CHAPTER I
MARSHAL JIM RADABAUGH

JIM RADABAUGH, the city marshal, that is to say, the chief of police, was a man not without honor in Hardiston. A good fellow, and a cool, brave officer. That he was a good fellow, every one who knew him could attest. He had no enemies. It was a pleasure to be arrested by him. There was an equable good nature in the man, and a drawling humor in the very tones of his voice which inspired good nature and good humor in return. He was a lean man, lazily erect, as though it were too much trouble to be stoop-shouldered. Black hair, black eyes.... A chronic bulge in his cheek that housed the wad of tobacco which he kept there. An intimate acquaintance with the intricacies of big-league baseball as set forth in the public prints; a repository of racing lore; a good pool player and a redoubtable hand at poker. All in all, a good man to keep the peace according to his lights.

People said he was easy-going, but every one knew he was no slacker of duty or of obligation. Three years back—that was before they elected him marshal—he had been under fire for the first time. It was on the interurban street-car line that ran from Hardiston “up the crick.” Radabaugh sat in the front of the car, facing the rear; and a man in the middle of the car ran amuck with a revolver, shooting wildly. He killed one man, wounded another, in the seconds it took Radabaugh to charge down the aisle and overwhelm him. The conductor of the car, at the moment, was hiding under a rear seat; and the motorman had jammed off his power and jumped overboard, into a ditch that had more water in it than he had counted on. Radabaugh knocked the man over with a cuff of his fist, and pinned him, and took his gun away.

His friends told him he ought to run for office after that. He said he didn’t mind. His business was not an exacting one. He and his brother were tailors, and his brother could handle the bulk of their work anyway. So Jim ran for marshal, and was elected. Thereafter, when he was not occupied with his official duties, he used to drop in at the tailor shop to help things along there. It was no sight for timid customers, trying on their new suits while Jim’s brother chalked them in mysterious places, to see Jim come in and go to work. He always came in casually, spat in the appointed direction, then produced from one pocket and another his gun, his handcuffs, and his club. He was accustomed to lay these on one of the bolts of cloth which stocked the shelves, then seat himself cross-legged on the table, with a little cloth apron on his knees, and pick up the first task that came to hand.

His duties as marshal were not pressing, for Hardiston folk commit few crimes, and usually commit those away from home. When he was wanted during the day, the telephone operator called the shop. If she wanted to locate him after dusk, she flashed a signal light which called him to the telephone. For the most part, his time was his own.

And this is not to say that Jim Radabaugh had nothing to do. There was the case, for example, of the darky who was wanted for burglary in one of the cities in the southern part of the state. Jim got word that he was drinking in a hovel down by the creek, with two other men. So he went down there and strolled in and told the man he was wanted. Jim’s hands, at the moment, were in his coat pockets. The darky pulled a revolver, jammed it against Jim’s breast, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; that is to say, nothing happened to Jim. The darky’s gun did not explode, but Jim’s did. It burned a hole in his pocket, and it bored a hole in the darky, neatly amidships, in such fashion that there was no further occasion to trouble with that man. His body, laid open with two slashes of the coroner’s knife that intersected on the bullet hole, was on view for a day or two in the undertaker’s back room; and small boys went in to see it. They thought Jim Radabaugh was rather more than mortal, after that.

As a matter of fact, it had been a narrow squeak for Jim, as an examination of the darky’s weapon proved. That unfortunate man had apparently been unable to buy revolver ammunition, so he had bought rifle cartridges of the desired caliber and whittled off the bullets to make them fit into the cylinder of the revolver. Perhaps he had hurried with this bit of preparation; at any rate, he left one of the bullets too long, and when he pulled the trigger, the bullet caught and prevented the cylinder from turning. Which undoubtedly saved Jim Radabaugh’s life.

People agreed that was a good thing; for Jim was a good fellow. Wint’s orders to clean up the town interested him. They meant some measure of excitement, and he liked excitement. He told two or three people, that night, and they spread the news. But Jim took no official step till next day. Then he set out to serve notice on those most concerned.

One of these people most concerned was a man named Lutcher. His place of business was on the second floor of a building that fronted on one of the alleys in the heart of town. You climbed an outside stair from the alley to Lutcher’s door. Wint and Jack Routt went there, that night of Amos Caretall’s first home-coming, from their interrupted billiard game. Lutcher’s place was perhaps the best in town; that is to say, the surroundings were least sordid, and the wares he sold most meritorious. He was financed, of course, by Kite.

Radabaugh went there first. He had been there before, in his personal capacity. He had no scruples about such visits. Lutcher was a lawbreaker, of course; but the lawbreaking was tacitly accepted. There had been no orders against it. And Jim Radabaugh had no objection to a drink now and then. So he climbed the stairs from the alley to Lutcher’s door, and knocked, and Lutcher opened the door and admitted him. This Lutcher was not a bad fellow, say what you will of his business. A big, bald man with a husky, whispering voice, and a habit of appearing in his shirt sleeves. He wore rather attractive silk shirts, chosen with no mean taste; and his vests were often remarked. Also, he smoked good cigars, instead of the well-nigh universal stogie of Hardiston; and he gave these cigars freely to his regular customers.

