong seized and flung the dog away, and as he righted the cage its door came open and the coon escaped. Dodging his enemy, the little animal sought refuge in a thicket of people. Being pursued by dogs, and accustomed also to avoid peril by climbing, he straightway climbed, not a tree, but a tall sapling of a youth, from which the others broke away in a panic. They were opposite a little park, and the youth, not daring to lay hold of the animal, fled among the trees, pursued by Strong and two dogs and a throng of brave spirits who shouted information as to what he had best do.

For half a moment the frightened coon clung on a shoulder, his tail in the air, growling at the dogs. The latter leaped up at him, and he began to feel for more altitude. The youth, who had some knowledge of the nature of coons, ran to the nearest tree. Quickly the coon sprang upon it and scrambled far out of reach. He ran up the smooth shaft of elm and settled on a swaying bough some forty feet above ground. A crowd of people were now looking up at him.

"Coon in a cage is worth two in a tree," a man shouted.

Strong sat down beneath the tree and lighted his pipe and "thought out" another bit of wisdom for his memorandum-book. It was:

"Coon on yer shoulder worth less'n what he is anywhere."He sat in meditation—as if, indeed, he were resting in the wilderness. A cannon, not a hundred feet away, shook the windows of Hillsborough with a loud explosion for every star on the flag. A perpetual fusillade of fire-crackers seemed to suggest the stripes. Accustomed to woodland silences, the Emperor's feeling was, in a measure, like that of his coon. The "morning salute" ended presently, and then he uttered an exclamation which indicated clearly that he had been losing ground in his late struggle with Satan.

One of the guides with whom he had sat in the store at Pitkin came near. "Had yer tooth drawed?" was the question he put to the Emperor.

Strong was now looking at the empty cage. "Had my coon d-drawed," he answered.

"Where is he?"

"Up-s-stairs." Strong pointed in the direction of the coon's refuge.

Silas was now the centre of an admiring company. His former pupil had brought the president of the corporation of Hillsborough to meet him. The official invited Strong to participate in the games. The Emperor was willing to do anything to oblige, and walked with his new acquaintance to the public square.

A trial at lifting and carrying was the first number on the programme. The contestants leaned, with hands behind them, while others on a raised platform began to heap bags of oats upon their backs and shoulders. Loaded to the limit of their strength, they carried the burden as far as they were able and flung it down. One after another tried, and the last carried nine bags a distance of seven feet and was rewarded with many cheers.

It was Strong's turn now. He bent his broad back, and the loaders began to burden him. At ten they stopped, but Strong called for more. Three others were heaped upon him, and slowly he began to move away. One could see only his legs beneath his burden, which towered far above him. Ten feet beyond the farthest mark he bore the bags and let them down. The people began cheering, and many came to shake his hand and feel the sinews in his arms and shoulders. Of the trial at scale-lifting a woodsman who stood near gave this illuminating description, "When they all got through, Strong put on two hundred more an' raised his neck an' lifted, an' the bar come up like a trout after a fly." Silas Strong stood, his coat off, his trousers tucked in his boots, looking soberly at the people who cheered him. One eye was wide open, the other partly closed. There were wrinkles above his wide eye, and his faded felt hat, tilted backward and to one side, left his face uncovered. He had a new and grateful sense of being "ahead," but seemed to wonder if so much brute strength were altogether creditable.

Master was to address the people, and Strong was invited to sit behind the speaker's table with the select of the county. He accompanied the president of the corporation to the platform in the park, his pack-basket on his arm. More than a thousand men and women had gathered in front of them when the chairman introduced the young orator.

The speech delighted Silas Strong, and he summed it up in his old memorandum-book as follows:

"folks cant be no better than the air they brethe "roots of a plant are in the ground but the roots of a man are in his lungs

"whair the woods ar plenty the air is strong an folks are stout an supple like our forefathers when they licked the British them days they got a powrful crop of folks sometimes fifteen in a famly the powr of the woods was in em. now folks live under a sky eight feet above their heads an take their air secont handed an drink at the bar instead of the spring an eat more than what they earn an travel on wheels an think so much of their own helth they aint got no time to think of their countrys when a man's mind is on his stummick it cant be any where else brains warnt made to digest vittles with old fashioned ways is best which Strong says is so also that a man had not oughto eat any more than what he's earnt by hard labor."

After the address Strong went home to dinner with Congressman Wilbert, the leading citizen of Hillsborough. That little town still retained the democratic spirit of old times. There one had only to be clean and honest to be respectable, and the mighty often sat at meat with the lowly. Strong declined the invitation at first, on the plea that he had fried cakes in his pack-basket, and yielded only after some urging.

