TECUMSEH STREET was the fourth street back from the river. Tradition said that the father and Certain aunts of the man who laid out the street had been scalped by Tecumseh, the Indian. It was the only distinguished event in his family, and he wished to commemorate it.

The street was paved with undressed Medina. The newspaper offices were all there, and the smash and scream of undressed Medina under traffic was in the columns. It was satisfactory to Port Argent. The proper paving of streets in front of newspaper offices was never petitioned in the Council. Opposite the offices was a half block of vacant lots, a high board fence of advertisements around it.

The space between was packed with a jostling crowd. A street lamp lit a small section of it. Lights from the office windows fell in patches on faces, hats, and shoulders. A round moon floated above the tower of The Chronicle Building with a look of mild speculation, like a “Thrice Blessed Buddha,” leading in the sky his disciple stars, who all endeavoured to look mildly speculative, and saying, “Yonder, oh, mendicants! is a dense mass of foolish desires, which indeed squirm as vermin in a pit, and are unpleasant to the eye of meditation. Because the mind of each individual is there full of squirming desires, even as the individual squirms in the mass.” No doubt it looks so when one floats so far over it.

Opposite the windows of The Chronicle (Independent-Reform) and The Press (Republican) the advertising boards were covered with white cloth, and two blinding circles shone there of rival stereopticons. There was no board fence opposite The Western Advocate (Democratic), and no stereopticon in the windows. This was deplored. It showed a lack of public spirit—a want of understanding of the people's needs. If there could be no stereopticon without a board fence, there should be a brass band.

The proprietor of The Advocate sent out for a bushel of Roman candles, and discharged them from his windows by threes, of red, white, and blue. This was poetic and sufficient.

The stereopticons flashed on the white circles the figures of returns, when there were any, pictures and slurs when there were no figures,—a picture of a cage full of riotous monkeys on The Chronicle circle, underwritten, “The Council,”—a picture of an elderly lady with a poke bonnet and lifted hands of reprehension, on the Press circle, underwritten, “Independent Reform.”

“Auction of the City of Port Argent!” flashed The Chronicle. “Office of M. Wood. Cash on Delivery of Goods.”

“All citizens must go to Sunday School or be fined,” from The Press.

“6th Ward. Rep. Plurality, 300.”

“1st Ward. Ind. Ref. Plurality, 28.”

Whish! a rocket from the windows of The Western Advocate. And the crowd roared and shuffled.

The last of The Press windows to the left belonged to a little room off the press-room, containing a desk, a board table, and several chairs. The desk seemed only to be used as an object at which to throw articles, in order that, they might roll to the floor. There were crude piles of newspapers on it and about it, hats, a section of a stove pipe, and a backgammon board. The table looked as if it sometimes might be used to write on.

The room was supposed to be the editor's, but no one in Port Argent believed Charlie Carroll ever stayed in the same place long enough to pre-empt it. He edited The Press from all over the city, and wrote the editorials wherever he stopped to catch breath. The Press editorials were sometimes single sentences, sometimes a paragraph. More than a paragraph was supposed to mean that Carroll had ridden on a street car, and relieved the tedium of his long imprisonment.

A number of men stood at the window or stood grouped back, and watched the canvas across the street. The only light came through the door from the press-room.

Carroll put his curly head through the door, shouted something and vanished. The Press stereopticon withdrew a view of Yosmite Valley and threw on the canvas:

“Recount in the 1st Ward announced.”

The Chronicle cleared its canvas promptly and flung across the street:

“Fraud!”

Only two men sat still by the window of the darkened room. The rest rushed out.

The street was in an uproar, hats crushed over heads, fists shaken in the air to the instructive comment of the moon.

“How foolish, oh, mendicants! How do men make for themselves troubles, as though one should stir quiet waters with his hand, saying, 'It is a storm. The gods have afflicted me.'”

“How foolish!” said one of the men at the darkened window. “Those boys are terribly anxious to carry that Ward, and no point in it, Dick!”

“Suppose I'd been out canvassing for Reform, Wood? Think you'd have lost?”

Wood peered curiously at Hennion in the half-lit dusk. “Like enough! Well—want anything in particular? I admit the bill, if it ain't too big.”

“I don't want anything.”

Wood tilted his chair and was silent a moment.

