As the days passed it certainly looked as though Mr. Day was correct in his surmise about the difficulties of "Janice's job," as he called it. The girl was earnestly talking to everybody whom she knew, especially to the influential men of Polktown, regarding the disgraceful things that had happened in the lakeside hamlet since the bar had been opened at the Inn. And it was among these influential men that she found the most opposition to making Polktown "dry" instead of "wet."

She had thrown down her gauntlet at Mr. Cross Moore's feet, so she troubled no more about him. Janice realized that nobody was more politically powerful in Polktown than Mr. Moore. But she believed she could not possibly obtain him on the side of prohibition, so she did not waste her strength or time in trying.

Not that Mr. Cross Moore was a drinking man himself. He was never known to touch either liquor or tobacco. He was just a hard-fisted, hard-hearted, shrewd and successful country politician; and there appeared to be no soft side to his character. Unless that side was exposed to his invalid wife. And nobody outside ever caught Mr. Moore displaying tenderness in particular to her, although he was known to spend much time with her.

He had fought his way up in politics and in wealth, from very poor and small beginnings. From his birth in an ancient log cabin, with parents who were as poor and miserable as the Trimminses or the Narnays to being president of the Town Council and chairman of the School Committee, was a long stride for Mr. Cross Moore—and nobody appreciated the fact more clearly than himself.

Money had been the best friend he had ever had. Without Elder Concannon's streak of acquisitiveness in his character that made the good old man almost miserly, Mr. Cross Moore possessed the money-getting ability, and a faith in the creed that "Wealth is Power" that nothing had yet shaken in his long experience.

For a number of years Polktown had been free of any public dram-selling, although the voters had not put themselves on record as desiring prohibition. Occasionally a more or less secret place for the selling of liquor had risen and was quickly put down. There had, in the opinion of the majority of the citizens, been no call for a drinking place, and there would probably have been no such local demand had Lem Parraday—backed by Mr. Moore, who held the mortgage on the Inn—not desired to increase the profits of that hostelry. The license was taken out that visitors to Polktown might be satisfied.

There had been no local demand for the sale of liquor, as has been said. Those who made a practise of using it could obtain all they wished at Middletown, or other places near by. But once having allowed the traffic a foothold in the hamlet, it would be hard to dislodge it.

John Barleycorn is fighting for his life. He has few real friends, indeed, among his consumers. No man knows better the danger of alcohol than the man who is addicted to its use—until he gets to that besotted stage where his brain is so befuddled that his opinion would scarcely be taken in a court of law on any subject.

Janice Day was determined not to listen to these temporizers in Polktown who professed themselves satisfied if the license was taken away from the Lake View Inn. Something more drastic was needed than that.

"The business must be voted out of town. We all must take a stand upon the question—on one side or the other," the girl had said earnestly, in discussing this point with Elder Concannon.

"If you only shut up this bar, another license, located at some other point, will be asked for. Each time the fight will have to be begun again. Vote the town dry—that is the only way."

"Well, I reckon that's true enough, my girl," said the cautious elder.
"But I doubt if we can do it. They're too strong for us."

"We can try," Janice urged. "You don't know that the wets will win,
Elder."

"And if we try the question in town meeting and get beaten, we'll be worse off than we are now."

"Why shall we?" Janice demanded. "And, besides, I do not believe the wets can carry the day."

"I'm afraid the idea of making the town dry isn't popular enough," pursued the elder.

"Why not?"

"We are Vermonters," said Elder Concannon, as though that were conclusive. "We're sons of the Green Mountain Boys, and liberty is greater to us than to any other people in the world."

"Including the liberty to get drunk—and the children to follow the example of the grown men?" asked Janice, tartly. "Is that liberty so precious?"

"That's a harsh saying, Janice," said the old man, wagging his head.

"It's the truth, just the same," the girl declared, with doggedness.

"You can't make the voters do what you want—not always," said Elder Concannon. "I don't want to see liquor sold here; but I think we'll be more successful if we oppose each license as it comes up."

"What chance had you to oppose Lem Parraday's license?" demanded the girl, sharply.

"Well! I allow that was sprung on us sudden. But Cross Moore was interested in it, too."

"Somebody will always be particularly interested in the granting of the license. I believe with Uncle Jason that it's foolish to give Old Nick a fair show. He does not deserve the honors of war."

More than Elder Concannon did not believe that Polktown could be carried for prohibition in Town Meeting. But election day was months ahead, and if "keeping everlastingly at it" would bring success, Janice was determined that her idea should be adopted.

Mr. Middler's first sermon on temperance was in no uncertain tone. Indeed, that good man's discourses nowadays were very different from those he had been wont to give the congregation of the Union Church when Janice had first come to Polktown. In the old-fashioned phrase, Mr. Middler had "found liberty."

There was nothing sensational about his sermons. He was a drab man, who still hesitated before uttering any very pronounced view upon any subject; but he thought deeply, and even that super-critic, Elder Concannon, had begun to praise the pastor of the Union Church.

To start the movement for prohibition in the largest church in the community was all very well; but Janice and the other earnest workers realized that the movement must be broader than that. A general meeting was arranged in the Town House, the biggest assembly room in town, and speakers were secured who were really worth hearing. All this went on quite satisfactorily. Indeed, the first temperance rally was a pronounced success, and white ribbons became common in Polktown, worn by both young and old.

But Janice's and Nelson Haley's private affairs remained in a most unsatisfactory state indeed.

First of all, there was a long month to wait before Janice could expect to see another letter from daddy. It puzzled her that he was forbidden to write but once in thirty days, by an under lieutenant of the Zapatist chief, Juan Dicampa, who was Mr. Day's friend—or supposed to be, and yet the letters came to her readdressed in Juan Dicampa's hand.

She watched the daily papers, too, for any word printed regarding the chieftain, and perhaps never was a brigand's well-being so heartily prayed for, as was Juan Dicampa's. Janice never forgot that her father said Dicampa stood between him and almost certain death.

Considering Nelson Haley's affairs, that young man was quite impatient because they had come to no head. Nor did it seem that they were likely to soon.

Nelson had secretly objected when Uncle Jason had asked Judge Little to put off for a full week the examination of Nelson in his court. The unfortunate schoolmaster felt that he wanted the thing over and the worst known immediately.

But it seemed that he was neither to be acquitted at once of the crime charged against him, nor was he to be found guilty and punished.

Uncle Jason was right about the turning up of the ten dollar gold piece being a blow to the accusation the School Committee had lodged against Nelson. They could not connect the young schoolmaster with the gold coin.

By Uncle Jason's advice, too, Nelson had put off engaging a lawyer in
Middletown to come over to defend the young man in Judge Little's court.

"And well he did wait, too," declared Mr. Day, very much pleased with his own shrewdness. "That would have meant a twenty dollar note. Now it don't cost Mr. Haley a cent."

"What do you mean, Jase Day?" demanded Aunt Almira, for her husband announced the above at the supper table on Friday evening of that eventful week. "They ain't goin' ter send Mr. Haley to jail without a trial?"

"Hear the woman, will ye?" apostrophized Uncle Jason, with disgust.
"Ain't thet jes' like ye, Almiry—goin' off at ha'f cock thet-a-way?
Who said anythin' about Mr. Haley goin' ter jail?"

"Wal——"

"He ain't goin' yet awhile, I reckon," and Mr. Day chuckled. "I told ye them fule committeemen would overreach themselves. They've withdrawn the charge."

"What?" chorused the family, in joy and amazement.

"Yessir! that's what they've done. Jedge Little sent word to me an' give me back my bond. 'Course, we could ha' demanded a hearin' an' tried ter git a clear discharge. And then ag'in—Wal! I advised Mr. Haley ter let well enough alone."

"Then they know who is the thief at last?" asked Janice, quaveringly.

"No."

"But they know Mr. Haley never stole them coins!" cried Aunt Almira.

"Wal—ef they do, they don't admit of it," drawled Uncle Jason.

"What in tarnation is it, then, Dad?" demanded Marty.

"Why, they've made sech a to-do over findin' that gold piece in Hope Drugg's possession, that they don't dare go on an' prosercute the schoolmaster—nossir!"

"Bully!" exclaimed the thoughtless Marty. "That's all right, then."

"But—but," objected Janice, with trembling lip, "that doesn't clear
Nelson at all!"

"It answers the puppose," proclaimed Uncle Jason. "He ain't under arrest no more, and he don't hafter pay no lawyer's fee."

"Ye-es," admitted his niece, slowly. "But what is poor Nelson to do?
He's still under a cloud, and he can't teach school."

"And believe me!" growled Marty, "that greeny they got to teach in his place don't scu'cely know beans when the bag's untied."

It was true that the four committeemen had considered it wise to withdraw their charge against Nelson Haley. Without any evidence but that of a purely presumptive character, their lawyer had advised this retreat.

Really, it was a sharp trick. It left Nelson worse off, as far as disproving their charge went, than he would have been had they taken the case into court. The charge still lay against the young man in the public mind. He had no opportunity of being legally cleared of suspicion.

The ancient legal supposition that a man is innocent until he is found guilty, is never honored in a New England village. He is guilty unless proved innocent. And how could Nelson prove his innocence? Only by discovering the real thief and proving him guilty.

The shrewd attorney hired by the four committeemen knew very well that he was not prejudicing his clients' case when he advised them to quash the warrant.

But as for the discovery of the rare coin in circulation—one known to belong to the collection stolen from the schoolhouse—that injured the committeemen's cause rather than helped it, it must be confessed.

Joe Bodley frankly admitted having paid over the gold piece to Hopewell Drugg, as a deposit on the fiddle. But he professed not to know how the coin had come into the till at the tavern.

Joe had full charge of the cash-drawer when Mr. Parraday was not present, and he had helped himself to such money as he thought he would need when he went up town to negotiate for the purchase of the fiddle. He denied emphatically that the man who had engaged him to purchase the fiddle had given him the ten dollar gold piece. Who the purchaser of the fiddle was, however, the barkeeper declined to say.

"That's my business," Joe had said, when questioned on this point. "Ya-as. I expect to take the fiddle. Hopewell's agreed to sell it to me, fair and square. If I can make a lettle spec on the side, who's business is it but my own?"

When Janice heard the report of this—through Walky Dexter, of course—she was reminded of the black-haired, foreign looking man, who had been so much interested in Hopewell's violin the night she and Frank Bowman had taken the storekeeper home from the dance.

"I wonder if he can be the customer that Joe Bodley speaks of? Oh, dear me!" sighed Janice. "I'm so sorry Hopewell has to sell his violin. And I'm sorry he is going to sell it this way. If that 'foxy looking foreigner,' as Mr. Bowman called him, is the purchaser of the instrument, perhaps it is worth much more than a hundred dollars.

"Lottie must go again and have her eyes examined. Hopewell will take her himself next month—the poor, dear little thing! Oh! if daddy's mine wasn't down there among those hateful Mexicans——

"And I wonder," added the young girl, suddenly, "what one of those real old violins is worth."

She chanced to be reflecting on this subject on a Saturday afternoon near the end of the month Hopewell had allowed to Joe Bodley to find the rest of the purchase price for the violin. She had been up to the church vestry to attend a meeting of her Girls' Guild. As she passed the Public Library this thought came to her:

"I'll go in and look in the encyclopaedia. That ought to tell about old violins."

She looked up Cremona and read about its wonderful violins made in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries by the Amati family and by Antonio Stradivari and Josef Guarnerius. It did not seem possible that Hopewell's instrument could be one of these beautifully wrought violins of the masters; yet——

"Who knows?" sighed Janice. "You read about such instruments coming to light in such queer places. And Hopewell's fiddle looks awfully old. From all accounts his father must have been a musician of some importance, despite the fact that he was thought little of in Polktown by either his wife or other people. Mr. Drugg might have owned one of these famous violins—not one of the most ancient, perhaps—and told nobody here about it. Why! the ordinary Polktownite would think just as much of a two-dollar-and-a-half fiddle as of a real Stradivarius or an Amati."

While she was at the task, Janice took some notes of what she read. While she was about this, Walky Dexter, who brought the mail over from Middletown, daily, came in with the usual bundle of papers for the reading desk, and the girl in charge that afternoon hastened to put the papers in the files.

Major Price had presented the library with a year's subscription to a
New York daily. Janice or Marty always found time to scan each page of
that paper for Mexican news—especially for news of the brigand chief,
Juan Dicampa.

She went to the reading desk after closing and returning the encyclopaedia to its proper shelf, and spread the New York paper before her. This day she had not to search for mention of her father's friend, the Zapatist chief. Right in front of her eyes, at the top of the very first column, were these headlines:

JUAN DICAMPA CAPTURED

THE ZAPATIST CHIEFTAIN CAPTURED BY FEDERALS WITH 500 OF HIS FORCE AND IMMEDIATELY SHOT. MASSACRE OF HIS FOLLOWERS.