The statesman's wife received the hunter cordially and presented him to her daughter. The girl led Strong aside and began to entertain him. He had lost his easy, catlike stride, his unconscious control of bone and muscle. He looked and felt as if he were carrying himself on his own back. He seemed to be balancing his head carefully, for fear it would fall off, and had treated his hands like detached sundries in a camp-outfit by stuffing them into the side pockets of his coat. Gradually he limbered in his chair and settled down. His confidence grew, and soon he "horsed" one knee upon the other and flung his hands around it as if to bind an invisible burden resting on his lap. He carried this objective treatment of his own, person to such an extreme that he seemed even to be measuring his breath and to find little opportunity for cerebration. When the young lady addressed him he often answered with the old formulas of "I tnum!" or "T-y-ty!" They eased the responsibility of his tongue, and, without seriously committing him, expressed a fair degree of interest and surprise.

At the table Strong behaved himself with the utmost conservatism. They treated him very tenderly, and he found relief in the fact that his embarrassment seemed not to be observed. He thought it the part of politeness to refuse nearly everything that was offered and to eat in a gingerly fashion.

The Congressman had often heard of Silas and gave him many compliments, and finally asked what, in his opinion, should be done to protect the forest. Briefly Strong gave his views, and the other seemed to agree with him.

"I'll do what I can for the woods and for you, too," said the statesman. "You ought to be a warden with a good salary."

These kindly assurances flattered the "Emperor of the Woods." Insidiously the great world power was making its most potent appeal to him.

"I may ask you for a favor now and then," said Wilbert. "I'd be glad if you'd do what you could to help Migley. He needs the vote of your town."

Strong knew not what to say. "M-mind's m-made up," he stammered, after a little pause. When his mind was "made up" he had nothing further to do but obey its will. The other did not quite comprehend his meaning.

Strong in his embarrassment had put too much tabasco sauce on his meat. He blew, according to his custom in moments of distress, and took a drink of water. He looked thoughtfully at the small cylinder of glass. He tried to read its label.

"Small b-bore," he remarked, presently.

"Sh-shoots w-well," he added, after a moment of reflection.

Strong had begun to think of his coon, now clinging in a tree-top. Suddenly he had become too proud to try to sell him, but he could not bear to abandon his old pet. So while the others talked together he began to contrive against the dogs of Hillsborough. As he was about to leave, he asked Mrs. Wilbert where he could buy "one o' them l-little r-red guns," by which he meant a bottle of tabasco sauce. She immediately sent a servant to bring one, which the Emperor accepted with her compliments. His host went with him to a store where Strong invested some of his prize-money in "C'ris'mus presents"—so he called them—for Sinth and the "little fawns," filling his pack well above the brim.

Then, forthwith, Strong proceeded to the coon's refuge, in the public park, where, with the aid of a Roman-candle, as he explained to Sinth in the privacy of their cook-tent, he made the coon "l-let go all holts." The animal had been clinging high in the old elm, and, being stunned by his fall, Strong caught and held him firmly by the nape of the neck while he covered him with an armor of liquid fire from the tabasco bottle. The fur of back and neck and shoulders had now the power to inflict misery sharper than a serpent's tooth.

"D-Dick," he whispered, "Strong is 'shamed o' y-you. He c-can't 'sociate n-no more with c-coons in this v-village. But he won't let ye git t-tore up."

Strong carried his coon out of the park and let him down. In Hillsborough popular enthusiasm had turned from revelry to refreshment. The crowd, having retired to home and hostelry, had left the streets nearly deserted.

Strong's coon set out in the direction of the river, and soon a bull-dog laid hold of him. The dog gave the coon a shake, and began, as it were, to lose confidence. He dropped the hot-furred animal, shook his head, and tarried the tenth part of a second, as if to make a note of the coon's odor for future reference, and then ran with all speed to the river. He heeded not the call of his master or the jeering of a number of small boys. They were no more to him than the idle wind.

The coon proceeded on his way to the woods. Farther on three other dogs bounded into trouble, and rushed for water. The coon passed two bridges and made his way across an open field in the direction of Turner's wood.

Strong, whose hunger had not been satisfied, bought some cake and pie, and made for open country where he sat down by the road-side. Tree-tops above him were full of chattering birds, driven out of town probably by its hideous uproar.

The Emperor, having appeased his hunger, took half an hour for reflection. Before the end of it came he began for the first time in his life to suffer the penalty of idleness and high living. Indigestion, the bane of towns and cities, had taken hold of him. Before leaving he made these entries in his little book:

"July the 4

"This aint no place for Strong

"Man might as well be in Ogdensburg * as have Ogdensburg in him.

"Strong's coon snaked out of his cage contrived to git even also coon made free and independent."

His revenge was of such lasting effect that, some say, for a long time thereafter dogs in Hillsborough fled terror-stricken at the sight of a coon-skin overcoat.