“Look what comes of making rows,” he went on. “I wouldn't have that Ward now for a gift. The Chronicle's red in the face with wrath and happiness. Everybody's hair on end as it is. Disgusting, ain't it? Well—down east, where the land's tilted up so you can turn a section over bottom upwards by heaving one end with a rail, well—there was a man there had a farm at the bottom of a long hill, and his neighbour's punkins up above used to roll down on him. But he didn't make any row, because his yard was littered with punkins, no. He ate the punkins. Well, now, take the neighbour above, he might have gone down and called somebody a thief for not returning strayed punkins, and two pillars of the church might have disliked each other. But he didn't. He built a board fence along the lower edge of his cornfield and caught his own punkins. And there was mutual respect, mutual respect. Well—the boys, they always want to fight. They go round saying, 'The old man's level-headed,' but they ain't satisfied with building that fence to catch those punkins without heaving a rock down an aggravating man's chimney, or else it makes 'em mad to have punkins rolled at 'em, and moreover they don't roll fast enough. Disgusting, ain't it?”

“Wood! Wood! Wherein——” Carroll rushed in and turned up the electric light impatiently. “Wh-what you going to do about the First Ward?”

He had thin bright curly hair, the slimmest of bodies, and moved like a restless insect.

“Tell'em to count it twenty-eight Reform plurality, no more and no less! And turn off that light! And clear out! Well—now—that Charlie Carroll, he's a living fidget. Well—when they used to race steamboats on the Mississippi, they'd put a nigger on the safety valve, so it wouldn't get nervous. I've heard so. I've seen 'em tie it up with a string. Well—winning the race depended some on the size and serenity of the nigger, that'd see it wasn't his place to worry, for he'd get blown off all right in the natural course of things. For sitting on a safety valve you want a nigger that won't wriggle. Well—Charlie's a good man. Keeps people thinking about odds and ends of things. If one thing out of forty is going to happen, his mind's going to be a sort of composite picture of the whole forty. Sees eight or ten dimensions to a straight line. Yes—folks are pretty liberal. They'll allow there's another side to 'most anything, and a straight line's got no business to be so gone particular. It's the liberal-mindedness of the public that lets us win out, of course. But—you've got to sit still sometimes, and wait for the earth to turn round.”

“I suppose you have. It'll turn round.”

“Yes, it'll turn round.”

The tumult outside had subsided in a dull, unsettled rumble. The moon went into retreat among silver-grey clouds. Tecumseh Street muttered in the darkness of its pit. The stereopticons continued.

“The Chronicle suspects the U. S. Census,” from The Press.

“Census O. K. Wood didn't make it,” from The Chronicle.

“Port Argent stands by the G. O. P.”

“Did Wood mention his Candidate's Name?”

The Press threw defiantly the portrait of its candidate for mayor.

“Pull the String and See it Jump!” from The Chronicle.

Behind The Press stereopticon a telephone jingled, telegraph instruments clicked, men wrote busily at a long table under a row of pendent electric lights that swayed in the draught.

A large man came in, panting. His short coat swung back under his arm-pits, away from the vast curve of his waistcoat. He had a falling moustache and a round face.

“Vere iss Vood? So!” He peered curiously into the darker room. “Vere.”

“Come along, Freiburger,” said Wood. “Pull up a chair. Well—how's your Ward? All quiet?”

Freiburger settled into a chair with the same caution.

“Oh, yes, quviet. Not shtill, but quviet.”

“What's the difference between 'still' and 'quiet'?” asked Hennion.

“Veil, it vass drunk, und someone vass punch Cahn der barber's nose, but not me.”

“You call it quiet till somebody hits you?”

“Vy should he hit me?” cried Freiburger indignantly.

“He shouldn't,” said Hennion.

“No! Veil, it vass not shtill, but quviet. Ach!” sadly, “ven a man iss drunk, vy don't he shleep?”

“He wants to stay awake and enjoy it.”

Freiburger shook his head slowly and felt of his nose, as if to be quite sure before taking the responsibility of repeating the statement.

“It vass Cahn. It vass not me.”

Wood sat silently, looking through the window to where the stereopticons flashed over the crowd's changing emotions, half listening to the conversation near him. Freiburger peered anxiously at him in the dusk. His mind was trembling with the thrill and tumult of the day, longing that Wood might say something, utter some sentence that it might cling to, clasp about with comprehension, and be safe from wandering, unguaranteed ideas. Hennion seemed interested in examining Freiburger's soul.

“Freiburger, you're as honest a man as I know.”

“Veil, yes, I'm honest. I don't know who you know.”

“You never owed a dollar you didn't pay.”

“Oh, no, I don' do it.”

“Business fair?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, what did you want to get on the Council for?”