Lutcher had not heard the news, the night before. So he greeted Marshal Radabaugh good-naturedly, and told him it was pretty early in the day for a drink, and that he would lose his reputation if he came here by daylight in this fashion. Jim laughed at that, and asked cheerfully whether Lutcher had a good stock on hand.

“Ice chest full, and a sawdust bin packed with bottles,” Lutcher told him. “What’s yours? The same.”

“Any reserve supply?” Radabaugh asked. Lutcher said there was no reserve; that he was expecting a shipment in a day or two. Radabaugh nodded.

“Got bad news for you, Lutch,” he said.

Lutcher beamed. He was always an amiable man. “Can’t make me feel bad, Jim,” he said. “Shoot the wad.”

“Going to close you up,” said Radabaugh.

Lutcher laughed. “Fat chance, I guess. What’re you trying to do? Work me for a snifter. All right. Say the word.”

“Straight goods,” Radabaugh assured him. “Mayor’s orders.”

“Wint’s orders? That’s a hot one.” Lutcher chuckled, his gay vest heaving with his mirth. “Why, Wint’s one of my regular customers.”

“Ain’t been in lately, has he?” Radabaugh suggested.

“No, not just lately. It wouldn’t look right.”

Radabaugh nodded. “He’s in earnest, I’d say,” he told Lutcher. “Anyway, I do what he says. He didn’t say anything about confiscating the stuff, or destroying it. Said to stop the sale. So I’ve got to seal you up, Lutch.”

Lutcher had been losing some of his amiability. He told Radabaugh so. “I’m a good-natured man,” he said. “But this is no joke.”

“No,” said Jim. “It’s no joke. Where’s your ice box?”

“What in time do you think you’re going to do?”

“Put a seal on it, and on that bin of yours. And drop in and look at the seals every day or two. And I’ll take charge of shipments that come in, unless you cancel them. If you bust the seals, I’ll have to take you into court, and Wint will soak you.”

“You’ve got a Chinaman’s chance,” Lutcher told him scornfully. “Why, I’ve given that pup his pap for two years. I’m not going to stand for this. Not for a minute. You tell him so.”

“If you’d rather have it so,” Jim said mildly, “I’ll pour it all out of the window, right now.” He said this mildly, but Lutcher knew Jim’s mildness was apt to be deceptive. In the end, he surrendered to the inevitable, because it was the inevitable. Jim placed his seals, and strolled away. Lutcher boiled out after him and hurried off to see V. R. Kite.

The marshal bent his steps toward the Weaver House, that infamous hostelry where Wint had spent the night of his election, and where he had been found next day. Radabaugh knew Mrs. Moody, the presiding genius of that place, as well as he knew Lutcher. He had always made it his business to know such folk. But Mrs. Moody did not receive him with the good nature Lutcher had shown. She had heard some rumors of what was to come.

The sunken office of the old hotel was little changed, when the marshal strolled in, since that night of Wint’s election. The light of day, fighting its way through the dingy windows, served only to make the interior more squalid. The same old men played their interminable game of checkers on the table in the corner. The miserable dog that bore Marshal Jim Radabaugh’s name sprawled beneath the table, its bony legs clattering on the floor when the creature stirred in its sleep. The boy, that boy who had been so painfully reading the literature of brewing on the night of the election, was not to be seen. It is to be hoped that he was out about some wholesome play. Radabaugh had a suspicion, founded on experience, that the boy was not in school. He never was. Mrs. Moody sat behind the high, bar-like counter. When Radabaugh came in, she got up with a quick, deadly movement like the stir of a coiling snake; and she smiled at the marshal with those hideously beautiful false teeth gleaming in her aged and distorted countenance.

“Why, good morning, deary,” she said, terribly amiable. “I don’t often see you down here any more.”

“Morning, Mrs. Moody,” said Jim. And stalked past the counter toward the door that led to that back room which overhung the creek. Mrs. Moody bustled after him and caught his arm at the door.

“Where you a-going, Jim Radabaugh?” she demanded. “You say what you want, and say it here.”

Radabaugh shook his head. He knew such measures as he had used with Lutcher would not serve with Mrs. Moody. The patrons of the Weaver House had little respect for such flimsy things as seals. He knew, also, that there was no possibility of relying upon the word of Mrs. Moody. Many women, especially such women as she, have the attitude toward promises that the Kaiser had toward treaties. They consider them interesting only when broken. Radabaugh meant to destroy her stock of liquor; and he told her so.

Then she began to scream at him. The old men at the checkerboard brushed at their ears as though her screaming were a swarm of flies, harassing them. Jim pushed her to one side and went through to the back room. When he set about his business there, she attacked him with a billet of wood; and Jim subdued the old warrior as gently as might be, and told her to mind what she did. So she began to weep and wail and scream hysterically; and Jim emptied bottles through the trap-door into the creek, knocking off the neck of each bottle so that there might be no survivors. All the while, Mrs. Moody wailed behind him.

When it was done, he turned to her, brushing his hands. “Orders are, no more selling, ma’am,” he said gently. “If you start up again, I’ll have to take you in.”

She was trying to placate him now. “Whose orders, deary?” she wheedled. “Who’s doing this to old Mother Moody, anyhow?”

“Mayor,” Jim told her; and she wailed:

“Wint Chase. Little Wint that I’ve put to bed here amany a time. He’d never go and do this, now. Who was it? Honest.”

