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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No," he managed to say.

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

She said that in tones of conviction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To business?" he snarled.

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

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

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

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

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

"My papers?"

"Yes, your letters, your political correspondence."

"Think they are valuable?"

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

"How?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And if I refuse?" he held out.

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

"Humph!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good morning, Madam!" he returned.

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

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

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

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

"What'd she have in that bag?"

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

"Didn't know they had one."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good idea!" said Prim.

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

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

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

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

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

"Hold on, Prim!"

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

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

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

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

The Fourth of July fell on Saturday, the day wisely chosen by the Women's Leagues for their mass meeting. Bills were posted advertising this "historical event" far and wide in every post office, and country store, in mills, gin houses, and at every crossroad in the county.

Co-Citizens' Mass Meeting

Great Historical Event!

At Jordantown Hall, July 4th, 3:00 p. m.

Speeches by Prominent Leaders of the Movement!

Announcement of Election Plans!

Everybody invited!

If anything could have added to the crowds which gathered in Jordantown every year on this day, these impudent circulars were calculated to do it.

"Election plans! by gad!" exclaimed Squire Deal when he found one of the obnoxious bills posted on the door of the little courtroom in Possum Trot. "Who said there was going to be an election, I'd like to know. Darndest piece of impudence I ever saw in my life!"

"Maybe they'll tell us what their rickrack political platform is, too!" said another farmer.

Nevertheless, they all went to Jordantown on the appointed day. It was their custom to go, and they were determined that this woman foolishness should not interfere with their long-established habit of celebrating the Fourth.

The sun rose blistering hot. Clouds of dust rolled above every highway to the town, and out of it moved a long procession of vehicles, buggies, wagons, even ox carts, all filled with men, women, and children.

Jordantown was doing its best to look glorious. It had thrown off for a moment the lethargy of business depression. Flags waved, the Town Hall was literally swathed in yellow bunting, with a great white canvas stretched across the top of the doors, upon which was printed in black letters a foot long:

Co-Citizens' Mass Meeting!

3:00 p. m.

Don't Miss It!

The square teamed with life and glory. Mules brayed, horses neighed, dogs yelped, man hailed his fellowman. Matrons in calico frocks and sunbonnets walked side by side with their daughters in white muslin and pink sashes, with gala hats on their young heads. The avenue was a sight and a scandal. Strings ran across from house to house high above the heads of the throng, upon which little yellow flags with "Votes for Women" hung thick as waving goldenrod upon October hills, alternating with the red, white, and blue larkspur of the national colours. The Women's CoÖperative Store was a seething beehive of activity. There was a cake and lemonade stand stretching across the entire front, where, for the first time in the history of glorious Fourths, you got your lemonade and gluttonous wedges of cake free of charge. This may or may not have accounted for the fact that, as the day advanced, the avenue outdid the square in popularity. The latter was barely able to hold its own by means of a very tall greased pole with a ten-dollar bill sticking on top of it, which was to be had by any boy climbing the pole. The crowd yelled itself hoarse as urchin after urchin slid back to defeat. Finally a little fellow, who had surreptitiously smeared the inside of his breeches with pitch, reached the top and seized the prize. The crowd went wild, threw its hats high in the air over this performance, then, with the fickleness of its nature, it turned again toward the avenue and the free lemonade dispensed by the fairest maidens in Jordantown. But before the stream could turn the corner, a long-legged black pig greased with the lard of its forbears was turned loose—to become the property of any man who could catch and hold him. A wild scramble ensued. The pig darted this way and that, slipped nimbly through detaining hands, until, by much handling, his grease was rubbed off, and he was held, a squealing trophy, by a young farmer. One after another the attractions of the square failed, and the crowd surged into the avenue, where it was fed to repletion—all free of charge. The stomach of man is singularly elemental in its cravings, and not subject to political or any other influence which fails to meet this demand.

Long before three o'clock in the afternoon the Town Hall was filled and jammed to its doors with men and women. The farmers were in such high good humour that, laying all masculine prejudice aside, they were determined to witness the last feature of the day's entertainment, or rather they would indulge in the humour of gratifying their masculine prejudices at the mass meeting. They stamped their feet, they hooted, they looked at the still empty stage and demanded to know where were the leaders of the "Crinoline Campaign." They whispered and nudged each other and shouted ribald laughter.

At ten minutes to three o'clock a line of women filed on the rostrum and took their chairs at the back of it. They were the representatives of the Co-Citizens' County Leagues. There were twenty-five of them, and they ranged in age and dignity all the way from Granny White, who was seventy, to the youngest bride from Apple Valley. Granny White looked like a crooked letter of the female alphabet in a peroda waist frock with a very full skirt, and a black silk sunbonnet upon her old palsied head, which wagged incessantly. The bride wore her wedding dress, which was now a trifle too tight for her. She looked like a pale young Madonna scarcely able to bear the weighty honour which had been thrust upon her. Some of the other women were enormously fat, some were pathetically lean, but they all faced the jeering crowd below with amazing assurance. They represented the harvest of all the virtues and sorrows and sacrifices of women for centuries, and all unconsciously they showed it with a calm accusing majesty.

The audience, which was largely composed of men, stared at them and grew suddenly silent. They recognized their wives and mothers in those serene faces, and manhood forbids that you should hoot at your own blood-and-bone kin womenfolk. So they changed the subject. They began to talk, a perfect hurricane of inconsequential comments on every imaginable subject except the subject of women and their rights.

Promptly at three o'clock Judge Regis came through a side door upon the rostrum, accompanied by Susan Walton and Selah Adams. The women took their places in two empty chairs among those at the back; the Judge approached the table in the middle of the rostrum, stood for a moment, a tall and elegant figure, looking out over the sea of faces below him. Then, lifting the gavel, he rapped for order.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began in slow, distinct tones, "I have the honour and privilege of opening the most remarkable meeting ever held in this county or state. We are about to make history, which is becoming to this memorial day of American Independence. I shall not address you upon the momentous issue at hand. Others far more capable will speak to you presently on that. I shall only state the purpose of the meeting.

"We are assembled here to learn for the first time how the brave women who have done such valiant work for the cause of suffrage in this county have succeeded in their efforts beyond their most sanguine hopes——"

"Hear! Hear! Ha! ha! Oh, haw-haw, haw!" The wall shook with the cannonade of masculine mirth.

The Judge waited patiently. Then he rapped loudly for order, and in the lull he went on, not hurrying:

"—and to reveal to you the plans by which this county will have the great distinction of being the first one in this or any other Southern state to give the ballot to our women, who have proved by nearly three hundred years of devotion and virtue and sacrifice for us and our children their worthiness for this trust.

"The speakers of the afternoon are Miss Selah Adams and Mrs. Susan Walton. I have the honour to introduce Miss Adams, who will address you upon some general aspects of the question under discussion."

"Adams! Adams! Adams!" yelled the audience.

But before the Judge could retire or Selah could rise from her chair, one of those incidents occurred which sometimes inform a public occasion with humour and pathos. At this moment Colonel Marshall Adams entered the hall. He had not heard Judge Regis's "opening remarks," but he had spent an unusually glorious Fourth. He was magnificently befuddled, and for the first time in three months he was the regnant intoxicated ideal of what a gentleman and a soldier should be. He was a man among men, equal to any emergency, capable of leading a forlorn hope, or entering the lists for a lady's hand. He had forgotten, if he had ever known, the object of this meeting; but when he heard his name loudly called, he understood at once; he recalled the fact that he had something eloquent and momentous to say.

He squared his shoulders, lifted his old standard-bearing presence, and made for the rostrum. Before any one could stop him—if any one in the roaring throng would have done so—he stood beside the table, one hand resting heavily upon it, the other thrust into the tightly buttoned breast of his yellow seersucker coat.

He was received with deafening applause. He waited, as he must have waited long ago at the charge of his regiment when it climbed the breastworks of the enemy in the roar of a thousand guns, his head erect, his nostrils dilated, his eyes glistening—only slightly wavering upon his Fourth of July legs.

"Ladies and gentlemen: It was with surprise not unmixed with pardonable pride that I heard you calling my name upon this momentous occasion. But never has Marshall Adams failed to listen to the call of his country in dishtresh!" he cried, making a determined effort to control his inebriated aitches and waving his sword arm defiantly.

"And we are in dire distress, my countrymen! Never since the bloodstained days of eighteen shixty-five have we been in such need of courage. We face a terrible situation. I addresh you in behalf of these fair woman whom we shee before us, and who are about to suffer the irreparable loss of their sphere. No greater calamity could befall this great nation. For four long years, through the snows of winter and the heat of summer, we fought for them, my countrymen, to preserve their homes, their traditions, their honour and pride as the fairest flowers in this fair land!" Deafening applause, during which the Colonel waited, sanctified by his emotions; then waving his hand for silence, he went on:

"And we did preserve them! The Yankees relieved us of the burden of a few unprofitable slaves. They slew the best and the bravest of our men. They took our wealth and reduced us to unimaginable poverty and hardship. But, thank God, we saved our women! We returned to them ragged, wounded, footsore, and despairing, and we found them faithful as the stars in their courses. More inspiring than 'pillows' of fire by night and of cloud by day, they led us back to hope and love and prosperity. They were the trophies of the brave which no enemy could wrest from us——"

"Oh Lord! listen to him! That thar's a man talkin' up thar!" shouted an old veteran.