“Oh! Veil! It vass goot for business.” He seemed pleased to talk about this, but expression was a matter of labour and excitement. “Veil! You see! Die boys sie come at Freiburger's saloon, und I know 'em all on Maple Street und der Fourt Vard. Und nights at Freiburger's I hear von der shobs und der Union und der prices. Und sie tell me vy der carriage factory strike. Und sie tell me Hennion iss a shquvare man, und Vood vill do as he say he vill do, und Shamieson in der freight yards iss a hog, und Ranald Cam iss make money, und Fater Harra iss teach lil' boys fight mit gloves in St. Catherine's parochial school und bleed der badness out of der kleine noses. Und sie say, 'I loss my shob, Freiburger!' 'My lil' boy sick, Freiburger.' Ach, so! All dings in der Vard iss tell me. Veil now, aber, look here! I am a Councilman. Der iss no man so big on Maple Street as Fater Harra und me, und Freiburger's iss head-quaverters of der Vard, und das iss goot for business.”

“That's all right. I see your point. But the Council isn't supposed to be an adjunct to the different councilmen's business, is it? I suppose the Ward understood itself to be trusting its interests in your hands, don't you? and you're a sort of guardian and trustee for the city, aren't you? Seems as if that would take a good deal of time and worry, because you'd want to be sure you were doing right by the city and the Ward, and it's a complicated affair you have to look after, and a lot of people's interests at stake.”

Wood stirred slightly in his chair, partly with pleasure at the humour of it, partly with uneasiness. It was all right for Hennion to examine the Freiburger soul, if he liked, but to cast on its smooth seas such wide-stirring, windy ideas seemed unkind to Freiburger.

Freiburger puffed heavily in the darkness.

The excitement of expressing himself subsided, and Hennion's idea opened before him, a black gulf into which he could for a while only stare dubiously. His mind reached out vaguely for something familiar to cling to.

“Veil—I don' know—die boys and Fater Harra und—Mein Gott! I ask Vood!” He puffed heavily again after the struggle and triumph.

“Couldn't do better. It's what your boys expect of you anyhow.”

And Hennion returned to his silence. Freiburger's soul glowed peacefully once more.

“It iss Vood's business, hein?”

He looked from one to the other of the impassive, self-controlled men. He wanted Wood to say something that he could carry away for law and wisdom and conviction, something to which other ideas might be fitted and referred. He had the invertebrate instinct of a mollusk to cling to something not itself, something rooted and undriven, in the sea.

“You've done well, Freiburger,” said Wood, rousing himself. “Tell the boys they've done well. Stay by your beer and don't worry till the keg's dry.”

Freiburger rolled away, murmuring his message loyally. “Stay by mein—a—mein keg's dry.”

“Freiburger won't cost you much,” Hen-nion murmured after a while. Wood swung softly in his chair.

“Got something on your mind, ain't you, Dick?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. But I don't know what it is. I've fished for it till I'm tired. I've analysed Freiburger, and didn't get much. Now I'd like to examine your soul in a strong chemical solution. Maybe I'm a bit embarrassed.”

Wood chuckled. “Go ahead. Most men 'll lie, if you give 'em time to rearrange their ideas. Well—it won't take me so long.” His manner became genial. “You've got a good head, Dick. Well—I'll tell what I'm thinking. It's this. The old man 'll have to drop his job one of these days, and—if you're feeling for pointers—I don't say you are, but supposing you are—I don't mind saying I shall back you to head the organization. Maybe—well,—in fact, I don't suppose there's much money in it you'd care to touch—maybe there ain't any—but there's a place for the right man. I like you. I liked your father. He was built something your way. The boys want somebody over 'em that won't wriggle off the safety valve, and knows how to pick up punkins peacefully as they come. This First Ward business—well, you've got a pretty good grip through the crowd to begin with.”

“Now there!” broke in Hennion.

“You and Aidee are both trying to do the same thing. You want to get me into politics. I don't care for your primaries and committees. I don't see ten cents' difference to the city which party runs it. I dare say whoever runs it expects to make a living out of it. Why do you both come to me?”

“I guess we've both got an idea you're useful.”

Hennion thought a moment and then spoke more quietly.

“Henry Champney used to boss this section. He did it from the platform instead of the committee room. And my father handled bigger contracts than I've touched yet. But Champney didn't ask him to run his canal into the next caucus, or furnish stray batches of constituents with jobs. Understand, I'm not grumbling about the last. Champney stayed on his platform, and my father stayed in his big ditch and dug. The proper thing now seems to be for everybody to get into the street and row around together. Here's Aidee too thinks he's got to jump into it now, and take with him—take with him everything he can' reach.”

“That's straight,” murmured Wood. “So they do.”

“Yes, and I call off, myself.”

“All right. I was only guessing what you had in your mind. Well—it's business sets the pace nowadays. 'Most everything else has to catch its gait or be left. I remember Champney forty years gone. He was a fine picture, when he got up and spread himself. He didn't do anything that's here now, unless it's a volume of his speeches, congressional and occasional. Not much. He kept us all whooping for Harry Clay. Well—Clay's dead, Whig Party and Compromises and all burnt up. Your father built sixty miles of canal. Canal stock's pretty dead now, but that's not his fault. He laid a few thousand miles of railroad, went around this place and that, cleaning up the country. Several million people travel his railroads and walk his bridges. Anybody ever call him a great man like Henry Champney? Gone little he cared if they did or didn't. He and his like were a sight more important. Well—no; Champney didn't ask favours of anybody in those days. And he didn't ask votes. They shovelled 'em at him, and he went on telling 'em the Constitution was the foundation of America, and Harry Clay the steeple. They weren't. Rick Hennion and his like were the foundation, and there wasn't any steeple. If you ask what they're all rowing round in the street for now, why, I don't know. I guess they've all found out the point's got to be fought out there or nowhere. Well—better think over what I was telling you, Dick. You're Rick Hennion's son. Well—it's none of my business—but—I'd gone like to see you old Champney's son-in-law—if that's it. I believed in Champney once, and shouted for Clay, and thought there was something in it. I did, that's a fact. I'd lock horns with any other bull then, and swear my name was Righteouashess and his was Sin.”

“Well, but Champney——”

“Yes—Champney!”

“When he turned a vote, it meant he'd persuaded a man, didn't it?”

“Yes—Champney! His best argument was a particular chest tone. If I tell a man, 'Hullo, Jimmy!' and give him a cigar, it's as reasonable as a chest tone.”

“It's not in my line, Wood,” said Hen-nion after a silence. “What makes you so down? You're not old.”

“Going on seventy, Dick.” Wood's mood seemed more than usually frank and talkative. He seemed to be smoothing out the creases in his mind, hunting into corners that he hardly knew himself, showing a certain wistfulness to explain his conception of things, complex and crumpled by the wear and pressures of a long life, possibly taking Hennion to represent some remembrance that he would like to be friends with after long estrangement, and in that way pleading with his own youth to think kindly of him. Or it might have been he was thinking of “Rick” Hennion, who helped him forty years before, and stayed with him longest of worn-out ideals.

There was a rush of feet and clamour of voices in the press-room.

“Wood! Wood!”

“First Ward.”

“Thrown out forty votes.”

“Wouldn't do what you told 'em.”

The little room was jammed with men, thinned out, and jammed again. The electric light flashed up.

“What's to pay now?”

The Chronicle flung its bold cone of light and glaring challenge across the street. It seemed to strike the canvas with a slap.

“Forty Reform votes thrown out in 1st Ward. Fraud!”

A hush fell on Tecumseh Street. Then a roar went up that seemed to shake the buildings. Tecumseh Street thundered below, monstrous and elemental, and trembled above like a resonant drum. The mob rolled against the brick front of the block like a surf that might be expected to splash any moment up the flat perpendicular. Grey helmets of policemen tossed on the surface. Faces were yellow and greenish-white in the mingled electric-light and moonlight. Fists and spread hands were shaken at The Press windows. Five or six heads were in the window of the little room. Wood's face was plain to make out by his grey shovel-beard. They shouted comments in each other's ears.

“It's a riot.”

“No!”

“Looks like the bottom of hell, don't it?” Then a little spit of smoke and flame darted like a snake's tongue between the advertising boards, seven feet above the sidewalk. There was a sharp crack that only the nearest heard.

Wood flung up his hand, pitched forward, and hung half over the window sill.

Someone directly beneath, looking up, saw a head hanging, felt a drop splash on his face, and drew back wincing.

The thrill and hush spread from the centre. It ran whisperingly over the mass. The roar died away in the distance to right and left. Tecumseh Street was still, except for the crash where a policeman tore a board from the advertisements with a heave of burly shoulders, and plunged through into the darkness of empty lots.

The little room above was now crowded and silent, like the street. They laid Wood on the table with a coat under his head. He coughed and blinked his eyes at the familiar faces, leaning over him, strained and staring.

“You boys are foolish. Charlie Carroll—I want—take Hennion—Ranald Cam, you hear me! Becket—Tuttle.”

It was like a Roman emperor dispensing the succession, some worn Augustus leaving historic counsel out of his experience of good and evil and the cross-breeds of expediency—meaning by good, good for something, and by evil, good for nothing.

“Seems queer to be plugged at my time of life. Take Hennion. You ain't got any heads. Dick!”

Hennion stood over him. Wood looked up wistfully, as if there were something he would like to explain.

“The game's up to you, Dick. I played it the only way I knew how.”

The moon floated clear above the street, and mild and speculative. Ten minutes passed, twenty, thirty. The mass began to sway and murmur, then caught sight of Carroll in the window, lifting his hand, and was quiet.

“Gentlemen, Mr. Wood is dead.”

For a moment there was hardly a motion. Then the crowd melted away, shuffling and murmuring, into half a score of dim streets.