“Mayor,” Jim repeated. “Straight goods. Hardiston has gone dry. This is serious, too. Don’t you go to start anything, ma’am. Because I always did hate to arrest a lady.”

“You’ll just have to—you might just as well take me right off to the poor farm, Jim Radabaugh. I’m not making ends meet, even right now.” Her withered old hands covered her face, and she rocked and wailed: “Eh, poor old Mother Moody! Poor old Mother Moody! You wouldn’t take me in if I sold just a little bit, would you, now?”

He said he would; and when she saw he meant it, she dropped her attempts to conciliate him; and she cursed him through the corridor and through the office; and she stood in the door of her hostelry and cursed him as long as he could hear, so that even Jim Radabaugh’s hardened ears turned red and burned with shame. It takes a brave man to face without inward shrinking the revilements of a thoroughly angry woman. Jim was glad to be rid of her.

He stopped, on the way back uptown, to warn a fly-by-nighter who ran a lunch cart near the station and served stronger drinks than coffee. This man denied any interest in Jim’s warning; and the marshal could find no liquor about the cart. Nevertheless he served notice, and made a mental memorandum to see to it that the notice was obeyed.

Remained only V. R. Kite. Radabaugh grinned as he thought of Kite. Kite would take this matter hard; and when V. R. Kite took a thing hard, the sight was worth seeing.

But Kite was not in the Bazaar when he got there, so Jim strolled back up street and dropped in on B. B. Beecham. The editor greeted him as courteously as he greeted every one. “Good morning,” he said. “Have a chair. Anything I can do for you?”

Radabaugh spat into the stove. “No,” he said, readjusting the bulge in his cheek. “Just dropped in. Waiting to see Kite.”

B. B. nodded. “Anything new with you?” he asked, for everybody was a source of news to B. B. Beecham. That was why the Journal was popular.

“We-ell, I have got a sort of an item for you,” Jim told him. “Might be worth printing, maybe.”

B. B. asked what it was; and Jim told him. “Wint’s give orders that the town’s going dry.”

B. B. said: “H’m! Is that so?” And Jim said it was so.

“Guess that’ll be an item folks will read,” he remarked.

The editor shook his head. “We don’t feel we can print such things,” he said. “You see, it’s bad for Hardiston, outside. Legally, the town is already dry.”

“I never did have much of any use for laws,” Jim drawled.

“I suppose this means some work for you.”

“Can’t say. Don’t think so. There won’t be much of it done, except a little, on the sly. Not after the word I’ve passed around.”

“Well, it won’t do Hardiston any harm. Even as things are, they are better than they used to be. I can remember thirteen saloons here at one time. How many have there been, under cover?”

“Three-four, regular,” Jim told him.

“Very few people will really miss them,” B. B. said. “People do so many things, just because they’re in the habit, and the things are waiting to be done. It’s surprising how much a man can give up without realizing that he’s giving up anything. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that.”

“Can’t say I ever did,” said Jim, and spat into the stove.

“Like the horse in the story. You’ve heard about the horse?”

“What horse?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard it? The horse that was trained to live without eating.”

Jim looked mildly interested. “I’ll say that was some horse,” he remarked. “What happened to him?”

“Why, just as the man got him trained, the horse died,” said B. B.; and Jim chuckled, and B. B. laughed in the silently uproarious way habitual to him. Then Jim saw V. R. Kite pass by on the way to the Bazaar and got up quickly.

“There’s Kite,” he said. “See you later.”

He overtook the little man just inside the Bazaar; and Kite heard his step and turned and looked at him, and Jim saw that Kite knew. But he only said:

“Hello, Kite. Want to talk to you a minute.”

“Come back to my desk,” said Kite, and led the way, walking stiffly, head high, ever so much like a turkey. Jim marked this peculiarity to himself.

“Exactly like a man looking over a high fence,” he thought. “I’ll declare, it is.”

Kite sat down, tugged at his side whiskers, and bade Jim speak. The marshal looked for a place to spit, saw none, swallowed hard, and said:

“Guess you’ve heard the orders.”

“What orders?” Kite asked harshly. But his face was livid, and the veins stood out on his forehead with his effort at self-control.

“Mayor calls me up last night and tells me to stop whisky selling. Hardiston’s gone dry.”

“What has that to do with me?” Kite demanded.

The marshal did not grin. If Kite wanted to act that way, all right. It was the little man’s privilege. After all, he was outwardly respectable enough, a pillar of the church, and all that.

“Thought you might be interested,” said Jim.

“I am,” said Kite. “I believe in the free sale of liquor. Every man must have an opinion, one way or the other.”

Jim considered that. Then he got up. “Well,” he said, “I’ve passed the word around. Don’t know any one that’s planning to keep on selling, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Because if you do,” said Jim slowly, “tell ’em not to do it. Because if there’s any turns up, any selling, I’m going to come and ask you about it, Kite.”

Kite boiled up out of his chair and waved his fist. “Get out of here, you rat!” he raged, holding his voice to a monotonous whisper that was more deadly than an outcry would have been. “Get out of here, before I....”

“Before you what?” Jim asked; and Kite checked himself, and pulled at his side whiskers, and sat down abruptly, staring at the desk before him.

Jim left him there. As he emerged into the street, he began to whistle. The whistle was ragged, but the tune could be identified. Jim was whistling:

“‘There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.’”

CHAPTER II
THE BREWING STORM

WINT lay awake for a while, the night after he had given his orders to Radabaugh. He had many things to occupy his thoughts. There was in him none of the elation which might have been expected; he had no zest for the fight that was ahead of him. He was, rather, depressed and doubtful of the wisdom of what he had done, and doubtful of his own strength and determination to carry it through. He was acutely aware that a great many people would say: “Well, Wint’s got a nerve. A fish like him, trying to make Hardiston dry. I’ll bet he’s got a cellar full.” They would say this, and they would have a right to say it. Wint thought, miserably enough, that he had been foolish to start trouble. He might better have let well enough alone.

The boy’s stubbornness had played him false more than once in the past; this time it was to do him a good turn. A less stubborn person would have backed down, under the weight of these misgivings; would have canceled the orders given Radabaugh, and let matters slide along as they had slid in the past. But Wint, though he dreaded the ridicule that would follow what he had done, felt himself committed. They would laugh! Well, let them laugh! His jaw set; he swore to go on at any cost. On this determination, he slept at last.

In spite of his wakefulness, Wint was first downstairs in the morning. Hetty, sweeping out the sitting room, encountered him. He had not seen her the day before, except when his father and mother were about. Then she had avoided his eye. Now she looked at him sullenly, and said:

“Much obliged for getting me to bed, Wint.”

“That’s all right, Hetty. I remember you did as much for me.”

She laughed harshly and defiantly. “Sure I did.” Her eyes were watchful and on guard. Wint guessed that she expected him to reproach her, to warn her, to bid her mend her ways. But he did nothing of the kind.

“Forget it,” he said. “It wasn’t anything.”

Something wistful crept into her eyes, as though she would have said more. But Mrs. Chase came downstairs, and Hetty went on with her work, while Mrs. Chase volubly directed her.

After breakfast, Wint and his father walked downtown together. The elder Chase asked stiffly:

“Well, how did you find Amos?”

“Same as ever,” Wint said.

“Suppose he’s home for the summer.”

“I guess so.”

He wondered whether to tell his father what he had done; but something held his tongue. It may have been diffidence, a reluctant feeling that to tell his father this would be like an effort to justify himself in the elder Chase’s eyes. It may have been uncertainty as to what attitude the older man would take. It may have been a shrewd guess at the truth; that Chase would attribute the move to Amos, and oppose it on that ground. Wint had no illusions about his father’s attitude toward the Congressman. Chase held Amos as his enemy, without compromise.

As they reached the first stores on the outskirts of the business section of Hardiston, they met Ned Bentley and another man, and exchanged greetings. Bentley grinned at Wint in a friendly way, and Wint knew that Bentley had heard of his order to Radabaugh. The elder Chase saw something had passed between them, and asked Wint:

“What’s Bentley so cheerful about?”

“Why, I don’t know,” said Wint. “He’s usually pretty good-natured.”

He flushed at his own evasion, but the older man did not press the question, and a little later they separated.

Foster, the city solicitor—Foster was an earnest young fellow, and took his office seriously—was waiting for Wint in what passed as Wint’s office, off the main room above the fire-engine house. Foster looked flurried; and he asked quickly:

“Look here, Wint, Radabaugh says you told him to clean up the town.”

Wint nodded idly, fumbling among the papers on his desk. “Yes, I did.”

“Well, what’s the idea?” Foster demanded excitedly. “What’s the idea, anyway?”

“The idea is to—clean up the town,” Wint told him.

“You’re in earnest?”

“Yes.”

“You mean to stop bootlegging?”

“Yes.”

“Good Lord!” said Foster.

The solicitor’s consternation gave Wint confidence. He asked: “Why, what’s wrong with that?”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. But you’ll surely start something.”

“I mean to stop something.”

“There’ll be an awful row.”

Wint said quietly: “If you don’t want to come through.... If you don’t want to make it stick, help me out, why, now’s the time to say so, and get out.”

“Good Lord!” Foster cried. “Of course I’ll stick. Nothing suits me better. I’m.... I tell you, you don’t know what you’ve started. But I’m with you, Wint. All along the line. Absolutely.”

Wint said: “That’s good.”

“It’s a great chance for me,” Foster said.

Wint chuckled. “Ought to do you and Hardiston both some good.”

“Prosecuting all those cases.”

“Oh, there won’t be many cases,” Wint said cheerfully.

“A lot you know. Why won’t there?”

“Because,” said Wint, “I’m going to see that the first man in here gets soaked, good and proper. I’m going to put the fear of—the fear of me into them.”

“You can’t scare those fellows.”

“Well,” Wint admitted, “that may be so. But I’m surely going to try.”

Foster had amused him, and encouraged him; but when Foster was gone, and he was left alone, his depression of the night before returned. He locked his door. He did not want to see people. And he sat down to think.

Radabaugh came in a little before noon to report what he had done. Wint listened, studying the marshal. “Think Lutcher will keep straight?” he asked.

“I should think so.”

“How about Mrs. Moody?”

“She’ll need watching.”

“See that you watch her.”

“I’m right on the job,” Radabaugh assured him easily; and Jim knew the marshal meant what he said. “I’ve left ’em run before, because there wasn’t any kick made. If you say shut ’em off, I’ll do it. That’s all.”

“I do say it,” Wint told him. He got up and gripped the other’s shoulder, something of the excitement of the coming fight already stirring in him. “Jim, we’ll make Hardiston dry as a bone.”

Radabaugh spat. “We-ell,” he drawled, “it don’t take much booze to wet a bone. But we’ll see to it the stuff don’t go sloshing around the gutters, anyway.”

For his lunch, Wint went to fat Sam O’Brien’s restaurant. He liked the place. The long, high counter, scrubbed white as the deck of a ship; the revolving stools before the counter; the shelves on which bottles of mustards and catsups and spices were ranged; and big Sam O’Brien in his vast white apron presiding over it all. There was a mechanical piano which played a tune for a nickel in the back of the restaurant, and it was jangling and tinkling when Wint came in. Half a dozen men were there before him; and they grinned when they saw Wint, and spoke among themselves. Sam O’Brien welcomed him with a chuckle. O’Brien was a jocular man. He set plate and knife and fork and a thick glass of water before Wint, and spread his hands on the counter, and asked in a booming voice:

“Well, how’s your appetite, you bold crusader?”

Wint flushed, and said uncomfortably: “Cut it out, Sam!”

The restaurant proprietor had his own ideas of a joke; and he made the most of them. At Wint’s words, he threw back his head and laughter poured out of him. He rocked, he slapped his great fist on the counter.

“Cut it out?” he repeated. “Oh, Wint, you’re the funny man. Cut it out, he says! The whole blamed town. ‘The booze is getting you, Hardiston. Cut it out,’ he says!” He bellowed the words. “Cut it out! Cut it out! Oh, Wint, you’ll be the death o’ me.”

There was never any use resenting Sam O’Brien. Wint laughed and said: “I’ll be the death of you if you don’t get me something to eat, Sam. Get a move on your old carcass.”

After lunch, he had a word or two with men upon the street; but he did not want to talk to them. He wanted to get out of their way, out of sight. His nerves were beginning to jangle; he wanted something to happen. There was hanging over him a storm; he wanted the storm to break. He had a thought of going to V. R. Kite and flinging a defiance in that old buzzard’s gold-filled teeth. He liked to think of Kite as an old buzzard; the phrase pleased him. Men will always be pleased to find they have used words tellingly. The gift of speech is what distinguishes man from the animals; it is right that he should vaunt himself upon it.

But in the end, Wint did not go to Kite; he went to Hoover’s office and hid himself in a back room with a law book. Neither Dick nor his father was there when he arrived; he counted on not being disturbed. He did not want to be disturbed. He wanted to be let alone. He was mistrustful of himself, of his motives and of his powers.

In mid-afternoon, the telephone rang; and he answered, expecting a call for one or the other of the Hoovers. But when he spoke into the instrument, some one said: “Is this you, Wint?”

He said it was; and the some one said: “This is Joan.”

Wint said: “Oh!” He was uncomfortable, wondering what she wanted, why she had called.

“I’ve just heard what you’ve done,” she said.

“What’s that?” Wint asked. “Done what?”

“About how you’re going to—to clean up Hardiston.”

“Oh, that,” said Wint. “Yes.”

“Central told me I could probably get you at the Hoover office.”

“Yes. Yes, I’m here.”

“I thought you might like to know that I’m glad you’re going to do this.”

“That’s all right,” he said awkwardly. The old, stubborn resentment at any praise was awake in him; but there was a curious tincture of happiness, too.

“It’s a good fight, Wint,” she said. “And—you’ll win.”

Wint laughed uneasily. “Oh, sure,” he said. He did not want to talk about it; and Joan understood and said good-by. Wint stared thoughtfully at the telephone for a while; then he went back to his probing into the musty recesses of the law which he found so live and vital.

But he was unable to keep his thoughts upon the book. They wandered. He kept thinking about V. R. Kite. He kept wondering what Kite would do.

And he wished insistently that whatever Kite meant to do, he would do quickly. Wint was tired of waiting for the storm to break.

CHAPTER III
A HARD DAY FOR KITE

IF V. R. Kite had been wise enough to let Wint severely alone, in the days that followed, it is not at all improbable that Wint’s resolution would have weakened. But if knaves were wise, they would not be knaves. So, instead of being left alone with his depression, and his doubts of himself, Wint was attacked front and flank; and the stimulus of battle proved to be exactly what he needed to forge his determination and whip his courage to the sticking point.

Kite first heard the news of what Wint had done from Lutcher, the amiable man in the distinctive vest, whose stock in trade Jim Radabaugh put under seal. Lutcher went straightaway to Kite when Radabaugh left him; and he found Kite still ignorant of what had come to pass. Lutcher took a decided pleasure in breaking the news to Kite. He found the little turkey of a man at his desk in the Bazaar; and he stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his vest and said in his husky, whispering voice:

“Well, Kite, we’re closed up.”

Kite had greeted Lutcher as pleasantly as he greeted any one. He was a little afraid of the big, bald man, and Lutcher knew it. He was as much afraid of Lutcher as Lutcher was of Jim Radabaugh. But he forgot to be afraid of Lutcher in this moment. He came up out of his chair like a Jack-in-the-Box—and Kite looked not unlike the conventional Jack-in-the-Box with his lean neck and his poised head and his side whiskers flying—and he snapped at Lutcher:

“What’s that you say?”

Lutcher grinned, and wheezed: “I say we’re closed up.”

“Closed up?” Kite repeated, in something like a shout. “Closed up? What do you mean? Talk English, man.”

Lutcher ran his thick finger around the soft collar of his silken shirt. “I mean Radabaugh’s given orders not to sell any more stuff,” he said. “What did you think I meant?”

“You’re crazy,” said Kite flatly. “Radabaugh wouldn’t dare do that.”

“Well, he’s done it!”

“Jim Radabaugh? The marshal?”

“Sure,” said Lutcher impatiently. “Can’t you hear what I say? Came and sealed me up this morning. Said it was orders.”

“Orders? Whose orders?”

“Mayor’s.”

Kite’s clenched fists went into the air. “He can’t do that,” he said fiercely. “I won’t stand for it. By God, if he tries to do that, I’ll leave town. Or I’ll kill the pup. Or kill myself. I won’t stand for it, I tell you, Lutcher.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Lutcher, amiable again in the face of the other’s excitement. “Don’t tell me; tell the Mayor.”

Kite stood for a minute with staring, thoughtful eyes, as though Lutcher were not there. Then he grabbed his hat and started for the street. Lutcher looked after him, grinning with amusement. “The old buzzard does take it hard,” he told himself. “Well, I should worry. What’s he up to now?”

Kite had disappeared. When Lutcher got to the street, the little man was no longer in sight. Lutcher wondered what Kite had set off to do; and he loitered for a while in the hope of seeing the little man again. Kite’s fury amused him. But Kite had not returned when Jim Radabaugh drifted into sight; and Lutcher did not want to see Jim again, so he effaced himself. He saw Jim go into the Bazaar, and come out again, and stop at the Journal office; and after a little, Kite came down the street from the Court House, and Radabaugh emerged from the Journal office, and followed Kite into the Bazaar. Lutcher wished he could be near enough to hear what they said, but there was no chance of it, so he departed.

Kite held on to himself while he talked with Radabaugh; but when the marshal was gone, the little man, in the shelter of his desk, fretted and jerked in his chair in a tempest of furious anger. There was no doubt about it; he did take this news hard. But one watching with a seeing eye might have discovered in Kite’s anger something else; a touch of panic.

Perhaps fear is always a part of anger; perhaps it is one of the springs from which anger flows. But in the case of Kite, his fear and panic tended to quiet him and steady him and bid him go slowly and watch his every move. There had been a day when he would have leaped into such a fight as this, a terrible and furious figure. But Kite was getting old. There was something senile and pitiful in his fury now.

There in the rear of his busy little shop, with customers going and coming and the clerks laughing together, Kite twisted his fingers together and beat at his head with his clenched hands and tried to think what to do. He had been so sure that Wint would never take this step; he had been so sure that with Wint as Mayor, Hardiston would be safely and securely wet. He had been so sure of Amos Caretall’s good will. Chase and Jack Routt had warned him; but he had not believed their warnings, because he did not wish to believe. Wint was a drinker; it was just common sense that Wint would let the town go on as it had gone in the past. Kite had counted on it.

And now Wint had betrayed him. That was the word that sprang into Kite’s mind. Wint had betrayed him. He felt an honest indignation at the Mayor. He was more indignant than he had been when Wint called him a buzzard. He had accepted that good-naturedly enough. Hard names broke no bones; besides, Wint had been quite obviously suffering from an overnight bout, that morning. Kite knew the mood; he was not surprised; and he was not resentful. But this was different. Damnably different. This was out and out treachery, betrayal. He had helped elect Wint; now Wint turned against him.

Kit felt acutely sorry for himself; he felt acutely reproachful toward Wint. And when Jack Routt dropped in, half an hour after Radabaugh had gone, with a triumphant light in his eye, Kite told him so.

“I didn’t think Wint would do it,” he said dolefully. “Routt, I didn’t suppose Wint would do this to me.”

Routt chuckled. “It’s not Wint’s doing,” he said. “I told you this was coming, you know. It’s Amos.”

But Kite was in no mood for rage at Amos. “I don’t know,” he said. “This looks like Wint’s doing. It’s a boy’s trick. A man like Amos would have seen the harm for Hardiston in such a move. No, Jack, Wint did this, himself.”

Routt shook his head. “I know better. You get after Amos, and Wint will come to heel. I know them both, I tell you.”

“I can’t believe it,” Kite insisted. “What motive could he possibly have?”

“Trying to get on the band wagon,” Routt told him. “That’s Amos. Trying to get on the dry band wagon.”

“No, no, it’s Wint. He’s the one we must go to. He’s the one we must work on. He’s got to be stopped, Routt.” Something of the old fire was reviving in Kite. “He’s got to be stopped. Scared off. Called off. Something. I won’t stand for such a state of affairs. Such a thing.... In Hardiston.”

Routt grinned. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Get after him. There must be a way. Don’t you know a way to get hold of him and bring him to time? Must be some way, Routt. Think, man; think. What can we do? Scare him off?”

Routt looked at Kite in a curious, intent way, as though he thought there might be a hidden meaning in what the other man had said. “What’s your idea exactly?” he asked. “What’s up your sleeve?”

“Idea?” Kite echoed. “Idea is to get something on that young skate and make him call Radabaugh off. That’s the idea. Get after him, heavy. There must be a way. Some way.”

Routt smiled faintly, tilting back in his chair, looking at the ceiling; and he blew a long stream of smoke straight upward. Kite snapped:

“Well?”

“Well,” said Routt, “there’s something in that. There might be a way....”

Kite leaned toward him intently. “What is it?”

Routt waved his hand. “Nothing definite. Might develop. Hold off a while.”

“I can’t hold off,” said Kite. “I won’t hold off. Something’s got to be done.”

“Then you do it,” Routt told him carelessly; and Kite pleaded with him.

“No, no. You do your own way. I’ll try mine. We’ll both work at this, Routt. Something ... I.... See what you can do. That’s all. I’ll see what I can do.”

Routt got up. “Don’t forget,” he said, “that Amos is back of this.”

Kite shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’ll hit Wint first. I don’t want to buck Amos.”

“You’ll find,” said Routt, “that you’ll have to buck Amos.”

After Routt left him, Kite sat for a while, fingers tapping nervously on his desk, wondering what to do next. And he wondered if it could be that Routt was right, that Amos was back of this move on Wint’s part. Routt had said Amos would do this; so, Kite remembered, had the elder Chase. Chase had come to him, shortly after the election, to warn Kite that this was sure to happen. Were Routt and Chase right; was it possible that Amos had betrayed him?

Kite would not believe it. Not because he had any doubt of Amos’s willingness to betray him, but because he did not dare believe that this was Amos’s doing. If Wint had made the move on his own account, there was some hope of swaying him, or frightening him. But if Amos had prompted it and were backing Wint now, the situation was almost hopeless.

Therefore Kite refused to believe that Amos was responsible; he clung to the idea that the whole thing was Wint’s own idea. Wint, then, he must fight.

He thought of Wint; and he thought of Wint’s father again. There might be a chance to move Wint through his father. “If the boy has any sense of duty,” Kite thought, “he’ll do what his father says.” He forgot that the elder Chase had always been a “dry” man. Politics takes little account of convictions; and Kite clutched at the hope that the elder Chase could change Wint’s mind. Chase had offered him alliance, once; had offered him an alliance against Amos. He should be willing to show his friendliness now. Kite’s eyes lighted with a faintly optimistic glint at the thought; and he took his hat and started forthwith down the street toward the furnace where Chase was to be found during the day.

He met a number of men; and he thought they all grinned at him with derision in their eyes. They must know what had happened; must be amused at this plight in which he found himself. The thought roused the anger in Kite, and strengthened him. He went on his way more boldly. By and by, at the end of the street, the smoky black bulk of the furnace loomed before him.

Kite did not like the looks of the furnace; there was such an atmosphere of harnessed power about it, and Kite was always a little afraid the power would break its harness. To reach the office, he had to go through the very heart of the monstrous thing. At the beginning of the way, a ten-foot flame hissed out of the very earth itself, at his right hand, so that he shrank past it timidly. Then he must pick his way through a corridor between structures like squat, brick ovens, below which living flame roared in a stream like a racing torrent. He could see this stream of flame. There was nothing to hold it, between the ovens. He trembled with fear that this stream would leap out at him.

When he passed under the stacks, pulsing with the rhythmic beat of life which stirred them, he could hear the roar of the fires inside, and the hiss of the air from the tuyÈres, and the sounds were like the ravenings of beasts to him. Kite felt immensely small, immensely insignificant. Toward the end of his way he was almost running, and he came out with vast relief upon the other side, and approached the iron-sheeted building which housed the furnace office and the chemist’s laboratory. He might have come here by circling around the furnace, but even Kite had pride enough to face dangers, rather than avoid them.

He found the elder Chase at his desk; and Chase dismissed the stenographer to whom he had been dictating, and offered Kite a cigar. Kite refused it. He was by personal habit an abstemious man. “I never smoke,” he said.

Chase nodded, a little ill at ease. He had tried to make an alliance with Kite, but he did not like the little man, and never would. He did not like Kite, and he was self-conscious about it, and felt that he ought to make up for his dislike by treating Kite with extreme courtesy. So now he asked: “Well, Mr. Kite,” and Kite responded with a sharp question:

“What’s this Wint’s doing?”

There had been a time when such an inquiry frightened Chase; because, when people asked him such a question, he knew they meant that Wint was in trouble again. But he was coming to have a certain faith in Wint; so he was puzzled by Kite’s question, and said so.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he told the little man.

Kite was surprised. “Good God! You must know. Didn’t he tell you?”

“He’s told me nothing in particular. What do you mean?”

“The young fool has given Radabaugh orders against any more liquor selling.”

Chase’s first reaction to this information was a leap of delighted pride. It was what he would have wished Wint to do; it was what he himself would have done in Wint’s place. It was a decent, strong thing to do, and Chase was glad. Kite saw this in the other man’s eyes; and he exclaimed challengingly:

“You look as though you were tickled, man. Don’t you know this thing will ruin Hardiston?”

Chase knew it would not ruin Hardiston; nevertheless he was willing to humor Kite. So he asked: “Do you know the details? Tell me about it.”

Kite laughed harshly. “You hadn’t heard of it, then. He didn’t tell you. It was Amos put him up to it, I guess, after all. But it looks as though he’d have told you, anyway.” Kite was shrewd enough in his way; he understood that Chase, as a father, must be jealous of Amos’s influence with Wint. And Chase reacted as Kite expected. His eyes clouded with hurt. Wint might have told him; should have told him. Instead, his son had laid him open to this new humiliation, the humiliation of hearing important news from a third person. And—Wint had had supper with Amos last night.

Chase struck back, in the instinct to defend himself. “You remember, I warned you Congressman Caretall would do just this.”

“Sure I remember,” Kite agreed. “That’s why I’ve come to you. Want to get together with you. That was our understanding. I’m going to skin Amos Caretall. Are you with me? That’s the question.” He was shrewd enough to rouse Chase against Amos, not against Chase’s own son. And Chase considered the matter, inwardly hurt and sorry because Wint had not confided in him, and boiling with jealous hostility toward Amos.

“All right,” he said at last. “You see I was right. What are we going to do?”

“Do?” Kite snapped. “We’re going to make Amos run to cover. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“After all,” Chase reminded him, “I’m a dry man. I can’t fight Amos on that issue.”

“Dry?” Kite demanded. “What of it? What’s that got to do with it? This is politics. Amos is no more dry than I am; but he plays the dry game because that’s politics, and there are votes in it. He’s trying to steal your thunder, Chase. If Amos grabs the dry vote, where do you come in? I tell you, we’ve got to lick him, man.”

“How?” Chase asked at last. “What are we going to do?”

“First thing,” Kite said, “is to get after Wint.” He had been ready with the answer to this question. “Caretall is using Wint. Making a tool of him. A scapegoat. Wint doesn’t know his own mind. Caretall’s using him. We’ve got to get him out of Caretall’s hands. Get him to work with you. You’re his father. He ought to want to work with you. Oughtn’t he?”

“He and I—understand each other,” Chase said. He was not at all sure this was true, but he could not confess to Kite that he and Wint were less than confidants.

“Sure,” Kite agreed. “Naturally. So the first thing to do is for you to go to Wint and tell him what he’s up against. How he’s being manipulated. Get him to rescind the order. Then we’ll go after Amos, with Wint helping us, and clean him up.”

“I don’t know,” said Chase reluctantly.

“Good God, man,” Kite snapped, “can’t you handle your own son?”

Chase got up and walked to the window, his back to Kite. His lips set firmly. Kite was right; he ought to be able to handle his own son, unless the world were all awry. After all, the dry question was only a pretext. Wint ought to train with him rather than with Amos. He would tell the boy so.

When at last he turned toward Kite again, the other man saw that he had won. “I’ll see,” said Chase. “I’ll talk to Wint and see.”

CHAPTER IV
CHASE CHANGES SIDES

WINTHROP CHASE, SENIOR, was thoughtful all that day; he went home in the evening still undecided as to what he should do. He was unhappy, hurt at Wint’s reticence, disturbed as to his own course of action, and fiercely resentful of Amos’s influence over his son.

His conscience was troubling him; and he was trying to quiet it with Kite’s more or less specious argument that this was politics, not morality. If Chase had been asked to come out, point-blank, and champion the nonenforcement of the liquor law, he would have refused; and he would have refused with indignation at the suggestion. But the issue was not so clear as that. It was clouded by his dislike for Amos. It was not merely a question of enforcing the law; it was a question of balking Amos Caretall. And Chase was prepared to go a long way to put a spoke in Amos’s wheel.

Wint had not yet come, when he reached his home; and he was glad of that. It gave him some leeway, gave him some further time to think. But his thoughts ran in an endless circle; his convictions countered his enmity toward Amos. It was only by small degrees that his attitude toward Amos crowded other considerations out of his mind. He was gradually coming to the point of decision when he heard Wint at the door. Mrs. Chase met Wint in the front hall, and told him hurriedly:

“Now, Wint, you’re late again. You run right upstairs and wash your face and hands. Supper’s all ready, and Hetty wants to go out, and I don’t want to keep her waiting any—”

Wint laughed, and kissed her, and told her he would hurry, and he was gone up the stairs, two steps at a time, while his mother still talked to him. When he came down, his father and mother had already gone into the dining room. He followed them, answered his father’s “Good evening, Wint,” in an abstracted way, and sat down hurriedly. He did not look toward his father; he was conscious he had not done the fair thing in failing to tell the older man of his orders to Radabaugh. He felt guilty.

Mrs. Chase never allowed any gaps in the conversation to go unplugged; and since Wint and his father were both normal men, with normal appetites, she did most of the talking during the early part of the meal, while they ate. It was only when Hetty brought on a thick rhubarb pie and Mrs. Chase began to cut it that Chase said casually to his son:

“Well, Wint, I hear you’ve set out to clean up Hardiston.”

Wint gulped what was in his mouth, and uneasily admitted that this was true. Mrs. Chase was talking to Hetty about the pie and did not hear what they said. Chase asked:

“What does Amos think of that?”

Wint looked for an instant at his father. “Thinks it’s all right,” he said.

Mrs. Chase came back into the conversation then. She had the aggravating habit of catching the tail end of a story or a remark and demanding that the whole be repeated for her benefit. “What’s all right?” she asked. “What’s all right, