CHAPTER I
HARDISTON

THERE are two kinds of people: small-town folks, and others. The others are inclined to think of the people of the small towns as men and women of narrow horizons and narrow interests and a vast ignorance of such important things as cocktails. But, as a matter of fact, the people who dwell in the little mid-western cities and towns are your real cosmopolites. They know their own country, east, west, north and south, at firsthand. The reason for this is simple. When a city dweller goes to the country, he is careful to remain a city dweller; but when a small-town man goes to the city, he becomes a city man for as long as he is within the city’s gates. Your Bostonian knows Boston, has a smattering of New York, and a talking acquaintance with London. Your New Yorker knows New York—perhaps; and he desires to know nothing else. But the men and women of Hardiston, for example, know New York, and they know Boston—and they prefer Hardiston with a steadfast and unshakable preference.

This little town of Hardiston—it is really no town at all, since the last census showed it with a population above the five thousand mark, and so entitled it to be called a city—stands on a plateau above Salt Creek, and it is overlooked by a circle of hills, and at three corners of the town the gaunt, black iron furnaces stand sentry at the gates. The hills, of clay and iron ore and conglomerate rock, are pink with apple blossoms in the spring; and in the fall the hardwood growth which clothes them where the orchards have not yet spread presents a dazzle of reds and yellows that blind the eye with their splendor. It is a rich and fertile country, with well-watered bottom lands; and Hardiston town and Hardiston county have a past, a present and a future.

The past goes back to the Indians and beyond. Salt Creek won its name by no mere chance. There have always been traces of salt in its water; and in the ancient days, the Indians used to come to a riffle below where Hardiston now stands and boil the water for this salt. There was a big encampment here; and the tribes came from all over Ohio, and from Kentucky, and farther, too, to boil salt and take it home with them. They brought Daniel Boone here once; and you may still see, to the north of Hardiston, a crumbling precipice of sand conglomerate over which Boone is said to have jumped in making his escape. Also, at the foot of that sandy bluff, you may dig in an ash bed twenty feet deep, and find the skeletons of Indian braves, buried there beneath the campfires, with perhaps an arrow head of flint between their ribs.

When the whites came in, they took up the making of salt where the Indians left off. The state recognized the industry, and chartered it. But at last cheaper salt came in, and the salt boilers found themselves with their occupation gone. So, seeking about them for work for their hands to do, they discovered black coal in the hills, and rusty brown ore; and they digged the coal and the ore and made iron. It was good iron; none better in the world; and it commanded the highest prices in any market.

The county was all undershot with coal; the hills were crowned with iron. Twenty years ago, every valley in the county had its gaunt tipple and its pile of crumbling slack; and every road was dotted with the creaking, rusty wagons that hauled the ores to the furnaces in Hardiston. To-day, much of the coal is gone; and the ore has vanished. But the furnaces fetch ore from Superior, and smelt it into heavy pigs of iron; and their roar is eternal about the comfortable little town.

A stranger, coming to Hardiston, is inclined to think the place is dead; but the town has a deceptive vitality. It is true the brick yard is gone, and the occasional imported industry usually dies after a brief and uneventful life. It is true the big hotel that was, ten years ago, the finest in a dozen counties, goes now from bankruptcy to bankruptcy without a struggle. And Morgan & Robinson’s dry-goods store has shrunk from three floors to one; and the interurban traction that used to run half-hourly between Hardiston and the B. & O. main line has given place to a dirty, jerky train that makes two trips a day. The car tracks along Broadway and Main have been ripped up, and the fine brick paving on these streets bids fair to endure forever, for lack of traffic that would give it wholesome wear and tear.

But the town is not dead; it is only sleeping. You may see signs of the awakening in the apple blossoms on the hills. These Hardiston hills produce apples of a surprising excellence, and some day the Hardiston apple will be as famous as the Hardiston iron was in the past. But for the present the town sleeps, a gorged slumber. For Hardiston is rich. There are three banks, and each has more than a million in deposits. Hardiston folk have made money; they have built themselves homes, they have bought themselves automobiles, they have sent their boys and girls to college, and now—save for an occasional trip into the outer world, there is little more for them to do. But the money is there; it feeds the prosperity of three or four moving-picture houses, half a dozen soda fountains, and two sporadic theaters; it fattens the purses of a street carnival or so every year, and it delights the heart of every circus that comes to Hardiston County.

It is a friendly town, a gay little town. People make their own good times, and many of them. And the stranger is always made welcome within their gates. Every one is quite honestly fond of Hardiston and proud of it. When you go there, the Chamber of Commerce does not buttonhole you and demand a factory. That is not Hardiston’s way; and besides, there is no Chamber of Commerce. No, when you go there, Hardiston does not ask you to do something for Hardiston; Hardiston tries to do something for you. For instance, it invites you out to the house for supper. And you go, and are glad you went.

Perhaps it is because of this taste for friendliness that Hardiston loves politics so ardently. Politics, after all, corrupt it as you will, is the art of making and keeping friends. Hardiston County, and the Congressional district of which it is the heart, form one of the prime political battle grounds of the state. Summer and winter, year in, year out, politics in Hardiston goes on. The county officials in the Court House, when their work is out of the way, tilt back their chairs about the most capacious cuspidor and talk politics; the men of the town gather at the Smoke House, or on the hotel corner, and talk politics; the farmers, driving to town, stop every man they meet upon the road and canvass the political situation. Even the women, at their bridge clubs and their sewing circles and their reading clubs—Hardiston is full of clubs—talk politics over their cards or their sewing, or after the paper on Browning has been read.

Hardiston politics is very like politics everywhere; it has not much to do with platforms and principles, and it has a great deal to do with men. In a political way, Congressman Amos Caretall was the biggest man in Hardiston County. And so the home-coming of Congressman Caretall, on the eve of the mayoralty election, was a matter that furnished talk for all the town.

CHAPTER II
AMOS CARETALL

PETER GERGUE is a public figure in Hardiston. Every one knows him, and—what is more to the point—he knows every one. Not only in Hardiston town, but in Hardiston County is Gergue known. He is an attorney, a notary, a justice of the peace. But his business under these heads is very small. It has always been small; and he has never made any great effort to increase it.

He is a man of medium height, thin and rusty to the eye, with a drooping black mustache and black hair that is too long, always too long, even when he has just emerged from the barber’s chair. This long, black hair is Gergue’s sole affectation. It is his custom, when the barber has finished his ministrations, to rumple the hair on the back of his head and rub it with his fingers until it is matted and tangled in a fashion to defy the comb. He is conscious of doing this, and has been known to explain the action. And his explanation is always the same.

“When I was a boy,” he says, “I used to comb the top of my head and slick it down, but I never got at the back much. So I got used to having it tangled; and now I don’t feel right if it’s smooth.”

So he keeps it religiously tangled; and at moments of deep thought, his fingers stray into this maze as though searching for his medulla oblongata in the hope of finding some idea there.

Gergue’s office is above that of the Building and Loan Company, on Main Street, opposite the Court House. There are spider webs in the corners and on the windows; there is dust on everything. The floor of soft wood has been worn till every knot stands up like a wart, and every nail protrudes its shining head. Against one wall, there is a wardrobe of walnut, higher than a man. Within this piece some law books are piled, and a few rusty garments hang. In the summer, moths nest here; in the winter they hibernate in their nests. The garments have not been disturbed for years, and now their fabric looks more like mosquito netting than honest broadcloth and serge.

Gergue has an old kitchen table, covered with oilcloth, near the windows that overlook the street. There is an iron inkwell on this table, a pen, and a miscellaneous litter of papers, while at one side of the table, on the window sill, stands his notary’s seal and a disused letter press. The oilcloth top of the table has worn through in many places, and the soft wood beneath is polished to a not unlovely luster by constant usage.

Toward train time of the day Congressman Caretall was to come home, Gergue was in this office of his. James T. Hollow was with him, sitting stiffly in a chair that was too narrow for his pudgy bulk. James T. Hollow was a candidate for Mayor. Amos Caretall was supporting him. And Gergue, as Caretall’s first lieutenant, had asked Hollow to go with him to the train to meet the Congressman. Hollow had obeyed the summons, and now waited Gergue’s pleasure. He was smiling with a determined, though tremulous, amiability.

“I’ve always aimed to do what was right,” he explained hurriedly. They had been discussing the chance of his election.

Gergue nodded his head. “That’s what you always do,” he agreed. “Trouble is, Chase has aimed to do what wa’n’t right, and looks like he’d get away with it.”

The other flushed painfully, and his mouth opened as though he would like to speak, but it was some time before he managed to ask: “Is that—the reason Congressman Caretall is coming home?”

The Court House clock, across the street, struck four. The train was due at four-twenty-two. Gergue rose slowly. “Well, now, let’s go down and ask him,” he invited.

Hollow assented weakly. “Yes, I guess that’s the right thing to do.”

Gergue looked at him with faint impatience. “Why do you guess it’s the right thing to do?” he inquired.

The other hesitated, lifted his hands, spread them helplessly. “Well—isn’t it?” he asked.

“Oh, dear!” said Gergue sweetly. “Well—come on.”

Hollow was a man with very short legs. This gave him an unfortunate, pattering appearance when he walked with a taller man; and as he and Gergue turned down Main Street toward the station, this fact was commented upon. Some of the comments were direct, some subtle. For example, one of a group of four men at the hotel corner, when the two approached, looked all about him and whistled shrilly.

“Hey, doggie! Hey, doggie! Heel!” he called.

James T. Hollow was not without perception. He blushed painfully. But Gergue took no notice of the jest, for as they approached the group, one of the men detached himself and came to meet them.

This was Winthrop Chase—Winthrop Chase, Senior—the candidate opposing Hollow for the mayoralty. Hardiston felt that it was gracious of Chase to offer himself for the office, for he was a man of affairs, chief owner of the biggest furnace, a coal operator of importance in other fields, and not unknown in state political circles. He was an erect man, so erect that he leaned backward, and with a peculiarly healthy look about him. He had a strong jaw and a small, governed mouth. His manner was courtly and gracious. Some considered it condescending.

“Good morning, Gergue,” he said now. “Good morning, Mr. Hollow.”

“Howdo,” Gergue returned. Hollow was more loquacious. “How do you do, Mr. Chase.”

“The Congressman comes back to-day?” Chase asked.

“Yep,” said Gergue.

“We ought to have a reception for him at the station. He has made a name for himself at this session.”

“Always had a name,” Gergue commented, and spat carelessly, so close to Winthrop Chase, Senior’s polished shoes that the great man moved uneasily to one side.

“I suppose he is coming to take a hand in the mayoralty campaign,” said Chase urbanely. He could afford to be urbane.

“He didn’t say,” Gergue declared.

“I’m sorry we’re on opposite sides of the fence in this squabble. Tell him he and I must work together hereafter.”

“You tell him.”

Chase laughed. “I believe he will see it—without being told,” he said loudly, and the three men at his back smiled. “He will, no doubt, find some change in Hardiston affairs.”

“He will if there is any.”

“Perhaps even in the district. Though of course he does not have to seek reËlection this fall.”

“No.”

“Still—”

Gergue interrupted maliciously: “By th’ way, how’s Wint?”

The question had a curious effect upon Chase. It surprised him, it seemed to embarrass him, and it certainly angered him. He opened his mouth to speak. “He—”

But before he could go on, Gergue interposed: “I hear Columbus would’ve gone dry in spite of itself, if they hadn’t sent him home from State when they did.” And he departed with the honors of war, leaving Chase to sputter angrily into the sympathetic ears of his companions. When he and Hollow were half a block away, Gergue permitted himself to smile. Then he frowned and looked at Hollow. “Why don’t you talk up to him, Jim?” he asked disgustedly.

“I—always try to do what is right, Peter. I’d like to, I really would.”

“Would you, now?” Gergue echoed mockingly.

“Yes, I really would,” insisted James T. Hollow.

“Well, all right then,” said Gergue affably. “Le’s go along.”

They went along, down shaded lower Main Street, and took at length the left-hand turn that led toward the station. Gergue walked in silence, and Hollow, after a few futile efforts at conversation, gave it up and pattered at the taller man’s side without speaking. Gergue seemed to be thinking, thinking hard.

A branch line connects Hardiston with the main line of the B. & O. to Washington. Two trains a day traverse this branch in each direction. One of these trains is called the Mail; the other the Accommodation; but the source of these titles is not apparent, for both trains carry mail, and both are most accommodating. Perhaps the Accommodation is more so than the Mail, for at times it has a freight car attached between tender and baggage car, and this is an indignity which the Mail never suffers.

The station at Hardiston is a three-room structure of imitation hollow tiles. That is to say, it is built of wood sheathed with tin which is stamped in the likeness of tiles. These tin walls have an uncanny faculty for keeping the rooms inside the station at fever heat, summer and winter.

One of these rooms is the Men’s Waiting Room; another is for feminine patrons of the road; and between the two is the ticket office and dispatcher’s room, with telegraph instruments clattering on a table in the bay window at the front.

The station agent is a busy man, with three or four hard-worked assistants; for all the supplies for one of the big furnaces come in over this branch, and the furnace’s product goes out by the same route. The furnace itself towers above the very station, great ore piles spraddling over acres of ground waiting for the traveling crane that scoops them and carries the ore to the fires.

On the other side of the station, across the street, there are two buildings with ornate fronts—and locked doors. They proclaim themselves as buildings with a past—a bibulous past. County local option was their ruin, county local option locked their doors and stripped their shelves and spread dust upon their bars. They are ugly things, eyesores, specters of shame. Whatever may be said for the wares they dispense, there is nothing more hideous than a saloon.

Gergue and Hollow crossed the street at a diagonal, past these locked saloons, to the station platform. They found on the platform a familiar throng. Hardiston was the county seat, and served as market place for the southern half of the county. Many people came and went daily on the dirty, rattling, uncomfortable trains; and this, the afternoon train, always picked up a score or so of passengers southward bound.

In addition to these travelers, there were folk at the station to meet every incoming passenger; for Hardiston still meets people at the train. Guests, home-comers, even the commercial travelers find a welcome waiting. Every one in the neighborhood stops at the station at train time to pick up matters for gossip.

Gergue made it his custom to meet a train whenever no more important matter occupied his time; for by so doing he saw many men of the county whom he would not otherwise have seen, and renewed acquaintances that would otherwise have languished. He was, as it were, a professional meeter of trains, like the editors of the three weekly papers, and the bus men from the hotels. He left Hollow at one end of the platform, while he traversed its length, exchanging a word with every one, observing, inquiring, cultivating.

On this business, he was fifty yards away from Hollow when the Caretall touring car whirled down the street and stopped beside the platform. Hollow took off his hat in greeting, and the four young people in the car acknowledged the salutation carelessly.

Agnes Caretall was driving, with Jack Routt beside her in the front seat, and Wint Chase and Joan Arnold in the tonneau. They remained in the car, the two in front turning half around in their seats to talk with those behind. Agnes Caretall did most of the talking. She was a gay little thing, with fair hair and laughing eyes and flying tongue. Joan Arnold was darker, brown hair, eyes almost black. She was quiet, with a poise in sharp contrast to Agnes’ vivacity. Routt and Wint Chase were just average young men, pleasant enough in appearance. Routt was dark; Wint had a fair skin, his father’s strong jaw, eyes that inclined at times to sulky anger, and a head of crisp hair that was brown, with golden flashes when the sun touched it. There was a healthy color in his cheeks, but his eyes were reddened, and there were faint pouches beneath them. While they waited for the train, he rolled a cigarette, fizzling his first attempt because his hands were faintly tremulous. Routt laughed at him for this.

“You’re shaky, Wint,” he jested. “Better take a tailor-made one.”

And he offered the other his cigarette case; but Wint shook his head stubbornly, tried again, and this time succeeded in rolling a passable cigarette, which he lighted eagerly.

Peter Gergue, coming back along the platform, saw the four in the car and came toward them. He caught Joan Arnold’s eyes and took off his hat, and she smiled a greeting; and he came and stood beside the car, exchanging sallies awkwardly with Agnes Caretall and with Routt.

When the attention of these two was concentrated, for a moment, upon each other, he asked Joan: “Is anything wrong, Miss Arnold? You look worried. You hadn’t ought to look worried, ever.”

She laughed. “Why, no, of course not. I—must have been thinking. I didn’t know.”

“Thinking about what?”

“I don’t remember.”

Wint had climbed out of the car and was talking to some one on the platform a dozen feet away. Gergue looked toward him, then back to Joan. But he said no more.

“Isn’t the train late?” Agnes asked, forsaking Routt abruptly.

Gergue nodded. “Ten minutes. Dan says they got a hot box, or something, up above the Crossroads.”

Agnes pouted. “They’re always late.”

“They’re whistling now,” Gergue assured her, and a moment later every one heard the distant blast. “At the crossing beyond the cemetery,” Gergue supplemented. “Be here right away.” And he turned back to the crowd.

A moment later, they heard the whistle again, this time where the B. & O. and D. T. & I. crossed; and after a further interval, the train came in sight, rounding the last curve into the station. Agnes jumped out of the car, touching Routt’s extended hand when he sought to assist her; and then the engine roared and racketed past, vomiting sparks and cinders over them all.

The rear end of the last car was opposite the automobile when the train stopped; and Agnes and Gergue pushed that way; for Amos Caretall always got off at the rear end of a train. “If you do that you can’t get run over—unless she backs,” he was accustomed to explain. The two reached the steps just as the Congressman emerged from the car, and Agnes flew up to meet him so that her arms were around his neck when he stepped down to the platform. He was a stocky man of middle height with sandy hair, shrewd, squinting eyes, and a habit of holding his head on one side as though he suffered from that malady called stiff neck.

He hugged Agnes close, affectionately, for an instant, then held her away from him with both hands and surveyed her. “You sure look good, Agnes,” he told her, and hugged her again.

She slipped her hand through his arm. “We came down to get you,” she explained. “Come along—quick. These cinders are awful.”

He laughed. “In a minute. Hello, Peter. Hello, Jim.” He shook hands with Gergue and with Hollow. “Looking for somebody, Peter?”

“Just come down to see you come in.”

“Well—” The Congressman grinned amiably. “I’m in.”

“We wish to welcome you home, Congressman,” said James T. Hollow.

“Thanks, Jim.”

The three men were silent for a moment. The situation had its interesting side. When Gergue and Hollow had been alone together, Gergue was the dominant figure of the two. Gergue seemed then like a superman, calm, assured, at ease; and Hollow, beside Gergue, had been almost pathetically docile.

Now, however, in the presence of the Congressman, Gergue seemed to shrink to Hollow’s stature. He and Hollow were both mere creatures, Hollow if anything the stronger of the two. And Amos Caretall towered head and shoulders above them both.

It was the Congressman who broke the silence. “All right,” he said. “Drop in any time—both of you.” And with his grip in one hand and Agnes on the other arm, he crossed the platform to the car.

Routt and Joan and Wint were there. He greeted them with comfortable affection, and surveyed them with keen and appraising eyes. “Climb in,” he invited. “Glad to see everybody.”

Agnes and Routt took the front seat again, and Joan sat between Wint and the Congressman behind. Just before the car started, Amos Caretall leaned across to ask Wint:

“Well, young man—how’s your father?”

Wint’s eyes burned sulkily. “About as usual,” he said.

The engine roared, they turned up the street; and the Congressman turned to wave his hand to Gergue and Hollow on the platform.

CHAPTER III
WINT CHASE

AMOS CARETALL’S home was not a pretentious affair. He lived in a house that had not been built as other houses are; it had, like Topsy, “just growed.” It began as a one-story, four-room brick structure, and spread in wings and “ells” and upper stories until now it numbered ten rooms and was a thing fearful and wonderful to behold. In these ten rooms, Agnes and her father and old Maria Hale, the darky who cooked for them and looked after them, rattled around in a somewhat lonely fashion. For Mrs. Caretall was ten years dead, and the two Caretall boys had gone away to college and afterward had builded homes of their own in other regions.

Amos Caretall was not rich; but he was well off. He had made his money in coal, and when the visible supply of coal began to peter out, he had looked into politics, gone to the state legislature for two terms, and then to Congress. In Congress he had done well. The Hardiston district forgot, where he was concerned, the old rule that a Congressman shall have but two terms. They sent him back again and again. He was now in his fifth term, and his power at home and abroad was growing.

His most valuable quality was imagination. He was not an able man; he knew little about political economy, national finance, sociology, the science of government. He knew little and cared less. For by virtue of a keen imagination, he was able to construct in his own mind hypothetical situations, and then hire experts to meet them for him. Peter Gergue was one of these experts. Gergue’s field was human nature and Hardiston County. He knew every one in the county, and he had an uncanny faculty for predicting how a man would react to given circumstances. This faculty extended to men in the mass, and enabled him to predict the political effect of a given course of action with surprising accuracy. Amos Caretall had learned to take Gergue’s advice blindly. His home-coming at this time, for example, was in response to Gergue’s message of a week previous. That message had been brief.

“If Chase is elected Mayor, he’ll beat you for the House next year,” Gergue had written.

Caretall wired: “I’m coming home.” And he came.

But there was no trace of concern in his amiable countenance as they rode to his home now. He joked Joan Arnold into gayety, laughed Wint Chase out of his sulkiness, and pinched his daughter’s cheek until she threatened to ditch the car if he kept it up. Thus, when they stopped before the house, every one was in good humor.

They stopped, and Wint Chase was the first to alight. A muffled bark greeted him from the house, and he laughed and ran up the walk and opened the door. A wiry, tan-colored dog rushed out and engulfed him; Muldoon, an Irish terrier of parts, who had been left behind because he would neither ride in an automobile nor calmly suffer his master to do so. Muldoon was one creature whom Wint unreservedly loved; and Muldoon returned the affection. Master and dog, the first transports over, came down the walk again as the others climbed from the car.

Amos Caretall was urging them all to come in. Jack Routt said he would; but Joan shook her head. “I can’t,” she laughed. “I promised mother to bring home some bread.”

“I’ll take it out in the car,” Agnes pleaded. “Please....”

Joan stuck to her guns. Agnes pouted. Wint did not commit himself; he seemed to take it for granted that he would go with Joan. She turned to him. “You stay, Wint!”

The old sulky light flamed in his eyes again. “No—I’m going with you.”

They left the others, amid a little flurry of farewells from Agnes, and turned uptown. Muldoon circled them madly, running at top speed in a desperate effort to work off the spirits generated during his confinement. Joan laughed at the dog, whistled him to her, stooped to tug at his ears affectionately. “You’re full of it, aren’t you, Muldoon?”

He whined aloud in his desperate desire to answer her, then darted away again. She straightened and they went on, the girl still smiling. Wint looked at her once, and then again, and then he, too, smiled—at her and at the dog.

“He’s a clown,” he said.

She nodded. “He’s a fine dog, Wint.”

“He’s a dog of sense. He thinks well of you.” He laughed. “I’ll give him to you some day.”

She looked up at him seriously, understanding in her eyes. “I hope so, Wint,” she said.

There was something besides understanding in her eyes, something faintly accusing; and he flushed and said hotly: “Don’t look at me like that. Please. I’m—I mean to—make it come true.”

“I hope so, Wint,” she said again.

They spoke no more for a time. Presently she stopped at the bakery and they went in together. The sweet odor of hot bread and sugar and spice clouded about them as he opened the door. A round little woman greeted them.

“Is your cream bread all gone, Mrs. Mueller?” Joan asked.

“No. Not yet. How many loaves?”

“Two, please.”

The little woman brought two loaves, still soft from the great ovens and still warm, and wrapped them gently, careful not to bruise them. She handed the package to Joan. Wint tried to take it, but Joan shook her head, laughing at him. “Last time you mashed them flat,” she said; “I’ll carry them.”

“I’ll be careful,” he promised, and took the package from her with calm mastery, a mastery to which she yielded with a faint tremor of happiness. They continued more swiftly on their way.

Presently she asked: “How does the work go?”

He shook his head. “Badly. I’ve no—knack for it. And father and I weren’t meant to pull in double harness.”

“You must learn to, Wint. Give him a chance.”

He nodded. “But we—grate on each other. He fires up at the least mistake.”

“You’ve been hard on his patience.”

He stiffened faintly. “Possibly.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “Now don’t sulk, Wint. Please.”

“I’m not sulking.”

“You’re too quick on the trigger. You get angry at the least thing.” She laughed softly, in a way that robbed her words of sting. “Wint, you’re as proud as a peacock, and as stubborn as a mule. As soon as any one criticizes you for doing a thing—you go right off and do it again. That’s no way to do, Wint.”

He made no comment, and when she looked at him, she saw that his face was set and hard, and she laid a hand on his arm. “Wint—don’t you think I’m a—good friend of yours?”

“If you’re not more than that, Joan—I’m through.” His eyes searched hers; she met his bravely.

“I am—more than that, Wint. So you must let me tell you things frankly. Wint, you must learn to see that when people criticize you, or advise you, it’s more often than not because they really wish you well. Most people wish other people well, Wint.”

“That has not been my experience.”

She shook his arm, laughing. “Wint! Don’t be silly! You talk like a disappointed man—when you ought to talk like a fine, strong, hopeful one.”

He laid his hand on hers, where it rested in the crook of his arm. “You’re a big-heart, Joan. You like every one, and trust them and every one is good to you. You—can’t get my viewpoint.”

“I can too, Wint. For you haven’t any viewpoint. You’re just the plaything of a little devil of perversity that makes you do things you know you—oughtn’t to do—just to prove that you can.”

They came, abruptly, to her gate. She paused to say good-by. His eyes were angry; but he said quietly: “May I come to-night?”

She shook her head. “Not every night, Wint. To-morrow?”

“Please?”

“I—no, Wint.”

He straightened stiffly. “Very well. Good night.” He lifted his hat and stalked away.

Joan looked after him for a moment, her eyes disturbed, unhappy; then she smiled a tender little smile, as a mother smiles at a wayward boy, and turned into the house.

At the corner, Wint looked back. She was gone. He went on toward his own home, Muldoon at his heels, in a hot surge of rebellion. Halfway home, he asked himself what it was that made him rebellious, angry; and when he could find no reasonable answer to this question, he became more angry than ever. He was angry at himself; but he convinced himself that he was angry at others....

Winthrop Chase, Senior, had built a home for himself a dozen years before, in the first rush of great wealth from the furnace. It was a monumental house, of red, pressed brick, with a slate roof and a fence of iron pickets around the yard. It had been, when he built it, the finest house in town. Now, however, its supremacy was challenged by a dozen others, and the elder Chase had half decided to tear it down and build another that would defy competition. Mrs. Chase opposed this, gently and half-heartedly. She thought they were very comfortable.

But it was a losing fight, and she knew it. Her husband was accustomed to have his way. He would have it in the end.

Wint pushed open the iron gate—it dragged on its hinges so that it had worn a deep groove in the stone paving that led to the porch—and closed it behind him, and went up to the door. He opened it and went in; and in the dim light of the hall he encountered a girl. For an instant, he failed to recognize her; then:

“Why, hello—Hetty,” he said.

“Hello, Wint.”

“What are you doing here?” He dropped his hat on the hall bench.

“I’ve come to work for your mother.” She hesitated. “Supper’s ready. They’re sitting down.”

“Oh!” He looked at Hetty again. They had been schoolmates. Her seat had been just in front of his one year. He remembered, with sudden vividness, the day he stuck chewing gum in her hair. Her hair was red; a pleasant, dark red; and it was very luxuriant. “Oh—all right,” he said, and went into the dining room. His father and mother were at the table. “I see you’ve got a girl, mother,” he said.

“Yes—I’ve got Hetty Morfee.” Mrs. Chase sighed. “I’ve had the most awful time, Wint. I do hope she stays. Girls are terrible hard to get, in this town. They—”

Mrs. Chase was loquacious. Her speeches were never finished. She was always interrupted in mid-career. Otherwise, she would have talked on endlessly.

“That steak looks as though she could cook,” said Wint. “Give me some.”

CHAPTER IV
JACK ROUTT

ONE of Mrs. Chase’s difficulties with hired girls was that Winthrop Chase, Senior, liked style with his meals.

Mr. Chase was no provincial. He had traveled; he had lived at good hotels; he knew New York, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati. He had been a guest at fine homes. He knew what was what.

“It adds tone to a repast,” he would tell his wife, over and over. “It adds tone to a repast. A neatly dressed maidservant, in apron and cap, handing your dishes around. I tell you, Margaret, it gives that—that—that style....”

“I know it, Winthrop,” Mrs. Chase always agreed. “I’d like to have it so, as much as you would. Land knows I’ve tried. I’ve trained, and I’ve trained; but you can’t expect a girl to do everything for two dollars a week, or even three. Why, Mrs. Hullis had—”

“Well, pay more, then. Pay more. Five, or ten dollars. I make money enough. I surely make money enough, Margaret, to have comfort and—and style in my own home.”

“You can’t get a girl in Hardiston that’s worth more than three dollars,” Mrs. Chase insisted. “They come and they go, and they’re always getting married, and—”

Mr. Chase always carved the meats at his own table. He took pride in his carving. When Wint appeared now, he looked up with a hostile eye, at the same time lifting the carving knife and fork. “You’re late, young man.”

“Am I?” said Wint stiffly.

“The dinner hour in this house is five-thirty. If you wish to have your meals here, you would do well to observe that fact and regulate your movements in accordance.”

“Oh, give the boy his supper,” Mrs. Chase urged. “You get me all mixed up, calling supper dinner and dinner lunch that way, Winthrop. Wint, don’t you mind what your father says. He—”

“Margaret,” said Mr. Chase sternly, “I wish you would—”

“I went to the station to meet Caretall,” said Wint slowly. “Sorry to be late. But—”

“Caretall?” his father echoed sharply. “You—”

“Now, Wint—don’t aggravate your father,” Mrs. Chase urged. “You will drive me to—”

“Hetty, pass my son’s plate,” directed the elder Chase, discovering the girl in the doorway. “Your place is in the kitchen while the meals are being served, not in the hall.”

“All right,” said Hetty cheerfully, and she took Wint’s plate and went around the table to his father’s side. Thus relieved of the elder Chase’s scrutiny, she winked lightly at Wint and smiled. He made no response. A moment later, she set his plate before him, and departed toward the kitchen.

Mrs. Chase began at once to talk. Her eating did not seem to interfere with the gently querulous stream of her conversation. She spoke of many things. Housekeeping cares, the perplexities and annoyances of the day, the acquisition of Hetty, her hope that Hetty would prove a good girl, a good cook, a good housemaid. “She’s not going to go home at night, either,” she explained. “When girls go home at night, they’re never here in time to get breakfast. When I have a girl, I want her in the house, so’s I can see she gets up. She—”

The elder Chase interrupted obliviously. He had been studying his son. “Wint, have you been drinking to-day?” he demanded.

Wint looked up quickly, a retort on his lips. But he checked it, and instead said quietly:

“No.”

“Oh, Wint,” Mrs. Chase exclaimed, “you ain’t going to do any more of that, are you, son? You—”

“I’m keeping my eye on you, young man,” interrupted her husband. “You left the office early to-day. Who gave you permission?”

“The work was done.”

“The work is never done.”

“You left before I did.”

The elder Chase’s eyes flashed. “My movements have nothing to do with it. Your place is at the office till four-thirty every day. Don’t imagine, because you’re my son, you’ll receive any favoritism.”

“It seems to work the other way,” said Wint.

“It does work the other way. You’re on trial, guilty till proved innocent, worthless till proved otherwise. Some fathers.... A boy expelled from college for drunkenness.... You’re lucky that I am so lenient with you, young man.”

“Am I?”

“Now, Wint,” his mother interjected. “Don’t you aggravate your father. Goodness knows it’s hard enough to get along with him—”

“Margaret!”

“Well, I mean, you oughtn’t to—”

Wint rose abruptly. “Nagging never did any good,” he said. “I mean to—do my part.” He flamed suddenly. “But—for Heaven’s sake—don’t talk me to death.”

He went out, up to his room. He was trembling with humiliated resentment. In his room he stood for a moment before the mirror, looking at his image in the glass, frowning sullenly. “Talk! Talk! Talk!” he exclaimed hotly. “Always talk!” He went into the bathroom, splashed cold water into his face, went out again and down the stairs. He took his hat. His mother called, from the dining room:

“Wint—there’s ice cream! Don’t you—”

“No—thanks,” he said. “I’m going uptown.”

He closed the door upon their protests, and went down to the street and turned toward the town.

His way led past Joan’s house. He paused at her gate for a moment, hesitant, frowning, miserable, lonely. Then he went on.

Almost every one goes uptown in Hardiston at night. The seven-fifteen train, bringing mail, is one excuse. The moving pictures are an allurement. The streets are better filled in early evening than at any other time of the day. Wint began presently to meet acquaintances. At the hotel, he encountered Jack Routt. Routt greeted him eagerly.

“Wint! Hello there! Care for a game of billiards?”

“I’d just as soon.”

“Come along, then.”

They went through the hotel office, down three steps, and into the pool room. There were three tables, two for pool and one for billiards. A game of Kelly pool was in progress at one table, but the billiard table was free. They chalked their cues.

“Half a dollar?” Routt challenged.

Wint nodded. “All right.”

Routt won the draw and shot first. The game went jerkily forward. Neither was an expert player. A run of ten was an event. Wint played silently, his thoughts elsewhere. Routt was cheerful, loquacious, friendly. Wint envied him faintly. Every one liked Jack, respected him....

Routt won the game with a run of four, and laid his cue on the table. “I’ll be back in a minute, Wint,” he said. “You don’t mind waiting?”

“I’ll go with you,” Wint countered.

Routt shook his head. “Now, Wint—no, I won’t let you. You know—play it safe, man. You can’t afford to monkey with this.”

“Don’t be a fool, Jack.”

“Oh, Wint, I mean it. Leave it alone. That’s the only safe way—for you.”

Wint’s eyes flamed suddenly. “Aren’t you coming?” he asked, and started for the door.

Routt followed, still protesting. “Wint—don’t be a darned fool.”

“Don’t be a preacher, Jack.”

“Please, Wint—leave it alone. Come on back. I won’t go either.”

Wint said nothing, but he went steadily ahead; and Routt yielded. They left the hotel, went half a block, entered an alley, climbed a stair....

County option had closed the saloons; but Hardiston was still far from being a dry town. When they returned to the pool room half an hour later, Wint’s cheeks were unnaturally flushed, and he laughed more easily than before.

AMOS CARETALL and his daughter had supper—dinner was at midday in the Caretall household—alone together. Old Maria Hale cooked the supper, and Agnes brought it to the table. It was a good supper. Fried chicken, for example; and mashed potatoes as creamy as—cream. And afterwards, apple tapioca pudding of a peculiar excellence. All garnished with little, round biscuits, each no more than a crisp mouthful. The Congressman smacked his lips over it with frank appreciation. “Maria,” he told the old colored woman, “you could make your fortune in Washington.”

Maria cackled delightedly. She was a shriveled little old crone, bent, wrinkled, and suspected of being as bald as an egg. No one ever saw her without a kerchief bound tightly around her head. She had looked a hundred years old for twenty years, and declared she was more than that. “I mus’ be a hundred an’ twenty, at the mos’,” she used to say, when questioned. Now she cackled with delight at the Congressman’s praise of her cookery.

“I don’t know ’bout Wash’n’t’n,” she declared. “But I ain’ makin’ no great pile in Hardiston, Miste’ Caretall.”

He laughed, head tilted back, mouth full of biscuit. “You old fraud, you could buy and sell Chase himself, twice over. You haven’t spent a cent for a hundred years, Maria.”

She giggled like a girl, and went out to the kitchen, wagging her head from side to side and mumbling to herself. Agnes looked after her, and when the door was closed said, with a toss of her head: “She’s getting awfully cranky, Dad.”

Amos chuckled. “Always was, Agnes. Just the same when I was your age. But she can make mighty un-cranky biscuits.”

“She gets cross as a bear if I don’t help her with the dishes.”

Amos looked at his daughter with a dry smile. “Then if I was you, Agnes, I’d help her.”

She started to reply, but thought better of it. A little restraint fell upon them, and this continued until Amos leaned back with a sigh of contentment and pulled a pipe from his coat pocket. It was a horny old pipe, black, odorous, rank as a skunk cabbage. Agnes hated it; but Amos stuck to it, year in, year out. When it caked so full that a pencil would not go down into its cavity, Amos always whittled out the cake, burned the pipe with alcohol, and started over again. The brier had been in regular and constant use for half a dozen years—and it was still, as Agnes used to say, “going strong.”

Amos cuddled this pipe lovingly in the palm of his hand. He polished the black bowl in his palm, and then by rubbing it across his cheek and against the side of his nose. Agnes fidgeted, and Amos watched her with a twinkle in his eye until she rose suddenly and cried:

“Dad—that’s horrid!”

He chuckled. “What was it you said about dishes?” he asked.

She went sulkily toward the kitchen.

Amos watched her with a certain amount of speculation in his eyes. Amos was always speculating, speculating about people, and about things. He stared at the door that closed behind her for a long minute before the clock on the mantel struck seven and broke the charm. Then he got up stiffly, favoring his big body, and went into the sitting room. Only half a dozen houses in Hardiston had living rooms in those days. Rooms with no other appointed use were, respectively, sitting rooms and parlors. The library and the living room were arriving together.

Amos went into the sitting room and pulled a creaky rockingchair up before the coal fire. His feet were in carpet slippers, and he kicked off the slippers and thrust his feet toward the blaze. He wore knitted wool socks, gray, with white heels and toes. Maria Hale had knitted Amos’ socks for ten years. He wriggled his toes comfortably, then searched from one pocket a black plug of tobacco, from another a crooked-blade pruning knife. He sliced three or four slices from the plug with grave care, restored plug and knife to his pockets, rolled the slices to a crumbling pile in his palm, and filled his pipe. When it was lighted—he “primed” it by cramming into the top of the pipe some half-burned tobacco from a previous smoking—he leaned back luxuriously in the chair, closed his eyes, puffed hard and thought gently.

He was still in this position when the telephone rang; and he rose, grumblingly, to answer it. Winthrop Chase, Senior, was at the other end of the wire; and when he discovered this, Amos winked gravely at the fire and his voice descended half an octave.

“Good evening, Congressman,” said Chase.

“Evening, Mr. Chase,” said Amos.

“Gergue told me you were coming home.”

“I guess he was right.”

“He thought you would want to see me.”

Amos’ eyes widened. “Did he say so?”

Chase laughed. “Well—you understand—Gergue has his methods.”

Amos nodded soberly. “Yes, yes. Well—you can come to-night if you want.”

“Er—what—”

“I said you could come to-night. I’ll be home all evenin’.”

Winthrop Chase, Senior, hesitated. He hesitated for so long that Amos asked blandly: “Er—anything else?”

“No, no-o,” Chase decided then. “No—I’ll come.”

“That’s good,” said Amos; and hung up, and came back to his chair with a pleasant smile upon his countenance.

Almost immediately, some one knocked on the door. From the sitting room, the door was open into the hall, so that Amos heard the knock easily. There was a bell, and most people rang the bell; but Peter Gergue always knocked, so Amos called out confidently:

“Come in, Pete.”

Listening, he heard the front door open. Then it closed, and Gergue came slowly along the hall and into the room. Amos looked up and nodded.

“Evening, Peter. Glad t’see you. Take a chair. Any chair.”

Peter put his hat on the table and dragged a morris chair before the fire. He sat down, still without speaking, and extended his feet toward the fire in imitation of Amos. Amos’ hands were clasped across his middle, and Gergue clasped his hands there too. Thus they remained for a little time silent.

But such a position put Gergue under too great a handicap. He had to get his fingers into his hair; and so presently he unclasped his hands and began to rummage through the tangle at the nape of his neck for his medulla, as though hunting for something. Apparently, he found it; for after a moment he said slowly:

“Well, Amos, we’re licked.”

Amos turned his head and studied Gergue. “Do tell!” he exclaimed at last.

Gergue nodded. “Hollow ain’t got any more chance of being Mayor than—than young Wint Chase has.”

This seemed to startle Amos. He opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, closed it again, then asked: “Young Wint! What makes you say that?”

“We-ell—no more chance than I got, then,” Gergue amended.

The Congressman seemed satisfied with the amendment. He wagged his head as though deploring the situation, then asked: “Why? What’s Jim done?”

Gergue looked at Amos reproachfully. “We-ell, you know Jim.”

“Always does the right thing, don’t he?”

“They ain’t no votes in that.”

The two considered this truism for a time in thoughtful silence. In this interval, Gergue produced and filled and lighted a pipe in a manner painfully like that of Amos. Every detail—pipe, plug, knife, priming—was the same. Amos watched him with interest, and when Gergue had finished with the rites, Amos asked:

“How big a margin has Chase got?”

Gergue opened his hands as though baring every secret.

“Well,” he said, “Jim’ll get two votes. Yours and mine. He won’t vote for himself. Says it ain’t right. So I don’t know where we can count on anything else.” He hesitated, then: “You know, this Chase has got a holt on Hardiston.”

“How?”

“Every way. Four-five hundred men working for him, one way or another. The drys are all with him. The money is all with him. And the Democrats are all with him.”

Amos pondered. “I hadn’t no notion Chase was such a popular man,” he said.

Gergue shook his head. “He ain’t. They’d all like to see him licked, just to see his swelling go down some. But—a man can’t vote for Hollow.”

Amos puffed hard. “You know, Peter, I’ve a mind to vote for Chase myself.”

Gergue was startled; but after a minute he grinned. “Whatever you say goes for me, Amos.”

“Chase is a good man, a big man, a public-spirited man. You know, Peter, if he was elected Mayor, things being as they is, he’d stand right in line for Congress next fall. I don’t know as I’d even run against him, Pete.”

Gergue leaned forward and clapped his knee and chuckled. Something pleased him. Amos watched him with an expression of comical bewilderment, until Gergue caught his eye and sobered abruptly. Then Amos asked, most casually:

“How’s young Wint, Peter?”

Gergue looked sharply at the Congressman. “The boy? We-ell—he’s over twenty-one.”

“Er—is he?”

Amos squinted at the ceiling. “Seems to me he is. He was three years ahead of Agnes in school and high school, and she is twenty now. He must be twenty-two or three.”

Peter considered this, but made no comment. After a moment Amos asked again: “So—how is he, Peter?”

Gergue rummaged through his back hair. “We-ell—they kicked him out of State for over-study of booze.”

Amos nodded. “I know. But—how is he?”

“Still at it.”

“Still at—the booze?”

“He drinks when he has a mind to; and he’s got a large and active mind.”

“What does his father think of it?”

“Various sentiments.”

“Wint is looking badly.”

Gergue nodded. “I come along the street this morning,” he said. “He was standing in front of the Post Office. His back was to me; and when I says, ‘Hello’ to him, he jumped a foot. Nerves on edge.”

“That’s natural.”

Peter shook his head. “Not natural; booze.”

“Oh,” said Amos; and: “But he’ll straighten up. He’ll come out all right.”

Peter shook his head. “I’ve seen ’em go that way. By and by his face will begin to look old, just over night. And then his clothes will get shabby, and b’fore anybody knows different, he’ll be hanging around the hotel corner of nights with a cigarette in his mouth.” He hesitated. “He’s set in his way, Amos. Nothing but an accident’ll change him.”

Amos looked across at Peter curiously. “Accident?”

“Yeah.”

Gergue volunteered no explanation; but after a little time Amos said slowly: “Well, Peter—some accidents ain’t so accidental as others. Pete, you just make a study of Wint Chase for me.”

Gergue looked curious, and he threaded his hair for his medulla oblongata, but he asked no questions. Before a direct instruction or command from Amos, Peter was always silently obedient. He looked at Amos, and then he turned back at the fire; and for a long time the two men sat thus, staring into the coals above the smoking bowls of their pipes.

It is one of the merits of cut-plug for smoking that a well-filled pipe gives a long smoke. Amos Caretall’s pipe lasted three quarters of an hour before the last embers were drowned in the moisture at the bottom of the bowl. He knocked out the loose ashes into his palm, leaving the half-burned cake in the bottom of the pipe to serve as priming for a later smoke, and then stuffed the pipe affectionately away into his pocket.

Peter was still puffing at his, and Amos watched him for a little, and then he chuckled softly to himself. Gergue looked across at him in faint surprise. Amos chuckled harder, began to laugh, laughed aloud—and instantly was as sober as a judge.

“Peter,” he said slowly, “what you reckon Winthrop Chase, Senior, would up and do if he was licked for Mayor?”

Gergue considered for a moment, then seriously judged: “He’d up and lay him an egg.”

Amos nodded. “And eggs will be worth fifty cents a dozen, right here in Hardiston, inside a month. It might pay to have him lay one, Pete.”

“You’ll need a political Lay-or-Bust for that, Amos.”

“I’ve got one, Peter.”

Gergue stared slowly at Amos, his eyes ponderously inquisitive. At length he asked: “What brand?”

Amos leaned toward him quickly. “Almost any good man could beat Chase, couldn’t he, Pete?”

“He might have—starting at the first go off. He couldn’t now.”

“Chase ain’t rightly popular.”

“No—he puts on too many airs.”

“Hardiston’d like to see a joke on him—now wouldn’t it?”

“Sure. A man always can laugh at a joke on the other fellow. Special if it’s on old Chase.”

“Pete—I kind of like Congress.”

Gergue nodded. “Don’t blame you a speck.”

“I want to keep a-going back there.”

“Fair enough.”

“But you say, yourself, that Chase don’t agree with me on that.”

“He says so too.”

Amos tapped Gergue’s knee. “Pete, wouldn’t a good, smashing joke on Chase put him out of the running for a spell?”

Gergue considered. “I’ll say this, Amos,” he announced at length. “A joke on a man is all right, if it don’t go too far. If you go too far, you’ll make ’em sorry for Chase, and then there’ll be no stopping ’em. Politics sure does love a martyr. But—short o’ that—a joke’s good medicine.”

Caretall sat up quickly. “That’s fine,” he said soberly. “That’s fine,” he repeated. And he fell silent, and after a little said, half aloud and for the third time, “Peter, that’s fine.”

Peter’s pipe smoked out, and he, too, emptied the ashes and preserved the last charred bits of tobacco as Amos had done. Then he rose, reached slowly for his hat. “I’ll go along, Amos,” he announced.

The Congressman lumbered up out of his chair, his broad countenance beaming. “Fair enough, Peter. But, Pete—I want to ask you something.”

Gergue shifted his hat to his left hand; his right went to the back of his neck. “What is it?”

“Take a man like young Wint, Peter. Suppose he was give a job—sudden—that was right up to him. Responsibility, power, something to do that had to be done. Nobody to boss him but himself. Him and his heart. What would that do to a man like Wint, Pete?”

Gergue scratched his head—hard. He thought—hard. Amos said softly: “Don’t hurry, Pete. Think it over.” Gergue nodded; and presently he said:

“Man just like Wint—that’s what you mean?”

“Say—Wint himself.”

“It’d depend on the man.”

“Say it’s Wint.”

“Depend on whether he had any backbone—any stuff in him.”

“Has Wint got it?”

Gergue shook his head. “Ain’t sure.”

“Say he has.”

“Then—this job you mentioned would straighten him out—likely.”

“Say he hadn’t.”

“’Twouldn’t hurt him none.”

Amos nodded. “That’s what I thought, Pete.” He laid his hand on the other’s shoulder and propelled him gently toward the door. There he paused, added: “You do what I asked, will you, Pete? Make a study of Wint.”

“All right.”

“And—Pete.”

Gergue turned.

“Tell V. R. Kite I wish he’d come and see me.”

Peter’s eyes lighted slowly—and after a moment, he grinned. “All right, Amos,” he said quietly, and went down the walk to the gate.

CHAPTER VI
WINTHROP CHASE, SENIOR

WINTHROP CHASE, SENIOR, took himself seriously.

When he walked the streets of Hardiston, bowing most affably, smiling most genially, he was inwardly conscious of the gaze of all who passed that way. He felt their eyes upon him; and this gave him a sense of responsibility, a sense of duty. His duty, as he saw it, was to set an example to the town; an example of erectness and respectability and high ideals. And it must be said for Chase that he did his utmost along these lines.

He was not an educated man. He had been born in Hardiston, and had attended the Hardiston schools; but in those days the Hardiston schools were not remarkable. Chase could read, he could write, and he could arrange and classify more figures in his head than most men could manage on paper. But beyond that, he did not go. There was a native honesty in the man; and this led him to recognize his own shortcomings. For example, when he was called upon to address his fellow citizens, he always summoned a collaborator and arranged his speech in advance. He made no secret of this. In the same way, the printed word was a continual surprise and delight to him; every book he opened was a succession of amazing revelations. And this characteristic gave him a profound admiration for such folk as the editors of the Hardiston papers. As business men, he had for them only a benignant contempt; as politicians, they were pawns and nothing more; but for their ability to say what they wished with pen and paper, Chase accorded them all honors.

The elder Chase’s sense of responsibility to the town had made him an unsympathetic father to Wint. He expected Wint, too, to live up to the position in which he found himself. It was not hypocrisy that made him gloss over private errors and denounce more public aberrations; it was a feeling that Wint owed a good example to the town. Thus he had never objected to Wint’s drinking at home—the Chases always had liquor in the house—but when Wint was expelled from the state university for drinking, his father was furious; and when Wint once or twice was brought home from town in an uncertain state of mind and body, his father raged.

The elder Chase made many errors, most of them wellintentioned, and he accomplished much good, most of it by accident. He was a curious compound of harmless faults and dangerous virtues. And no one regretted his mistakes more than Chase himself.

Five minutes after telephoning Amos Caretall, Winthrop Chase saw that was a strategic mistake, and began regretting it. Until Amos’s home-coming the mayoralty campaign had been going smoothly and satisfactorily. Hollow was not a dangerous opponent, and Chase seemed reasonably sure of election by default.

Nevertheless, the coming of Amos had disturbed him. Amos was rightly feared by his political enemies. He had the habit of success; and no matter how secure Chase might feel, the thought of Amos made him secretly tremble.

He was not a man to avoid conflict; therefore he had sought to confront the enemy forthwith, and had telephoned Amos with that end in view. He wished to bolster his own courage by seeing Amos cower; and Amos had disappointed him. Instead of cowering, Amos had told him carelessly that if he, Chase, wished to do so, he might call on Amos that night. And Chase had promised to come.

Now he was torn with regrets. He was sorry he had telephoned; and he was sorry he had promised to come. At first he thought he would stay at home, let Amos wait in vain; and he tried to bolster this decision with arguments. But they were unconvincing. Sure as he was of the election, Amos made him nervous; and eventually, with a desperate feeling that he must know the worst, and quickly, he set out for the Caretall home.

Agnes came to admit him when he rang the bell. He liked the girl. She was pretty and gay, and she was always flutteringly deferential in his presence. She opened the door, and saw him, and cried delightedly:

“Why, Mr. Chase! Come in!”

He obeyed, drawing off his gloves. He was one of the four men in Hardiston who wore kid gloves. “Good evening, Agnes,” he said, in his tone of condescending graciousness. “Is your father at home?”

“Oh, yes—he’s in by the fire.”

Amos called from the sitting room: “Toasting my toes, Winthrop. Come in.”

“Let me take your coat,” Agnes was begging; and he allowed her to help him off with the garment, and then handed her his hat and gloves and watched her bestow them on the rack. She was graceful in everything she did, and she looked up at him in a humble little fashion, as though to solicit his approval. He gave it.

“Thank you, Agnes,” he said gravely.

“Now!” she said, and turned toward the sitting-room door. In the doorway she paused. “Dad, here’s Mr. Chase.”

“Come in, Chase,” Amos called again. “Take a chair. Any chair. Turning cold, ain’t it?”

Amos did not get up; but Chase went toward him and held out his hand so that the Congressman was forced to rise. He was in the act of filling his pipe again, knife in one hand, slices of tobacco in the other; and he had trouble clearing one hand for the greeting, but he managed. “Now sit down, Chase,” he urged again, when the handshake was over. “Glad you came in. Is it turning cold or ain’t it?”

“Yes,” said Chase seriously. “Yes, there’s a touch of cold in the air.”

“Sky looked that way to me this afternoon. Early, too.”

“I think it will pass, though,” Chase declared. “We’ll have some Indian summer yet.”

“Had some snow, haven’t you?”

“Two or three inches, early this month. But it melted in an hour when the sun touched it.”

Amos nodded slowly. He was lighting his pipe. Agnes had come in with the visitor, but after a moment took herself upstairs and the two men were left alone. This made Chase uncomfortable. Even Agnes would have been a support in this encounter. He looked sidewise at Amos, but Amos was studying the fire; and after a minute the Congressman got up and poked out the ashes and put on half a bucket of fresh coal. Then he jabbed the coals again, and so resumed his seat.

“Ain’t been over to Washington lately, Chase,” he said presently.

Chase aroused himself. “No. No. Been very busy, Amos. Affairs here, you know....”

“I know, I know. Now, me—Washington is my business. But you have to stick to your coal and your iron.” He paused. “I sh’d think you’d get tired of it, Chase.”

“How are things in the Capitol?” Chase asked importantly. Amos looked at him sidewise.

“Why—I ain’t noticed anything wrong.”

“Who will the Republicans nominate?”

Amos chuckled. “Gawd, Chase, I wish I knew.”

“They’ll need a strong man, Amos. The country’s swinging again.”

The Congressman looked at Chase, and he grinned. “Chase,” he said, “you’re a funny Democrat.”

“Why? I—”

“I guess you’re one of these waiting Democrats—eh?”

Chase looked confused. “I.... What’s that?”

“Figuring there’s bound to be a swing some day—and when it comes, you’ll be there and waiting,” Amos nodded. “You’re right, too. Bound to be a swing some day.”

“I’m a Democrat from conviction, Amos. The Democratic party....”

“Fiddlesticks! Tariff has made you—iron and steel. Fiddlesticks!”

Chase fidgeted; Amos fell silent, and for a time neither man spoke. Once Amos reached into a table drawer and produced a cigar and offered it to the other. Chase lighted it. When it was half smoked, Amos asked carelessly:

“Well, Chase, what was it you wanted to see me about?”

Chase put himself on the defensive. “I—why you asked me to come. I supposed....”

Amos grinned. “Have it so, Chase. Have it so.” He puffed hard at his pipe, looked at the other. “Well—does it look like the swing was coming in Hardiston?”

Chase stiffened self-consciously. “The town has demanded that I run for Mayor—and—I consented.”

“That was a public-spirited thing to do, Chase. With all your business to hinder you—take your time....”

“I was glad to do it. A man owes it.... If there is a demand for him, he must respond.”

“Sure! Sure thing! And you’ve responded noble, Chase.”

“I’ve made a straightforward campaign.”

“First-class campaign. You figure you’ve got a chance?”

Chase’s confidence returned. “I’m going to win, Amos. Nothing can stop me. I’ll be the next Mayor of Hardiston—sure.”

Amos looked thoughtful. “I ain’t in touch—myself.” He puffed at his pipe. “Gergue says you’ll win—barring an accident.”

“There will be no accident.”

“Eh?”

“I intend to see to it that there is no accident.”

Amos nodded. “Well,” he commented, “that’s your privilege.”

Chase leaned forward. “Congressman,” he said seriously, “it’s a bad plan to stay away from home so long. You get out of touch with affairs here. You ought to—you need some ally here to watch over your interests.”

Amos looked up quickly. “Now, I never thought of that,” he declared.

Chase clapped his hand on his knee. “It’s right. You can’t tell what the people are thinking unless you live among them—as I do, sir.”

Amos considered this statement, and then he remarked: “Take this wet and dry business, for instance. Now, me—I’m so far away I don’t rightly know what the folks here are thinking. But you—” He hesitated. “How does it strike you, Chase?”

“It’s the big issue here.”

“How? County’s dry.”

“But the town isn’t. The law is not enforced here.”

“Why not?”

Chase laughed shortly. “The present Mayor—”

Amos interrupted. “I’m a wet man, Chase. You know that. I guess you are, too, ain’t you?”

Chase shook his head sternly. “No, indeed. Prohibition is the greatest good for the greatest number. I want to see it sweep the country—state-wide—nation-wide.”

Amos looked startled. “I’m surprised.”

“There’s no question about it, Congressman. Prohibition is coming. And I’m for it.”

“You have—you ain’t a dry man, are you?”

“I believe in moderation.”

“Now that’s funny, too,” Amos commented, his head on one side in the familiar posture that suggested he was suffering from stiff neck.

“Funny? Why?”

“You and me. Me—I’m a wet man; I believe in license. But I’m a teetotaller. You’re a dry man—but you like moderation. I’m for a wet state and a dry cellar—and you’re for a dry state and a wet cellar. Ain’t that always the way?”

Chase flushed stiffly. “Many great men have held public views differing from their private practice.”

“Who, f’r instance?”

“Why—many of them.”

Amos nodded. “Well, you’ve studied the thing. Maybe you’re right.”

“I am right.”

The Congressman looked at the other with a cold, quizzical light in his eyes. “How ’bout Wint? He hold your views?”

Chase turned red as fire. “He has nothing to do with this.”

“I heard he was a wet man, personally. But I wondered if he was dry like you in theory.”

The other said stiffly: “My son has disgraced me. I have been very angry with him. But it may have been as much my fault as his. I have tried to be patient. He understands, now, that if he continues—if he does not mend his ways—I—” He stopped uncertainly.

“Reck’n you’d disown him.”

An unexpected and very human weakness showed in the countenance of the elder Chase. His features worked; he said huskily, “Well—the boy—he’s my only child, Amos.”

Amos had never liked Winthrop Chase till that moment. He was surprised at the burst of sympathy that moved him. He nodded. “You’re right, Chase. And—Wint’s a good boy, I figure.”

His tone encouraged the other. Chase leaned toward the Congressman. “Amos,” he said, “there’s a new day coming in Ohio politics.”

Amos looked puzzled. “To-morrow’s always likely to be a new day.”

“Things are changing, Amos.”

“How?”

“Men are dissatisfied with the present—administration of affairs.”

“Men are always dissatisfied.”

“They’re looking around for a new—hired man—Amos.”

Amos chuckled; then he said slowly: “Well—there’s lots of folks looking for the job.”

Chase hesitated, considering his next word; and in the end he cast diplomacy to the winds and came out flatly: “Amos—it’s a good time to look around for friends. To make new alliances.”

Amos looked at the other thoughtfully. “Meaning—just what?”

Chase said simply: “You and I ought to get together, Amos.”

“We’re—here together.”

“I mean—a permanent alliance—offensive and defensive. For mutual good.”

Amos’ pipe had smoked itself to the end. He emptied it with his accustomed care before answering. Then he said slowly: “Specify, Chase. Specify.”

Chase proceeded to specify. “I’m going to be the next Mayor of Hardiston, Amos.”

“Barring that accident.”

Chase brushed that suggestion aside. “My victory—in a strong Republican town—will make me an important figure in the district.”

“Meaning—my district.”

“Meaning the Congressional district.”

Amos looked at the other. “You figuring to run against me next year.”

Chase shook his head. “I don’t want to. There’s no sense in our cutting each other’s throats.”

“That’s against the law, anyhow.”

Chase leaned forward more earnestly. “Amos—here’s my proposition. We ought to get together. I’m willing. I’ve got Hardiston. Sentiment in the district is swinging. I can make a good fight against you next year—I think I can win. But I don’t want to fight you. So—Let’s get together. Party politics are out of date. We’re the two biggest men in the county, Amos. You step aside and let me go to Congress—I can beat any one else easily. And I’ll back you for—the Senate, Amos.”

For a moment Amos remained very quietly in his chair; then he coughed, such a loud, harsh cough that Chase jumped. And then he said slowly: “Chase—you startled me.”

Chase said condescendingly, grandly: “No reason for that, Amos.”

“But my land, man—the Senate! Me in the Senate!”

“Why not? Worse men than you are there.”

“Chase—you’re the man for the Senate—not me.”

Chase bridled like a girl. “No, no, Amos. You’ve the experience, the wide view—”

Amos seemed to recall something. “That’s so, Chase. And you—you ain’t Mayor yet. Something might happen.”

“It won’t.”

Amos rose. “Chase,” he said, “I’ve got to know you better to-night than in twenty years.”

Chase grasped the Congressman’s hand firmly. This was a habit of his, this firm clasp. “It’s high time, then, Amos.”

“Yes, yes,” Amos considered. “Tell you what, Chase,” he said at last, “I’ll think it over.”

“It’s the thing to do, Amos.”

“I’ll think it over, Chase,” the Congressman repeated. He was ushering the other toward the door, helping him into his coat, opening the door. “Wait till after election, Chase,” he said then deferentially. “If you’re elected Mayor of Hardiston—I don’t see but what we’ll have to team up together.”

Chase grasped the Congressman’s hand again. “That’s a bargain, Amos.”

“A bargain,” Amos echoed. Then: “Good night, Chase.”

The door closed; and Amos, after a minute, began to chuckle slowly under his breath.

CHAPTER VII
V. R. KITE

VICTOR RUTHERFORD KITE was a man about half the size of his name. Specifically, he was five feet and two inches tall with his shoes on and his pompadour ruffed up. A saving sense of the fitness of things had led him to abandon the long roll of names bestowed upon him by his parents in favor of the shorter and more fitting initials. As V. R. Kite, he had lived in Hardiston for twenty odd years; and most Hardiston people had forgotten what his given names actually were.

He was about sixty years old; and he looked it. His eyes were small, and they were washy blue. The eyelids fell about them in thousands of tiny folds and wrinkles, so that the eyes themselves were almost hidden. His eyebrows and his hair and his hints of side whiskers were gray. These side whiskers were really not whiskers at all; they were merely a faint downward growth of the hair before his ears; and they lay on his dry cheeks like the stroke of a brush. His skin was parched dry; it was so dry that it had a powdery look. He walked with a dignified little swing of his short legs, and held his head poised upon his thin neck in a self-contained way that indefinably suggested a turkey.

This man was a member of the session of his church; he was the proprietor and manager of a store that would have been a five-and-ten cent emporium in a larger town than Hardiston; and he was the acknowledged leader of the “wet” forces in Hardiston. He himself had come to the town in the beginning to run a saloon; but after a few years, he submerged his own personality in this venture and opened the little store, leaving a lieutenant to manage the saloon which he still owned. Thereafter, he acquired other establishments of a like nature, until he attained the dignity of a vested interest. When county option came, he suffered in proportion.

But though town and county voted “dry,” there were any number of Hardiston folk who still liked a drink now and then; and the city—for the town of Hardiston was legally a city—took judicial cognizance of the will of its citizens to this extent: the prohibition law was not strictly enforced. The official interpretation of it was: “It’s against the law to sell liquor if you get caught.”

V. R. Kite thought this was reasonable enough, and took care not to get caught.

On the evening of Amos Caretall’s home-coming, Kite was not in his store, so Peter Gergue had some difficulty in locating him. As a last resort, he tried the little man’s home, and was frankly surprised to find Kite there. He delivered Amos’s message, and Kite, who was at times a fiery little man, and a sulker between whiles, agreed in a surly fashion that he would go and see Amos that night. Gergue was satisfied.

Kite’s house was near that of Amos; but he did not set forth at once. When he did, it was just in time to encounter Winthrop Chase, Senior, at Amos’s gate. Kite bridled and slid past Chase as warily as a cat. The two men did not speak. If they had spoken, they would have fought; for each of them felt that he had borne the last bearable insult from the other. They passed, and Kite hurried up to Amos’s door while Winthrop Chase, looking back, watched with a calmly complacent smile. He felt that he and Amos had come to an understanding; and he rejoiced at the thought that this understanding meant the downfall of Kite as a political power in Hardiston.

Kite knocked at the door while Amos was still chuckling in the hall; and Amos let him in. Kite, once the door was open, slid inside, shoved the door shut behind him, and exclaimed in a low, furious voice: “That Chase met me outside. He was here. Don’t deny it, Amos! Did you aim for me to meet him here?”

Amos chuckled and patted Kite’s shoulder. “Now, now, Kite,” he said soothingly. “You didn’t run onto him here. You didn’t have to talk to him. So what you mad about?”

“I hate the sight of the man. He makes me sick.”

“Come in and set down,” said Amos, still chuckling.

They went into the sitting-room, Kite still grumbling at the nearness of his escape. When they were once settled, Amos broke in on this monologue without hesitation: “Chase says he’s going to be the next Mayor—whe’er or no,” he remarked.

Kite’s dry little countenance twisted with pain. Amos saw, and asked sympathetically: “That gripe ye, does it?”

“I’ll never live in the town with him Mayor,” Kite exploded. “I won’t live here. I’ll sell out and move away. I’ll shoot myself! Or him! I’ll....”

He petered out, and Amos grinned. “I gather you and Chase don’t jibe. What’s he ever done to you?”

“Grinned at me. He’s always grinning at me like a—like a—like....”

Amos smoothed the grin from his own countenance with a great hand, and tilted his head on one side. “You and him disagree some on the liquor issue, I take it.”

“We disagree on every issue. He’s....”

“Hardiston’s a little bit wet, ain’t it?”

“Of course! And no one objects! But this Chase wants to get in and make it dry. He’s a....”

“This county option law’s popular, though.”

“Popular—with fools and hypocrites like Chase.”

“Chase’ll make a good Mayor,” Amos suggested. “He’s a fine, public-spirited man. Always sacrificing himself for the town—sacrificing his own interests—an’ all that. So he says, anyhow. Said so to me, to-night.”

Kite waved his clenched fists above his head. He fought for words. Amos seemed not to notice this.

“He’s a good man, a churchly man,” he mused.

Kite exploded. “Damn hypocrite!”

Amos looked across at the other in surprise. “Hypocrite? How’s that?”

Kite became fluent. “Take the liquor question. He preaches dry—talks dry—and drinks like a fish. And his son is a common toper.”

Amos shook his head. “We-ell, a man’s private life ain’t nothing to do with his political principles. Lots of cases like that. If a man thinks right, and performs his office, I reckon that’s all you can ask. Out of office hours—he’s allowed to do what he wants.”

“He’ll ruin Hardiston,” Kite declared. “Ruin it.” He whirled toward the other. “Your fault, too, Amos. If you’d put up a man against him, instead of a fish like Jim Hollow....”

“I figured Jim would do. He always tried to do the right thing,” Amos protested; and Kite dismissed the protest with a grunt.

“The town don’t want Chase,” he declared vehemently, “but they can’t take Hollow.”

“We-ell,” said Amos thoughtfully, “what’s going to be done about it?”

Kite threw up his hands. “Nothing. Too late. But I....”

The Congressman interrupted drawlingly: “Now if it was young Wint that was going to be Mayor—you wouldn’t have to worry.”

Kite laughed shortly. “I guess not. But—he’s not.”

“He wouldn’t be likely to make the town so awful dry.”

“Not unless he drank it dry.”

“We-ell, he couldn’t do that.”

Kite grinned. “I’d chance it.”

They were silent for a moment; then Amos said slowly: “Funny—what a difference one letter makes. ‘Jr.’ instead of ‘Sr.’ Eh?”

Kite nodded slowly; and Amos was silent again, and so for a time the two men sat, thinking. Kite stared at the fire, his face working. Amos watched the fire, but most of all he watched Kite. He studied the little man, his head tilted on one side, his eyes narrowed. And Kite remained oblivious of this scrutiny. In the end, Amos spoke:

“Kite—how many votes you figure will be cast at this election?”

Kite looked up, considered. “A thousand or twelve hundred, I suppose.”

Amos bestirred his great bulk and drew from a pocket a handful of letters. He chose one, replaced the others. From another pocket he routed a stubby pencil, moistened the lead, and set down Kite’s figures on the envelope. “I think that’s too many,” he commented.

“Maybe,” Kite agreed. “What does it matter?”

“How many wet votes can you swing against Chase as it stands?”

Kite frowned. “I can’t do much with Hollow to work with. Maybe four hundred.”

“Suppose you had a good man to work with?”

“He ought to get close to five hundred out of twelve.”

“Everybody so much in love with Chase as that?”

Kite shook his head. “They don’t like him. Nobody does. He thinks he owns the town.”

“Does he own it?”

“A good part. Three or four hundred votes, anyhow.”

Amos tapped his envelope with his pencil, figuring thoughtfully. “I was thinking some of playing a little joke on Chase,” he said at last. “Think they’d enjoy a joke on him?”

Kite looked across at the Congressman with hope in his eye for the first time that evening. “Any joke on Chase will find lots to laugh at it,” he declared.

Amos nodded. “That’s what Gergue said.”

“He’s right.” Kite’s face fell. “But shucks! What chance is there?”

“There’s a chance,” said Amos.

“What is it?”

“Listen, Kite,” said the Congressman soberly. “Listen and I’ll tell you.”

He began to speak; he talked for a long time, and as he explained, Kite’s countenance passed from doubt to hope and then to exultant confidence.

CHAPTER VIII
THE RALLY

THE home-coming of Congressman Caretall created a momentary stir in Hardiston; but that was all. Every one knew he had come home to take a hand in the mayoralty election; but every one also knew that the elder Chase was going to be elected Mayor in spite of all Caretall could do, and so the first stir of interest soon lagged. There was no sport to be had in an election that was a foregone conclusion.

Caretall did not seem to be worrying about the situation. He walked uptown every morning, waited at the Post Office while the morning mail was distributed, talked with the men that gathered there, went to the barber shop for his shave, to the Smoke House for his plug of black tobacco, to the hotel, or to the Journal office, or some other rallying spot for men otherwise unattached.

Now and then he was seen to drop in at Peter Gergue’s office; but the best proof that he was doing nothing to change the election lay in the fact that Gergue was idle. That lank gentleman seldom emerged from his office, and when he did so, the fact that his mind was free of care was attested by the circumstance that he left his back hair severely alone. Gergue was a Caretall barometer; and all the signs pointed to “fair, followed by a probable depression!”

A lull settled over Hardiston. Chase carried on his campaign regularly but without heat. He talked with individuals on street corners and with groups wherever he found them; he spoke most graciously to all who met him on the street; and as the last week before election dawned, he announced two meetings, to which all voters were invited. They would be held in the Rink; otherwise the Crescent Opera House—and at these meetings, numerous speakers would expound the justice of the Chase cause. Chase himself, of course, would be the principal speaker.

The first of these meetings was held on Tuesday night, a week before the election; the second was set for the following Saturday. On Tuesday afternoon, Amos Caretall and Chase came face to face in the Post Office; and half a dozen people saw them greet each other pleasantly and without heat. Chase spoke as though he could afford to be generous, Amos like a man willing to accept generosity.

“I hope you’ll come to my meeting to-night, Amos,” Chase invited with grave condescension; and he laughed and added: “You might learn something that would be of value—about municipal affairs—”

“I was figuring on coming,” said Amos, surprisingly enough. It was surprising even to Chase; but he hid this feeling.

“Fine, fine!” he declared. “Amos, I’m glad to hear it. Partisanship has no place in city affairs.”

“That’s right,” Amos agreed.

Chase laughed. “If you don’t look out, I’ll call on you to speak to-night,” he threatened.

Amos grinned at that. “I reckon I wouldn’t be scared,” he declared. “I’ve spoke before.”

They parted with no further word save laughing jests; but when Chase turned toward his office, his eyes were thoughtful, and Amos watched his departing figure with a faint smile. While Chase was still in sight, Gergue came along; and he spoke to Amos in his habitual low drawl, and received a word from Amos in reply.

Gergue nodded. “The bee’ll keep a buzzing till he does it,” he promised; and Amos chuckled. He chuckled all that day; but his countenance was sober enough when he presented himself at the entrance to the Rink that night. He was alone; and he walked boldly down the aisle, responding to greetings on every hand, and took a conspicuous seat near the front.

The curtain had been raised; and the stage was set with a stock scene representing a farmyard, or something of the kind. There was an impracticable well at the right, in the rear; and at the left, the kitchen door of the farmhouse stood open beneath an arborway of cardboard grapevines. In the center of the stage, a table had been set; upon it a white pitcher of water and a glass; and in the semicircle about the table, half a dozen chairs. The stage setting was not strikingly appropriate, but no one save Amos gave it so much as a chuckle.

When he had studied the stage, Amos turned to look about at the audience. The Rink was half filled; but half of the people in it were either women or boys too young to vote. The women in Hardiston were all immensely interested in politics; and as for the boys—well, a boy loves a meeting.

While Amos was still studying the audience, Ed Skinner, editor of the weekly Sun, appeared on the stage, walked to the table, rapped on it with a wooden mallet which had obviously been designed for the uses of carpentry, and called the house to order. Amos settled in his seat and the meeting began.

There were four speakers. Skinner talked first; he was followed by Davy Morgan, a foreman in Chase’s furnace; and he in turn gave way to Will Murchie, from up the creek, who had been elected Attorney General the year before, and so won the honor of breaking the air-tight Republican grip on state offices. The testimony of these men was unanimously to the effect that Winthrop Chase, Senior, had the makings of the best Mayor any city in the state ever saw.

After which, Chase himself appeared, to prove the case indisputably.

Chase read his speech. He always read his speeches. Murchie had written this one for him; and it was well done, flowery, measured, resounding. It was real oratory, even as Chase rendered it. And Amos, in a front seat, was the loudest of all the audience in his applause. He was so loud that at times he interrupted the speaker; but Chase forgave him, beaming on Amos over the footlights.

Abruptly, Chase finished his speech. He finished it and folded it and put it in his pocket; and every one applauded, either from appreciation or relief. They applauded until they saw—by the fact that Chase still held the stage without starting to withdraw—that he had something further to say. Then they fell sulkily silent.

“My friends,” said Chase then, beaming on them. “My friends—I thank you. I thank you all; and particularly I wish to thank Congressman Caretall, down in front here, who has been loud in his applause.

“That’s a good sign. I’m glad he appreciates the fact that it is no use to fight longer. He told me this morning that he was coming here to-night; and in effect he dared me to invite him to speak to you to-night.

“My friends, I have nothing to hide. He cannot frighten me. Congressman Caretall—you have the floor!”

The listeners had been apathetic, bored; but they were so no longer. More of them rose, some climbed on seats and craned their necks the better to see the discomfiture of the Congressman. They yelled at him: “Speech! Sp-e-e-ech!” They jeered at him, confident he would accept their jeers in silence; and so they were the more delighted when he rose lumberingly in his place.

Every one yelled at everybody else to sit down and be quiet. Chase invited Amos up on the stage. Amos shook his head. “I can talk from here,” he roared, “if these gentlemen will be seated so I can look at them.” He spread his hands like one invoking a blessing. “Sit down! Sit down!”

They sat, rustling in their seats, grinning, whispering, gazing; and Amos waited benevolently, head on one side, until they were quiet. Then he spoke.

“My frien-n-d-s!” he drawled. “I am honored. It is an honor to any man to be asked to address a Hardiston audience. And especially on such an occasion—and in such a cause.

“My friends, the name of Chase is an old one in Hardiston. A Chase was one of the first to settle at the salt licks here; a Chase fought the Indians during those first hot years; a Chase dug salt wells when the riffles no longer proved profitable. And when the salt industry died, a Chase was the first to dig coal in this county, and a Chase was the first to establish an iron-smelting furnace here in Hardiston.

“The Chases have deserved well of Hardiston. They have been honored in the past; they will be honored in the future. But they should also be honored in the present.

“My friends, I came here to cast my vote in the city election. I came home in some doubt as to how I should cast that vote. But I am in doubt no longer, my friends.

“I shall go to the polls next Tuesday, and I shall ask for a ballot, and I shall go into a booth; and there, my friends, I shall cast my vote for Mayor.

“And the man I vote for, my friends, I tell you frankly; the man I vote for will be—a Chase!”

The storm broke; and Amos bowed to it and sat down. But that would not do. Chase climbed down from the stage to shake him by the hand and thank him; and others crowded around to do the same thing; and still others came crowding to storm at him for a traitor. And to them all Amos presented a smiling and agreeable countenance.

But this small tumult ended, as such things will. The crowd dispersed; the Rink emptied; and in the end, Chase and Amos walked up the street as far as the hotel together, separating there to go to their respective homes.

Next morning, Hardiston buzzed with the news. Strangely enough, Amos did not show himself in town. He hid at home, said his enemies—those who had been his friends. He hid at home to escape the storm. That was what they said; but it was observed, in the course of the day, that those who went to Amos’s home to accuse him, came away apparently reconciled to the Congressman’s course of action. They made no more complaint.

One of these was Jack Routt. Routt was an attorney, picking up the beginnings of a practice. He had ambitions. Other men had been prosecuting attorney, and there was no reason why a man named Routt should not hold that office. To this end, he had hitched his wagon to Amos’s star; and he was one of the Congressman’s first lieutenants.

Routt had not attended the meeting at the Rink. He and Wint Chase spent the evening together. But when he heard what had happened, he uttered one red-hot ejaculation, then clamped tight his lips and marched off to find Amos and demand an explanation.

He got it. It silenced him. It was observed that he came away from the Caretall home with a puzzled frown twisting his brow above the smile on his lips. But he spoke not, neither could word be enticed from him. Instead, he seemed to put politics off his shoulders, and attached himself, like a guardian angel, to Wint.

That was Wednesday. Wednesday evening, Wint and Routt and Agnes Caretall spent at Joan Arnold’s home, playing cards. Thursday, the four were again together, but this time at the Caretall home. Friday evening, Routt and Wint played pool at the hotel. Saturday evening they went together to the Chase rally at the Rink. It was a jubilant gathering; the speakers were exultant; and the elder Chase, again the speaker of the evening, was calm and paternally promising.

Sunday, the four went picnicking in Agnes Caretall’s car. And it was not until Monday evening that Wint broke away from Routt’s chaperonage. He spent that evening—it was the eve of election day—with Joan.

They were very happy together.

CHAPTER IX
HETTY MORFEE

IN the meanwhile, a single incident. An incident concerning itself with Hetty Morfee, Mrs. Chase’s newly acquired handmaiden.

Hetty was a girl Wint’s own age. She had been born in Hardiston, had lived in Hardiston all her life. She and Wint had gone to school together; they had played together; they had been friends all their lives.

Such things happen in a small town. Wint was the son of Hardiston’s big man; Hetty was the daughter of a man whom nobody remembered. He had come to town, married Hetty’s mother, and gone away. Thereafter, Hetty had been born.

Hetty’s mother was the fifth daughter of a coal miner. She was an honest woman, a woman of sense and sensibility; and Hetty received from her a worthy heritage. But most of Hetty was not mother but father; and all Hardiston knew about Hetty’s father was that he had come and had gone. It was assumed, fairly enough, that he had a roving, rascally, and irresponsible disposition. Hetty, it had been predicted, would not turn out well.

This prediction had not wholly justified itself. Hetty, in the first place, was unnaturally acute of mind. In school, she had mastered the lessons given her with careless ease. The effect was to give her an unwholesome amount of leisure. She occupied this leisure in bedeviling her teachers and inciting to riot the hardier spirits in the school—among whom number Wint.

She was, in those days, a wiry little thing, as hard as nails, as active as a boy, and fully as daring. She had whipped one or two boys in fair, stand-up fight, for Hetty had a temper that went with her hair. Her hair, as has been said, was a pleasant and interesting red.

As a child, she had been freckled. When she approached womanhood, these freckles disappeared and left her with a skin creamy and delicious. Her eyes were large, and warm, and merry. They were probably brown; it was hard to be sure. All in all, she was—give her a chance—a beauty.

Some men of science assert that all healthy children start life with an equal heritage. They attribute to environment the developing differences between men and between women. Hetty might have served them as an illuminating example. In school, she had mastered her lessons quickly, had led her classes as of right; while her schoolmates—including Wint, who was not good at books—lagged woefully behind.

This ascendancy persisted through the first half dozen years of schooling; and then it began, gradually, to disappear. In high school, it was not so marked; and at graduation, she and Wint—for example—were fairly on a par.

Then Wint went to college while Hetty went to work. She worked first in a store and lost that place for swearing at her employer. Then she took up housework, and so gravitated to the Chase household. There Wint encountered her; and within a day or so he discovered that the years since high school had borne him far ahead of Hetty. She now was beginning to recede; her wave had reached its height and was subsiding. He still bore on.

These things may be observed more intimately in a small town; for there, social differences do not so strictly herd the sheep apart from the goats. Thus, while Hetty was his mother’s handmaid, neither Wint nor any one else outspokenly considered her his inferior. She called him Wint, he called her Hetty, and his mother likewise.

Wint found her presence vaguely disturbing. That first night at supper, she had winked at him behind his father’s back. The wink somewhat chilled him. It savored of hardness—And there were other incidents. Wint perceived that Hetty was no longer a schoolgirl; she was, vaguely, sophisticated. Her old recklessness and daring remained; but they were inspired now not by ebullient spirits but by indifference, by bravado.

He remembered ugly rumors....

Wint and Hetty had been, to some extent, comrades in their school days. Once or twice he had defended her against aggression; once he had fought a boy who had told tales on her to the teacher. Hetty had never thanked him; she had even scolded and abused him for this knight-errantry, declaring her ability to take care of herself. Nevertheless, there was gratitude in her. She brought him apples, hiding them secretly in his desk.

On the Friday evening before election, as has been said, Wint and Jack Routt played pool together at the hotel. Afterwards, in spite of Routt’s protests, they went together to the stairway in the alley; and when eventually Wint reached home, he was unsteady on his feet.

His father and mother were abed. The door was never locked, so that he entered the hall without difficulty; but the only light was an electric bulb in the rear of the hall, near the kitchen door, and when he went back to extinguish this, he tripped over a rug and barely saved a fall.

While he was still tottering, the kitchen door opened and Hetty looked out at him. She had on her hat, so that he saw she, too, had just come in. He smiled at her amiably, holding on to the wall for support; and she laughed softly and came and caught his arm.

“Oh, you Wint!” she chided.

He tried to be dignified. “Wha’s matter?” he asked. “I’m all right.”

She winked. “But if father could only see you now!”

He became amiable again. “Thass all right,” he declared, “I’m going to bed. He’s sleeping th’ sleep of th’ just. Thass dad. Sleep of the just!”

“Sure,” she agreed. “But you know what he’d do to you.”

A door opened, in the hall above. A step sounded. Hetty, quick as light, led Wint under the stair where he was invisible from above, and signed him to be quiet. The elder Chase called down the stairs: “Who’s that?”

“Me, Mr. Chase,” said Hetty. “I tripped. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

She heard Chase say something under his breath; but when he answered, his tone was affable. “All right. Time you were abed, Hetty.”

“Uh-huh! I went to see my mother.”

“That’s all right. Good night!”

“Good night!”

They heard him go back to his room, heard the door close behind him. Hetty crossed to Wint. She was trembling a little, and she spoke very gently. “Come up the back stairs, Wint. He won’t hear you. I’ll help you....”

Wint took her arm. “You’re a good girl, Hetty,” he told her.

“You come along.”

They went through the kitchen to the back stairs, and up, Hetty steadying him and encouraging him in a whisper. Wint’s room was at the back of the house, on the second floor; his father’s at the front. Hetty’s was on the third floor. She helped him to the door of his room, and in, and turned on the light. He sat down and grinned amiably at her. She started to go, hesitated, came back and knelt before him. While he watched, not fully understanding, she loosened his shoes. Then she rose.

“Now you go to bed, Wint—and be quiet,” she warned him in a whisper. “Good night!”

He waved his hand. “Thass all right now. G’night!”

She closed the door behind her and went swiftly along the hall to the stair that led upward to her room. But there, with her foot on the lower step, her hand on the rail, she paused.

She paused, and looked back at Wint’s door, and pressed one hand against her mouth, thinking. And slowly her eyes misted with a wistful light. She turned a little, as though to go back....

Then, eyes still misty, she went up the stairs to her own room; and in her own room, with no one to see, Hetty lay down on her face on the bed and cried.

THE people of Hardiston are early risers, and their hours of labor are long and strenuous. The coal miners—what few still find tasks to do in the ravaged hills—are up and about before day in the fall and winter months; the furnace workmen change shifts at unearthly hours; and the glass factory and the pipe works both begin their day when most folks are still abed.

To accommodate these early risers, the polls at Hardiston open at six. They stay open until four or five or six in the afternoon. The hour is left somewhat to the discretion of the election officials. If a heavy vote is cast early, so that an extra hour would mean only half a dozen votes added to the totals, they close the polls and begin their counting in time to get home to supper.

But if there is prospect of a close contest, the polls remain open till the last voter has been given his opportunity.

On this election day, the polls opened at six; and the election officials, particularly those representing the supporters of the elder Chase, went about their duties with a careless confidence. In the second precinct, the polling place was an unoccupied store on the second floor of a two-story building at the corner of Pearl Street and Broadway. The lower floor of this building was occupied by a dealer in monuments; and throughout the day the chink and tap of his chisel and maul never ceased their song. These sounds came up in a muffled fashion through the floor of the room where the votes were being cast.

The early voting here was light. Jim Thomas and Ed Howe were the principal election officers; and they sat with their chairs tilted back and their feet on the railing around a red-hot little iron stove while the trickle of voters came and went. Jim Thomas chewed tobacco, and Ed smoked. He smoked a pipe; and he whittled his tobacco from a black plug, thus identifying himself with the Caretall factions. Aside from the stove and their two chairs, the room contained only the voting paraphernalia. Three booths against the wall, with cloth curtains to divide them; two flat tables, each containing a list of the registered voters; and the ballot box itself, on the floor near the door where each voter deposited his ballot as he departed.

At seven o’clock—the little stove, by this time, had raised the temperature of the room to a stifling mark—Jim Thomas spat in a box of sawdust and grinned at Ed Howe. “Slow, Ed,” he said.

Ed puffed hard. He had a weakness of one eye, a weakness which allowed the lid to droop so that he seemed to be perpetually winking. He turned this winking eye to Jim. “Yeah,” he said.

“I guess Caretall is due to get his.”

“You reckon?” Ed inquired listlessly.

“I reckon.”

Ed grunted and smoked harder than ever.

At half past seven, the elder Chase himself dropped in. “Good morning, boys,” he called from the door. “Splendid day, now isn’t it?”

“Fine,” said Jim Thomas.

Chase produced cigars; he dispensed them graciously. Only Ed Howe refused the proffered smoke.

“Oh, come, Ed,” Chase insisted. “Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings.”

“Never smoke ’em,” said Ed shortly.

“Want to vote once or twice?” Jim Thomas asked, grinning.

Chase chuckled. “I’ve cast my vote. Second ballot in my precinct, Jim.”

“Better chuck in a few more,” Jim advised. “Hollow’s running strong.” He said this seriously, but every one knew it was a joke. Even Ed Howe grinned.

Chase presently departed, still amiable and gracious. His visit had stimulated the imagination of Jim Thomas; and after a little while he rose and took his hat and went down to a group of men in the street outside. Ed looked out of the window curiously. He saw Jim go among the group, hat in hand, obviously taking up a collection. The man seemed to take the matter as a joke. But Jim was grave.

He came back up presently, hat in hand, and approached Ed. “Give up, Ed,” he invited. “A penny, a nickel, any little thing.”

Ed looked in the hat. He saw a button, a burnt match, a pebble, and a slice of tobacco. He grunted and puffed at his pipe. “Set down, Jim,” he invited. “Heat’s touched your head.”

Jim explained, in a hurt tone: “No, Ed, not a bit. Only—some of the boys thought we’d take up a collection and send downstairs for a tombstone for Hollow.”

Ed swung his head slowly and looked at Jim; and a slow grin broke across his countenance. “I declare,” he commented, “you’re a real joker, Jim.” Then he laughed a cackling laugh, wagged his head, and fell into silence again.

The second precinct was the most important in Hardiston. Its voters numbered half as many again as its next rival. And so the candidates gave it more than its share of attention that day. Chase came early and often. Each time he disseminated cigars and amiability. This was his day of glory; and he ate it with a relish, visibly smacking his lips.

Caretall and Gergue came together about eight o’clock in the morning. Amos had very little to say. He glanced at the voting lists, nodded to Ed Howe, called a greeting to Jim Thomas and departed. Peter Gergue remained for a time, scratching the back of his head and talking with those who came to vote.

Amos came back at noon, and as it happened, he met V. R. Kite at the voting place. Kite voted in this precinct, and he had just deposited his ballot when Amos arrived. The two men greeted each other amiably. Amos said: “Morning, Mr. Kite.”

“Good morning, Congressman.”

“Just voting?”

“Yes. Overslept.”

Amos winked. “I trust you voted right, V. R.”

Kite nodded briskly. “Right as rain, Congressman. You too?”

“Sure.”

Jim Thomas listened with frank interest. Now he found an opening for his joke. “You’d better drop in a few votes here, Congressman. Chase is running strong.”

Amos looked at him with interest. “You don’t say, Jim?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well—how do you know, Jim?”

Thomas became faintly confused. “Oh, I can tell.”

“You ain’t been looking at the ballots, have you, Jim?”

Jim blustered. “Look-a-here—who you accusing?”

“You ain’t? Then you must be one of these mediums that can read a folded paper.”

“Oh, sugar! You go....”

Amos grinned. “Matter of fact, Jim, I wish I knowed you was right. I’m frank to say, Jim, that I got a bet on a horse named Chase to win.” Jim gasped, and Amos nodded soberly. “Yes, sir, Jim. You just hear me.”

Jim took a plug of tobacco from his pocket and tore at it with his teeth and stuffed it away again. The operation restored his composure. “Well, Congressman, you’d ought not to bet—and you a lawmaker.”

“It ain’t rightly a bet, Jim,” said Amos. “It’s a sure thing.” He turned toward the door. “Good aft’noon, Jim.”

The voting, beginning slow, had picked up during the noon hour. A steady stream of men came in throughout that period and when this stream subsided, four-fifths of the registered voters had cast their ballots. Ed Howe suggested: “Might as well close up shop at four, hadn’t we, Jim?”

“Sure,” said Jim. “They ain’t no real contest to-day anyway.”

“I reckon that’s right,” Ed agreed.

This was a quarter before two o’clock in the afternoon. At two o’clock, Caretall and Chase came face to face at the door of the voting room. They came in arm in arm; and Chase asked graciously: “Well, boys, how are things going?”

Jim Thomas reported briskly, “Fine, Mr. Chase. Most of the votes in. Ed and me’s figuring to close at four.”

Chase nodded. “I guess that’s safe. Don’t you think so, Amos?”

“Whatever you say, Chase,” Amos agreed. “Looks to me like the fight’s all over.”

It was observed at that time, however, that Congressman Caretall was strangely buoyant for a beaten man.

Chase and Caretall separated at the door, and Jim Thomas called to Ed Howe: “I’m going uptown and get me some dinner. I ain’t ate yet.”

“Go along,” Ed agreed.

Jim went along, overtaking the elder Chase, and they walked together along Pearl Street and up Main to the restaurant. Chase was quietly contented and exceedingly courteous and gracious to those whom they encountered; and for the first half of the journey, Jim basked in the great man’s smile.

It was at the corner of Main Street that the first fly dropped into Jim’s ointment. As they turned the corner, they encountered three men. One was V. R. Kite; another was old Thompson, crippled with rheumatism but fat with wealth, and a lifelong enemy of Chase; and the third was Thompson’s son, the shoe man.

Chase said: “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” to these men. Kite responded: “Afternoon!” Old Thompson grunted; and young Thompson said: “How do you do, Mr. Chase?” with entirely too much sweet deference in his tones. They passed the group, but when they had gone twenty yards, something prompted Jim Thomas to look around, and he detected the elder Thompson in the act of smiting his knee in a paroxysm of silent and malignant mirth.

Right then, Jim Thomas smelled a rat. He looked up at Chase, but Chase was blind and deaf. Jim started to speak, then thought better of it; and at the next corner, he left his chieftain and turned aside to the restaurant.

It seemed to him that Sam O’Brien, the fat proprietor of the place, grinned at him when he entered. He ordered a veal sandwich, and when it was ready for him, he doused it with mustard and ate it with sips of cold water between each mouthful. It was delicious, but his stomach was uneasy under it.

Sam was frankly grinning at him; and so Jim asked at length, in some desperation: “What’s the joke, Sam?”

Sam shook his head. “How’s the election going, Jim?”

“All Chase.”

Sam threw back his head. He was a fat man, and the mirth billowed out of him. He rocked, he slapped his knee. “All Chase!” he gasped. “All Chase! Oh, Jim! Oh, Jimmy man! All Chase!” He wiped tears from his eyes. “Jim, you’ll kill me!”

Jim snorted. He was thoroughly disturbed. Sam was a man whose finger touched the public pulse. Obviously, he knew something. Jim leaned across the counter. “What’s the joke, Sam? Come on—let me laugh, too.”

Sam waved his fat hands at his customer. “You go away, Jim. You go ’way. You’ll kill me.”

His chortles pursued Jim to the street. There Thomas paused, irresolute. What was he going to do? Warn Chase? Warn Chase’s cohorts? But what should he warn them about? He remembered suddenly that his place was beside the ballot box, and he turned and fairly ran down the street to the voting rooms. And it seemed to him that, as he sped, mirth pursued him.

But he found everything as he left it. Ed Howe still sat by the stove, still smoked. He looked up as Jim entered, and shifted his pipe in his mouth.

“Why, Jim!” he exclaimed in pretended dismay. “You’re all het up! You’re all of a stew! Jim—have you gone and seen a ghost?”

Jim Thomas glared at him. He had gone away from this place confident and calm; he returned in a turmoil of fear; and the worst of this fear was that he did not know what it was he feared. He glared at Howe.

“What you been up to whilst I was gone, Ed Howe?” he demanded.

Ed looked at him in surprise. “We-ell—I’ve smoked two pipes.”

Jim strode to the ballot box, shook it, stared into its slot as though to read its secret.

Ned Bentley came in. He wished to cast his vote, and proceeded to do so. As he was about to go, he paused for a moment on the threshold.

“Has anybody here seen Wint?” he asked.

It was the stressing of his words that startled Jim. This stress, the emphasis of the verb, suggested that they had been discussing Wint, or that Wint must be in all their thoughts. And Jim had not thought of Wint Chase for days.

“Why should we have seen Wint?” he demanded, and looked at Ed Howe. Ed was grinning.

Of a sudden, light burst on Jim Thomas. It was not all the truth that he guessed. But it was enough of it to make his head swim. Without a word, he leaped for the street and ran across to the hotel—where there was a telephone.

Ed Howe watched him go—and grinned. “I declare—Jim acts right crazy,” he drawled.

Jim came back presently, a grim set about his jaw. He had no word for any of them. But he went to the voting list and copied the names of those citizens who had not yet voted, and went to the telephone again. When he returned this time, it was five minutes to four o’clock.

Ed lounged up from his chair. “Well—we’ve ’greed to close the polls now. Go to counting....” He started for the door, as though to bolt it.

Jim Thomas sprang in front of him. Jim was mad. “Git back there, Ed Howe.”

Ed looked puzzled. “Why—what—”

“Yo’re tricky; but you ain’t won yet. Set down. Legal hour for closing is six. We’ll have some law here.”

“But we ’greed on four....”

“Shut up!”

Ed lounged back in his chair. “Well—in that case—I got time for another smoke.” He filled his pipe and began it.

There followed a hectic two hours. Hardiston had never seen anything like it, anything even approaching it.

Every automobile that could be mustered by the Chase forces was mustered. Every livery stable in town hitched up its most ramshackle team. Even the funeral hacks were pressed into service. Fenney’s motor truck brought two loads of men from the glass factory. Even Bob Dyer’s old tandem bicycle came into use.

And when the elder Chase met Congressman Caretall in front of the Post Office at half past five, he refused to speak to him.

It was open war, with no quarter asked or given. The joke was out, and the Congressman’s men were enjoying it in anticipation. They exulted openly; they gathered at the polling places to watch the voters whom the Chase workers dragged thither. They cheered these workers on, praised them, encouraged them, made bets on their success.

It was a hectic two hours, and it lived long in Hardiston annals. But it had to end.

When the town clock struck six, the polls closed. And at every precinct in town, the strain relaxed and took, forthwith, the form of hunger. Unanimously, the election officials sat down with the unopened ballot boxes on a table, in plain view of the world, and sent out for supper.

Around the ballot boxes, they ate their sandwiches. Jim Thomas ate in grim silence, iron-jawed and moody. Ed Howe had recovered his spirits. He was urbane, gracious. He even gave a fair imitation of the manner of the elder Chase, at which all but Jim Thomas managed to smile.

In the morning, Jim had been jubilant and Ed had been moody and still; but now the rÔles were reversed. It was remarked afterward that no one had guessed Ed Howe had it in him; and his imitation of the elder Chase distributing cigars was destined to make him famous.

But this had to end, too. There came a time when the ballot boxes had to be opened. The tally sheets were prepared, pencils were sharpened, the boxes were unlocked; and at a quarter past eight o’clock, Jim Thomas lifted the first ballot from the box and unfolded it.

He looked at it; and a red flood poured over his face, and his jaw stiffened. But it was his duty to call the vote, and he called it:

“For Mayor—Chase!”

He was still staring at the ballot, and it did not need Ed Howe’s mild question to confirm his guess at Congressman Caretall’s coup.

What Ed asked was simply: “Which Chase, Jim?”

CHAPTER XI
THE NOTIFICATION

WHERE was Wint? Others beside Bentley were asking that question, as the afternoon of election wore along. Where was Wint?

No one had seen him. Every one was asking the question. No one was answering. But the inquirers, casting back and forth along the trail, at length hit upon one fact. Wint, for days past, had been consistently in the company of Jack Routt.

Where, then, was Routt?

On the morning after Amos Caretall’s announcement at the Rink that he would vote for a Chase for Mayor, Jack Routt had gone to the Congressman with questions on his lips. He had come away with instructions, instructions to keep much in Wint’s company and to keep the young man out of harm’s way till election day.

He had done this zealously. Until Monday evening, he and Wint were almost constantly together. That evening, Wint went to Joan’s house, and bluntly rebuffed Jack’s offer to accompany him. But when Wint came out—and he came out in a sulky and defiant manner—Jack was waiting for him at the gate.

Jack did not appear to be waiting. He seemed to be merely passing, on his way downtown; and Wint hailed him.

“Hello—you!”

“Hello, Wint! Just going home?”

“Home? It’s early yet. Going uptown?”

“Yes.” Routt hesitated, as though confused. “I—we—I’m going up to get a prescription filled.”

Wint laughed. “For snake bite?”

“Oh, no. A real prescription.”

“You don’t say!”

Jack protested. “Sure. So—good night.”

Wint thrust his arm through the other’s. “What do you want to get rid of me for? I’ll walk up with you.”

Jack balked. “Oh, now, Wint—you—your father will be down on you. You ought to cut it out, Wint. There’s nothing in it for you. You never know when to stop!”

Wint stiffened sulkily, but his voice was gentle. “That’s tough! Too bad about me! And it’s a shame what dad will do to me, now isn’t it?” He took a step forward. “Coming, Jack?”

So they departed together.

At daylight, the elder Chase, arising early to go to the polls, met Routt. Jack was homeward bound; and he was a weary young man. Wint was not with him. They exchanged greetings, but no more.

Routt did not again appear in public until something after noon, election day. When he came downtown then, he was as spruce as ever, his eyes clear, and his cheeks pink with health. He showed no signs of the—fatigue that the elder Chase had remarked in him.

Forthwith, men began to ask him: “Where is Wint?”

The first man that put the question was Peter Gergue. This was a big day for Peter. He had been busy, whispering and advising and suggesting and laughing a little behind the back of the elder Chase. He had been too busy getting out the votes and directing the voters to think much about Wint until Jack appeared; but the sight of Jack reminded him of Wint; and so he asked:

“Where is Wint, anyway?”

Jack looked to right and left. “I don’t know,” he said.

Gergue drawled: “It’s your job to know.”

“I know it is. But—he got away from me.”

“Got away from you?”

“Yes. Last night. I couldn’t stop him.”

Gergue frowned and ran his fingers through his back hair.

“It was your job to stop him.”

Jack threw out his hands. “You never saw him when he’s going good.”

Peter nodded and spat. “No,” he said slowly. “No—that’s right. Where d’you say you left him?”

Routt shook his head. “I wish I knew. He dodged me....”

Gergue shook his head. “Go along. Don’t let ’em see you talking—too much.”

As the afternoon passed and especially after that final two hours of scurry and effort began, the inquiries for Wint increased in volume. But at six o’clock Wint was still listed as missing, and he was still missing at eight, and he was still missing when the count of the ballots was completed.

But fifteen minutes later, Skinny Marsh, a man without visible means of support, met V. R. Kite on the street and drew him into the dark mouth of an alleyway.

“Kite,” he said huskily, “I got something to tell you.”

“What is it?” V. R. asked crisply.

“You know where Wint is?”

“No. Do you?”

“Yes.”

Kite was interested enough now. “Where?”

Marsh told him; and ten seconds later, Kite was walking briskly up the street, gathering his clans.

In the valley on the northeast side of Hardiston, there is a network of railway tracks, the freight and coal yards of the D. T. & I. Acres of ground are covered with slack, deposited through many years, and sprinkled over with the cinders from a thousand puffing engines.

This is low land. At one spot, a stagnant pool forms every year, and furnishes some ragged skating for the children of the locality. The ice factory is on a hill above this pool. At the other end of the yards, there is a gaunt and ruined brick structure that was once a nail mill; and this mill gives its name to the section.

Across the tracks, there are half a dozen streets, lined for the most part with well-kept little cottages of workingmen. But in one street there is a larger structure that was once a hotel.

This hotel is called the Weaver House. It fronts on the street, is flanked on one side by a railway track, and is backed by the creek whose muddy waters lap its sills at flood time. This was, in its days of glory, a railroad hotel, catering to the train crews in the days before the roads frowned on drink among the men. When the road threatened to discharge any man seen in the place, its business languished. But prohibition brought the Weaver House a measure of prosperity. There was strategic merit in its situation. A rear room overhung the creek; and a section of the floor of this room was so arranged that when a bolt was pulled the floor would swing downward and drop whatever it bore into the concealing waters.

This was a simple and effective way of destroying evidence; and the owner of the place made good use of it.

The office of this hostelry was a square room at one corner in front. At eleven o’clock on the night of election day, there were five creatures in this room.

Four were human; one was a dog.

The office was lighted by a single oil lamp. The chimney of this lamp had once been badly smoked, and subsequently cleaned by a masculine hand. It was, to put it gently, dingy. Also, its wick needed trimming. As a result of these defects, the light it gave was not blinding.

This lamp stood on a square table in one corner of the room. A wall bench ran along two sides of the table. At the corner, a checkerboard was set on the table, and over this board two old men leaned. They were engrossed in their game. Both were gray, both were unclean, both were ragged. Both were bearded, and the beards of both were stained, below the mouth, with tobacco. Nevertheless, they played keenly, and at the conclusion of each game broke into bitter, cackling arguments. These arguments lasted only so long as it took them to rearrange the men, when the one whose turn it was made the first move, and silence instantly descended on them again.

These gusts of debate which broke from the old men now and then were the only sounds in the room.

Beside one of the men, and leaning forward over the table in a strained and awkward position, was the boy. He may have been fourteen years old. But it was strange and pitiful to see in his face, in his eyes, an air of age and grim experience almost equaling that of his two old companions. This boy was dressed in clothes too small for him, so that his wrists stuck out from his sleeves, his neck reared itself bare and gaunt above his coat collar, and his pale ankles and shins were exposed above the shoes he wore.

This boy was reading. He was reading a copy of the bulletin of the Ohio Brewers’ Association. He was spelling it out word by word, with the closest attention. When the old men burst into argument, the boy shook his head a little as though annoyed by their outcries. But for the rest, he read steadily, passing his fingers along the lines as he read.

The dog slept on the floor at his feet. The dog was just a dog.

The other person in the room was the manager of the Weaver House. The manager was a woman. The manager was also the owner. She sat in a chair beside what had been the bar, at one side of the room. Her hands were folded in her lap, her head lolled on one shoulder, her mouth was open, and she was asleep.

This woman was a virago. In the old days, she once hit a brakeman with a rubber bung starter, and he died. She was acquitted because the brakeman was drunk and she pleaded self-defense. She was feared and respected by the men among whom she lived. In Paris, in ’93, she would have been a commanding figure. In the Nail Mill Addition of Hardiston she was a plague. But as she sat here now, asleep, her old hands folded in her lap, she invited not fear nor disgust but just compassion.

She was merely a tired old woman, asleep.

She was still asleep when the street door opened and four men came in.

The floor of the office was a foot below the level of the street. The first of the four men tripped and stumbled over this descent; and this slight sound woke the woman. She got to her feet with scrambling quickness, and from behind the breastwork of the dusty bar, surveyed her visitors. Her eyes were failing, and she thrust her head forward and twisted it on one side that she might see the better.

When she saw who the leader of the four men was, she straightened up with relief and said, her voice openly contemptuous:

“Oh, it’s you, Kite?”

It was. V. R. Kite, Jack Routt, and two of Kite’s satellites. Kite glanced at the men over the checkerboard, and at the boy. The old men, at their entrance, had looked up in fretful hostility, surrendered to the inevitable, and returned to their game. The boy continued to read.

“Hello, Mrs. Moody!” said Kite to the woman; and he stepped toward her and lowered his voice. “Is there a man—Wint Chase—staying here?”

Mrs. Moody grinned. The grin revealed a startlingly perfect set of false teeth, as beautiful as those of a girl of twenty. Their very beauty made them hideous in Mrs. Moody’s mouth. She nodded.

“I want to see him.”

“He’s upstairs. I’ll show you.”

She turned around and took a lamp from a shelf behind her and lighted it. Then, with this in her right hand, and her petticoats gathered up in her left, she emerged from behind the bar and led the way to the stairs.

The four men followed in silence. Kite led, and Routt was on his heels.

The stairs were uncertain; but they made the ascent without disaster. Mrs. Moody led the way along a narrow hall to an open door, and stood aside here so that the others might enter. She was enjoying herself.

The four men went into the dark room, and the woman followed and set the lamp on the mantel. This lamp illumined the place.

The room contained a bed, a chair, and a wardrobe. On the chair were set two shoes. On the floor lay a hat and a coat and one sock. In the bed, sprawling on his back upon the dirty coverlet, was Wint.

The woman crossed and shook him by the shoulder. She screamed at him:

“Wake up, deary! Here’s gentlemen to see you!”

Routt crossed quickly to her side, his face working. “Here. Let me!”

She pushed him scornfully. “And don’t I know the ways of a drunk, at my age? Get back with you. It’s me that has a right to bring him out of it.”

She shook Wint again; and this time he came slowly back to consciousness. He gasped, flung out his arms, stirred. His mouth twisted as though at a bad taste on his tongue. They waited for his eyes to open, but after a moment he settled back into sleep again.

The woman looked up over her shoulder. “He’s had a full dose. Since noon he’s been so.” She shook Wint again, yelled into his ear, cuffed him.

Thus presently he woke.

His eyes opened, though he still lay on his back. His eyes opened, and they wandered idly about the room, fixing a dull gaze now on this face and now on that. Wint was usually amiable when he was drunk, and so when he discovered Routt, he grinned and tried to sit up.

“Good ol’ Jack,” he said thickly. “Tried be a guardian t’ me. I fooled ’m. No hard feelin’s, Jack. Shake, ol’ man.”

He leaned on one elbow and thrust out an unsteady hand. V. R. Kite grinned wickedly, and Routt stepped forward and sat down on the bed and put his arms about Wint’s shoulders.

“Wint,” he begged. “Stiffen up! We’ve got to get you out of here.”

Wint shook his head. “I’m comf’ble here. My hostess—” He waved a hand toward Mrs. Moody. “She’s a lady. I’ll stay right here. I’m always go’n’ stay here, Jack.”

Routt shook him gently, cuffed his cheeks smartly. “Wint! Wint! Come out of it! Come on. Let’s go to my house. Let’s go home.”

Wint recognized the others. “H’lo, V. R.,” he said amiably. “V. R., why this sudd’n s’lic’tude?”

V. R. Kite was not a bashful man. He was enjoying himself. “I came to take you home—take you to some respectable house,” he declared. “This is no place for you.”

Mrs. Moody broke into objurgations. But one of Kite’s companions deftly hustled her into the hall, and silenced her there. Wint persisted:

“Why don’ this place suit me all right? I wanna know, V. R.”

Routt looked at Kite, and Kite said oracularly: “Because, my friend, the voters of Hardiston have elected you their next Mayor.”

Wint was swaying a little in Routt’s arms; and for a time his face remained blank. Then it assumed a puzzled look. In the end he asked, his voice less unsteady: “What’s—that?”

“You’re elected Mayor, Wint,” Routt told him. “Brace up.”

Wint sat up slowly, pushing Routt’s arms aside. “You mean—my father, don’t you?”

Routt shook his head; and Kite said pompously: “No, not your father. Yourself. The voters wrote in your name on the ballots....”

They saw a slow sweep of red flood Wint’s face; and for an instant his eyes closed as though he were fainting. The flush passed and left him pale. He got up, stood erect, unsteady, then firm. He shed drunkenness as though it were a cloak, throwing it off with a backward movement of his shoulders.

They watched him, waiting; and V. R. Kite suddenly moved a little toward the door, half afraid.

Then Wint burst out on them. He waved his hands furiously. “Routt!” he shouted. “This is a poor joke. It’s a damn poor joke. You Kite, you old whited sepulchre. You panderer, you worse than a prostitute—get out of here! Jack—I counted you my friend. You’re all dogs, cowards, rascals! Get out! If I choose to lie drunk in this shack—I’ll lie here. None of you shall stop me. It’s not your affair. It’s mine. Mine! Get out! The last one of you! Get out!”

He was so furious that they obeyed him. Routt tried to protest, but Wint gripped him by the shoulders and whirled him and thrust him toward the door.

They tumbled over each other into the hall. Even V. R. Kite lost his dignity. Wint pursued them, cursing them. He drove them to the stairs, down, stood above them with brandished fists. And when they had gone he still stood there for a space, trembling and alone.

Then he turned and went haltingly back into the room. He was no longer drunk. He was as sober as hell. He went into the room, stood at the door, frozen, ghastly white.

The lamp still stood on the mantel, and he crossed to it without knowing what he did. He stood before it.

There was a cracked mirror behind the lamp, above the mantel. Wint saw himself in it.

He looked into his own eyes for a long instant; and then his face twitched into a terrible, shamed, disgusted grimace. He lifted the lamp in both hands and sent it crashing into the grate in the fireplace. It splintered and shivered into fragments. The flame of the wick still burned, however, and the oil that had spilled caught fire, so that for a time the hearth and the grate were wreathed in blue flame.

Then the oil burned itself out. The room was left in darkness.

Wint went slowly across to the miserable bed and sat down on it. He gripped his head in his hands. After a little he lay down on his back on the bed.

Presently his misery and shame became so poignant that tears filled his eyes and welled over and flowed down his cheeks to the pillow. He ignored them.

Eventually, the silence in the room was torn by a single, racking sob.

END OF BOOK ONE