"—and we went on shaving 'em, gentlemen! There has never been another country in the world reduced to ashes by war where the women were not forced to work shoulder to shoulder with the men afterward to reclaim her. But we treasured our women. We did the work, we kept them comely and fine. We educated them when we could not educate ourselves. We poured our wealth at their feet—and that's why they have the smallest feet in America, gentlemen, the fairest skin, the softest palms."

There was a slight sniffing to be heard here among the farmers' wives, but he went on to his conclusion:

"And now, my comrades, we must save them again; they are about to be dragged from the shanctity of the home, from the altar of the fireside, into the grime and dirt of publicity. There is a movement on foot to thrust the ballot, gentlemen, into their unsteady hands! My God! My God! where is your gallantry and courage? Where is your manhood that you think of giving these gentle creatures your work to do, and lose what a hundred to one Yankees could not take from you?"

He looked about him with terrific scorn.

"I did not think that I should ever again appear in their dear defence. I'm an old man, my glory has departed. You shee before you—you shee—before—you——"

He lifted his hand to his forehead as if suddenly he was dazed, sunken into the dream of years. His knees bent, he would have fallen. Selah sprang swiftly forward, placed his arm over her shoulder, and supported him. He sank slowly into the chair she had just vacated. She made sure swiftly from long experience that he had only reached the coma of a familiar state. Then she went back to the front of the stage and began to speak.

The Colonel looked up vaguely, saw her standing there as one remembers a vision in a dream.

"That's it, Selah, my love! Give 'em 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,'" he murmured, as his head sank upon his breast.

"You have listened to the brave speech of a brave gentleman, my friends," she began, "and I would not if I could subtract one lovely word from that lovely tribute to the men and women and order to which he belongs. What he has said is the truth, raised to the eloquence of a martial soul. Until the present time we women, as he told you, have figured chiefly in religion, poetry, and romance. We have been that part of the imaginations of men which creates creeds, poetry, windmills, and fiction. We have no reputation for any other form of existence. We have been purely imaginary beings living in physical bodies for just men. Our character is a legend invented by men; it could never fit a real human being. Yet we have accepted it, and tried to believe in it. You have indeed kept us, but we have not lived at all except for you. We are not the authors of a single standard governing our lives. Do you understand what that means, you men who live only according to your own will and purpose?"

They listened to her in silence. They studied her in amazement. But we do not applaud an accusing angel, and they did not applaud Selah, who stood so elegantly fair and tall, a slim figure with earnest dark eyes bent in passionate appeal upon their faces.

"It was men," she went on, "who divided women into three great classes—virgins, wives, and prostitutes, a purely physical classification. You commanded chastity. We have never had the right to choose it. Women have never been real parents. They are only the mothers of the children of men. The small, almost negligible influence they have over their sons proves that. After the years of childhood are passed sons sustain only a sentimental relation to their mothers. They are inspired by them merely as religion or poetry inspires. Your institutions, social, moral, economic, and political, do not represent us nor our needs. But they represent you men.

"Every civilization is a bachelor civilization, with good or bad provision in it for the protection of women. But we do live, and like other sentient beings we desire to express ourselves in life, not merely in poetry. Listen, men," she said, bending sweetly forward like a lily in the golden gloom. "After they had knowledge, the first pair, man and woman, went out of the garden together! But you, with your beautiful but mistaken chivalry, have gone out and left us in the garden, the helpless, kept women of your love and desires. We wish to come out, to be with you. We must come! Once we have tasted knowledge, once we know what better things we are for, we must follow you to the ends of the earth. This everlasting garden where you keep us is no place for a thoughtful person. It is too limited by innocence and idleness. We are no longer innocent, we know the same things you know; we have the same education, the same thoughts, the same aspirations. Disobedience is not always a sin. When the first man and woman tasted of the fruit of knowledge, they simply assumed a terrific responsibility. But they assumed it together! You are withholding from us this right to live by your side. We are doing too much, or nothing at all. And you are not sharing justly with us. We are losing our old places in your hearts. After all, this is not the golden age of poetry and knights. The very pedestal upon which we once stood in your regard has been overturned by realities. We have ceased to be your ideals dearly cherished. It is not our fault nor yours. No one is to blame. This movement of women is as natural as any other growth. We are migrating out of the legendary into the real; we are passing from sentiment and romance into history. And we have arrived! Nothing can stop us. You only shame yourselves, your manhood, and your honour if you oppose us. We must succeed because we are right!"

She turned suddenly, and went back into the wings.

"What'd she say?" asked a man in a hoarse whisper. "Gol dern if I know! Foreign language to me!"

"The volypuke of the Woman's Movement! Didn't understand one word she said!"

"Well, you'll understand what's coming now or I'll eat my boots!" the other whispered.

He nodded toward the stage, where Susan Walton stood, flat-footed, fat, belligerent, her mouth primped, holding her head very much as if she wore horns instead of the black bonnet tied under her chin. And she was looking over the top of her spectacles at every man, seemingly straight in the eye.

"Don't look at us that way, Susan! Makes us feel like we'd been in washing without your permission!" called some one, imitating a little boy's whine. There was a gale of good-natured laughter.

"Men and women," she began in her high virago voice, "we have listened to two very fine speeches this afternoon, one upholding the sentimentality of the past, the other mystically prophesying the sentimentality of the future. I'm an apostate from the past, and a disciple of the future. I've got one foot in the grave and the other foot on the ballot for women. I shall not deal in sentiment or prophecies, but in cold facts!"

"Told you we'd understand her, boys!" shouted a voice.

"Go it, Susan! we all know you, and we don't have to give you no quarter!" yelled a bearded farmer standing in the back of the hall.

"Yes," screamed the old lady, shaking her fist at him, "and I know you, Tim Cates. You've been living on your wife's land ever since you married her. And you've made her mortgage it to pay your debts!"

"Git a chip somebody and take po' Tim out on it. She's done ruin't him!"

"Come ag'in, Susan! you drawed blood that time!" shouted the voice.

"I'm coming, and I've got the facts with me!" she cried, flirting her head in the direction from which the voice came. "I know every man in this hall: how he lives, how he votes, what he owes, what he can't or don't pay. I know how hard you farmers work your wives, harder than you do your beasts, in spite of all that fine talk we listened to from Marshall Adams, and I know how little you give them, how little they are allowed to spend. There's one of you standing in plain sight of me right now who took the fancy bedquilts your wife and daughters pieced last winter and sold them to get money to pay his taxes, though he is worth five thousand dollars! You needn't dodge!" she laughed shrilly. "I'll not call your name if you keep quiet and behave. But if you men don't stop your fuss and listen to what I have to say, I'll tell everything I know about you."

The titters of the women became distinctly audible for the first time in the indignant silence which followed this threat, for they knew that she was as good and could be even worse than her word.

"Three months ago Sarah Mosely died and willed all of her property to the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund, with the distinct command that the interest on this fund shall be spent to get suffrage for women in Jordan County," she began again. "The property of this Fund consists in mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this county, in the ownership of most of the business houses around the square in Jordantown, in various loans, in 60 per cent. of the stock of the National Bank, and in other properties, including the Signal. That is to say, gentlemen, if we do not own this county, we control enough of the property in it to have a right to say how it shall be taxed and governed. And while there is a law against bribing voters or intimidating voters, there is no law against foreclosing these loans and mortgages, nearly all of which are overdue. And I give you my word as one of the trustees of this Fund, that every one of them shall be foreclosed as fast as we can do it if our rights as citizens are not acknowledged with all the privileges that go with citizenship!

"And that is not all! Day before yesterday we purchased from Mr. Mike Prim the written records of the political workings of the Democratic party in this county during the past three years—all the letters written by you men who control the county districts with the money you received or were to receive for your services, and other letters even more interesting—but not a single statement of what you actually did with these contributions. I have not had time to go over Mr. Prim's memoirs carefully, but as near as I can make out it has been a blood-sucking business. Some of you have paid as high as three hundred dollars a year to the campaign fund, and some of you have received as much as a thousand dollars for delivering this town, say, in an election, while your wives pinched and scraped to pay the preachers and support missions in foreign fields! The appropriations for county schools have been bitten into with outrageous expense accounts which took thousands of dollars from the already meagre appropriations.

"I say these papers and letters are now the property of the Co-Citizens' Foundation; and if necessary we shall use them, spend your reputations as ruthlessly and extravagantly for our ends as you have spent the taxes of this county for your political purposes.

"The time has passed, men, when we are to be deceived by that foolish fallacy by which you have so long even deceived yourselves: that women win by their gentle influence over you. They don't! If they influence you at all it is for your good, not theirs. We are in the position to use the same lever that you have always had—power—and we shall use it. If you defeat us, you must destroy yourselves, your credit, and your reputation.

"You have been boasting at the impossibility of our even getting this issue as far as the polls. You have been challenging us to tell you how that can be done. That's what we are here for this afternoon: to tell you, and to leave you perfectly free to act as your judgment directs."

The audience moved, drew its breath, crossed and uncrossed its knees, spat its tobacco quids upon the floor, and craned its neck to see her better, to hear more distinctly what she had to say. Every man in Jordan County had been waiting for this news for three months.

"How did you get stock low in this county fifteen years ago?" she asked, and waited.

"Please, Marm, we voted on it!" whimpered the same waggish voice.

"But before you voted, you got up a petition signed by three fourths of the voting register of the county, didn't you? And then you submitted the petition to the Ordinary of the county, who by the laws of this state advertised the election to be held not sooner than thirty days. And you got prohibition the same way! Twenty, fifteen years ago this was the only way to close saloons and grogshops that were open at every crossroad and on the streets of every town and village. We have a state-wide temperance law now as the result of local option laws that were enforced first until public sentiment against liquor was sufficiently strong to control state legislation."

She paused, opened one palm, and brought her other fist down upon it with a smack that could be heard to the back of the hall, as she exclaimed:

"That, gentlemen, is the way we shall win suffrage for women in this state. We shall get it first by local option in this county! Other counties will follow your illustrious example and get it the same way, until the boundaries of these counties shall touch, and the experiment is no longer an experiment but an assured success!"

The women cheered. They made as much noise as they could, they waved their handkerchiefs, and emitted little feminine chirrups. But the men sat silent, staring in amazement at the little fat old lady who was smiling at them like a gratified mother.

"Now I have told you, and all you have to do at present is to sign that petition," she went on very pleasantly. "We have already secured to-day and yesterday the names of many of the leading citizens of Jordantown. And you will find just outside the doors of this hall two gentlemen whom you all know very well, Mr. Stark Coleman and Mr. Martin Acres. Each of them has a copy of the petition to be signed, and enough extra sheets of paper for every man here to sign his name.

"Now," she concluded, "we will close this meeting by singing the national hymn, not only because this day commemorates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but because, for all years to come, we shall look back upon this day as the one upon which the men of this county signed the petition which calls for liberty, rights, and justice for women!"

The twenty-five women at the back of the stage came forward and gathered about her.

"My Country 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty——"

they sang, their voices rising high and keen, unaccompanied by a single bass note. The women in the audience joined in. Colonel Adams, who had slept peacefully since his own masterly effort to protect the ladies, started now, sat up, saw the ecstatic faces of these women, arose, stumbled off the stage. He was satisfied. The dear creatures were singing! Nothing more becoming to women than song! Meanwhile, the men filed out bustling, and whispering, with Acres and Coleman heading the petition. That put a different face on the situation. One was the president of the bank and the other was the leading merchant of the county. If they favoured the thing, far be it from the others to oppose it—at least not the petition.

"Signing this here thing ain't votin' for women. We don't have to go to the polls on election day!"

This whisper went the rounds as they stood in line, looking curious, grinning suspiciously at Coleman and Acres, who had in fact stationed themselves on either side of the door, at little writing stands upon which the petition lay spread, with an ever-increasing list of names beneath as one man after another "put his fist to it," chaffing one another with grievous comments as they did so. And most of them secretly determined that this was the last they would have to do with the iniquitous thing.

But they were sadly mistaken. From opposing suffrage, many of the leading men were now pushing the petition. Coleman, Acres, and Bob Sasnett toured the county in their automobiles to secure signatures. They literally took the movement out of the hands of the Co-Citizens in their efforts to hasten the election. There was a tremendous spreading of the news of events going forward in Jordan County. The press of the state published extracts from the Signal, with numerous comments, later with serious prophecies of the future effects of this experiment so gallantly undertaken by the men of Jordan County. Reporters were sent down for interviews, which they got from Coleman and Acres, who calmly assumed the glory and responsibility of bringing about the coming election. For the first time in their lives they figured in the headlines of city newspapers, with their pictures on the front page. Susan Walton laughed at their vanity till her fat stomach shook like jelly.

Bob Sasnett figured as the first candidate in Jordan County who would run for office on the crinoline ticket. "Mr. Sasnett is extremely optimistic. He feels sure that he will be elected by an overwhelming majority of the crinoline vote. He is a very handsome young man," was the comment beneath his picture in a great morning daily.

The necessary number of signatures to the petition having been secured at last, the election was duly advertised for the 16th of September.

The women were hopeful, but they were by no means sure of success. The Foundation did not hold mortgages on all the farms by any means, neither were all the farmers implicated in the Prim papers. The large majority of them was still composed of free men of blameless characters, and with reputations for stubbornness that were alarming. Still, public sentiment was undoubtedly overwhelming in favour of suffrage now, and the county women held frequent secret League meetings at which they discussed plans, the great question being to get their husbands to the polls at all.

The 16th of September dawned upon Jordan County like an irritable old woman with a shawl over her shoulders and a broom in her hands. The sun rose clear, but there was a hint of frost in the air and the east wind was blowing. Ironweeds and goldenrods upon the hills bent low before it. The cotton fields looked dishevelled with white locks flying. The cornstalks, stripped long since of fodder, stood with down-hanging ears like rows of soldiers at attention with knapsacks upon their lean backs. It was as if, overnight, Nature had suddenly got in a hurry to shift her scenes and change the season.

Whether it was the brushing, brisk, windy character of the day, or the mood of the women owing to other circumstances, no one will ever know, but it is already a matter of history that upon this day every woman belonging to the Women's Co-Citizens' League had a fit of housecleaning. They cooked breakfasts for their respective families in a frenzy, scolding shrilly. They boxed the ears of their little boys, drove their little girls to the churning without mercy, clattered the breakfast dishes furiously, and in various ways indicated to their lords and masters that the day belonged to them, to them exclusively, and that no man could hope to remain in peace within range of their mops and brooms till every vestige of summer dust and dirt was removed, every feather bed sunned till it swelled tick tight, every quilt aired, every rug beaten, every floor scoured, and they themselves relaxed, exhausted, purified, and satisfied at the end of the day.

I say only their Maker could have told what inspired the women of Jordan County to undertake these arduous labours upon this particular day. Women have instincts to which the east wind appeals strongly. It excites their neuralgic energies. On the other hand, it was a curious circumstance, discovered afterward by an exchange of confidence between the desperate male victims, that this cleaning rage was carried on almost exclusively by the members of the Women's Co-Citizens' League in each of the voting districts of the county.

When a mere society woman desires for any reason to avenge herself upon the man nearest to her in the relations of life, or to bring him to terms, she may engage in a discreet flirtation with some other man. She knows how to exile him from his home with a reception or a bridge party. But when a good faithful wife makes up her virtuous mind to humble her man and declare her own supremacy, she pins an ugly rag tight over her head to keep the dust out of her hair, doubles her chin, draws her mouth into a facial command, tucks up her skirts, moves the furniture out of the living-room, dashes twelve gallons of hot suds over the floor, leaps into it with an old stiff broom, and begins to sweep. At such a moment the most timid, man-fearing woman becomes august. Her nature undergoes a swift change. She is no longer herself, she belongs once more to the matriarchal age when she carried man like a sack on her back and dumped him where she pleased, when she pleased. The most tyrannical husband immediately abrogates his authority when he sees the symptoms of this frenzy developing in her. He takes to his heels and remains away until she puts things in order and returns to her senses. This is the proof of a queer ineradicable cowardice in every man, that the bravest and hardiest of them who does not shrink from marching barefooted through winter snows to meet the enemy in overwhelming numbers will fly before the face of one woman who has made up her mind to wet his feet with scouring water if he does not get out of the way.

Before nine o'clock in the morning the domestic entrails of Jordan County were out of doors, piled in the sun, hanging upon the clotheslines, flapping in the wind. The swish of wet brooms could be heard in every house, mingled with the sharp voices of scolding women. The air was filled with clouds of dust, the sound of sticks in muffled strokes upon rugs and carpets like the drums of an invading army. These were answered by the strumming of other sticks similarly employed in other farmyards.

It was a fact, five hundred men had been rendered homeless for that day at least. Nevertheless, they were holding out. An hour later only one ballot had been cast at the polls in Possum Trot. The crowd thickened outside the courthouse door. Men eyed each other quizzically, morosely, some even avoided each other's questioning glances.

"Where's Jake Terry?" some one asked helplessly.

"Who, Terry?" answered Bill Long. "He was the first man here after the polls opened. Said if it was the last ballot he'd ever cast he'd vote against woman suffrage, went and put it in first for an example to the rest of us!"

"Susan Walton ain't got a mortgage on his sawmill, or he wouldn't be so gol dern frisky about votin' ag'in her!" growled Deal.

"What we going to do about this business, anyhow?" demanded one nervously.

"We could get drunk," suggested another. "There's nothing that takes the starch out of women and shows 'em their place quicker than that."

"But we can't stay drunk. We got to go home some time or other and have it out with 'em after we are sober and penitent," put in still another victim philosophically.

At this moment Tim Cates rode into the edge of the crowd, his mouth stretched in a broad grin, and his goatee working like a white peg in his chin.

"Boys," he shouted, rolling out of his saddle, "you'd as well give it up and take your medicine. I met a man coming from the Sugar Valley just now, and he 'lowed that out of a hundred and fifty votes down there this morning there wan't but three cast ag'in suffrage for women, and one of them was challenged. Susan Walton's got a man stationed at every precinct, with a list of the names of the men in that district that ain't registered nor paid their poll tax, ready to drop 'em if they try to vote!"

"Tim, step up to the store and telephone to Dry Pond and Calico Valley and see how the election is going."

Cates stepped briskly. He was one of these meddlesome persons who would sell his birthright to gratify his curiosity. Presently he returned, cupped his hands over his mouth, and trumpeted the news.

"Dry Pond, forty-two ballots cast, forty-two for suffrage, nary one anti!" This joke was greeted with a groan.

"Calico Valley, seventy-four ballots cast, sixty-eight for suffrage, six anti-suffrage! Fellow at Dry Pond says the women are beating their feather beds for miles around, and the men air scared to death. He says——"

A tall, well-dressed man, past fifty years of age, joined the group. This was John Fairfield, the only gentleman farmer in the community, and one of the few men whose wife was not implicated in the Woman's Movement. She was an invalid, nearly blind. Fairfield had been the understudy of Prim in controlling the political affairs of the community. He was very popular.

"Mr. Fairfield, how are you going to vote?" some one yelled.

"Yes, tell us what you're going to do!"

"A speech. Give us a speech!" came from a dozen husky throats.

"'We air po' wanderin' sheep to-day, away on the mountains wild and bar'!' Put yo' crook around our necks, John, an' lead us home with our tails behind us, so as our Bo Peeps'll know us when we come an' gladden us with their soft black eyes! Ain't that the way the poetry runs?" snickered a drunken wag, dropping on the post-office steps and gazing up with a befuddled air at Fairfield, who had removed his hat and ascended the steps.

"Gentlemen," he began, "you know me."

"Yes," sobbed the wag, "we know you and we know ourselves, unfortunate creatures that we air—an' we thought we knowed the women in this county. We've dandled some of 'em on our knees. We've drawed 'em in times past to our unworthy bosoms—but now all is changed. We've lost 'em! Where, oh, where——"

"Shet up, you darn fool! and let us hear what he has to say."

The "darn fool" laid his head in the dust, and gave himself up wholly to his grief.

"I was about to say," Fairfield began again, "that you know me——"

"Yes!"

"Shet up!"

"—and you know I have always stood for what was right among you——"

"Always! Give me five dollars for my vote last 'lection, ginerous man!"

Fairfield lifted his voice and hastened to drown these revelations of his generosity.

"I believe in woman! She has been the 'pillow' of cloud by day and fire by night——"

"Candle in the window, John, don't forget that!"

"—that guides us through the wilderness of the world, and now she has become the bright new star of our better destinies! We must follow her——"

"Dangerous to monkey with female stars!"

"—No man ever loses his way who trusts such women as we have among us."

"Sampson, oh, Sampson, listen to that!" cried the voice at his feet.

"For thirty years I have served one woman faithfully. I owe everything I am and everything I have to this service."

Every man present had a vision of the little, frail, white-haired woman who lay in his house helpless and blind. Never before had he referred to her, but they knew his devotion. He lifted himself in their regard by this one sentence. There are moments when even the demagogue may show the halo of a saint. Fairfield, henchman of Prim, never suspected it, but this was the crowning hour of his life, the one moment when he stood without fear and without reproach like a true knight.

"My advice to every citizen present is that he vote this day for the women who have cast so many ballots for us in their prayers!" he concluded, bowing to their cheers.

Immediately after there was a rush for the polls.

In Jordantown the day passed quietly. The women were in strict seclusion. All the "prominent citizens" were working earnestly at the polls for the cause of suffrage. At last the hour arrived for counting the ballots. The town had gone overwhelmingly for suffrage for women, but the returns were slow in coming from the country precincts, and great anxiety was felt about the issues there. The rumour was current that the farmers were determined not to vote at all.

About seven o'clock some one came swiftly down the courthouse steps, and rushed across to the National Bank Building. In five minutes the square was in an uproar. Men shouted to men: "We've put 'em in! We've put the women in!"

Stark Coleman snatched up the 'phone on his desk.

"Agatha, my dear, it's glorious news! Thank God, we've won by a majority of 633! You are now a voter in Jordan County!"

He hung up the receiver and ran out to Acres's store. At the same moment Sam Briggs, who was now a diligent clerk in Judge Regis's outer office, thrust the door open and shouted:

"They're in, Judge, by a good 633 majority!"

"All right, Briggs! finish that list of election expenses. We want to publish it in the Signal to-morrow!" he said quietly, as he arose and put on his hat. "I'll go over and tell Mrs. Walton. Think I've earned that privilege, anyhow!" he added, smiling.

"You did it!" exclaimed Briggs, "you worked the whole thing and put it across!"

"No, that speech she made in July did it," he said.

"It was a jo-darter all right, that speech!" laughed Briggs to himself as he went back to his desk.

On his way to Mrs. Walton's residence, the Judge passed two men.

"Bill," one of them was saying to the other, "we can't never get rid of our wives any more, nowhere, not even when we attend a political convention. Apt as not my wife will be my alternate!"

"Apt as not, you'll be hers, you damn fool!" he retorted.

As the Judge came up on the steps Mrs. Walton appeared in the door. At the sight of him there she threw up her hands and cried:

"Don't tell me we are defeated, John Regis, I can't bear it!"

"Susan, you may now run for sheriff of this county, there are enough more women than men in it to elect you. And you've got 'em in your pocket!" he concluded, laughing as he seized her hands.

"Oh!" she sobbed, sinking down into a chair. "I thought this day would never end. Such suspense!"

"Showed the white feather, too, didn't you? I called at your office early in the afternoon and you were not there," he teased.

"I couldn't stand it. I felt that if we should be defeated, I must hear the news in my own house—in reach of my bed!" she sobbed, half laughing.

"If I was twenty years younger, Susan, I'd ask you to marry me this night by way of celebrating our victory," he said, looking down at her.

"If I was twenty years younger there'd be no such victory to celebrate, John," she replied, "so you wouldn't have asked me!"

"You should see Coleman and Acres. They are taking all the credit of the election, strutting like fighting cocks on the square!"

"Let them have it. I'd rather the world should think the men gave us the ballot willingly, and that it should never be known that we beat them out of it," she said, heaving a sigh of relief.

A young man and a young woman were seated behind the vine on the veranda three doors down the avenue. His arm was about her waist, her head upon his shoulder. The moon was doing what she could to cover them with the mottled shadows of leaves.

"Could you manage it in two weeks, dear? I want you for my wife before I begin my own campaign! We'd make a honeymoon of it then, canvassing it together!" he pleaded softly.

"I'll marry you, Bob, but not for such a honeymoon as that! Oh, I'm sick and tired of politics. I never want to hear the word again. I'll just barely vote for you, that's all!" she sighed.

"Upon my word," he laughed, drawing her closer and kissing her. "I thought you'd be keen for the canvass."

"Bob!" she said, sitting up and looking at him solemnly, "I'll make a confession to you, now it's over and we have won; it's been horrid, from first to last. When we are married I want to sit at home and darn your socks—you do wear holes in them, don't you?" She laughed hysterically. "I believe it would relieve some outraged instinct in me if I could iron your shirts! Isn't it awful! I crave to do just the woman things—to serve you and father. I feel as if nothing else will ever naturalize me again as a woman!"

After an ineffable pause, during which her lover had laid a laughing tribute upon her lips and brow, she added:

"Poor father, I wonder where he is?"

"Saw him going down the avenue as I came up, with an enormous bunch of flowers in his hand," Bob told her.

"Poor father" was, in fact, approaching Mrs. Sasnett at that moment, who was seated in mournful but resplendent grandeur upon a rustic bench beneath the trees in her yard.

She was indignant at the day's doings. She had been indignant for months, but she thanked God that she was still a lady, and she was determined to remain one, to which end she had contributed that day enough to make up for the deficit in the women's missionary collections of her church. And she had dressed herself in purple and fine linen by way of making out that she was a lady and nothing but a lady.

"Colonel Adams!" she exclaimed softly, as the Colonel approached.

"Madam, the sight of you is grateful after what I've been through this day!" he said, kissing her hand, and depositing the flowers upon the ground at her feet.

"Oh! Colonel, no one can have had more sympathy with you than I have felt during these trying months," she sighed.

"I have felt it," he returned, parting his coat tails and seating himself beside her.

"No one could have sympathized with you so keenly in your sorrow," she murmured.

"I divined as much. I have suffered!"

"I know!" she breathed.

"My one pleasure has been the offering I have placed upon your doorstep each evening," he sighed.

"So the flowers were from you, then?" she said, gazing at the bouquet so significantly laid now at her feet.

"I trusted your woman's intuition to know that," he answered, with a shade of offended dignity.

"I suspected, of course, but how could I know? You never confessed."

"Who else in this shameless town would have the sense, the feeling, to approach a lady with flowers—they give 'em the ballot instead!"

"Don't speak of it!" she implored, lifting her hand tragically as if to ward off a blow.

"But I must speak of it, Lula," he exclaimed, seizing the despairing hand. "As much as I hate to mention a matter so indelicate, I must, because it concerns us." They looked at each other like two old doves.

"How should it matter to us?" she asked sadly.

"Because if we do not unite against this awful situation, we—well, we are lost!"

She sighed, as if she saw no hope anywhere in the moonlight.

"Will you marry me, Lula?"

"Oh! Colonel Adams——"

"Under ordinary circumstances I'd never dare hope for such a boon. I'm unworthy of you. No man can be—but consider what will happen if you refuse?"

"What will happen?" she exclaimed.

"You must pass the remainder of your days, the sweetest, most beautiful years of a woman's life, in intimate daily contact with a suffragist, with a young woman who votes like a man!"

"God help me! What do you mean?" she cried in genuine alarm.

"Bob's going to marry Selah! that's what I mean. You'll have to live with them. And if you don't marry me, I'll have to live with them!"

THE END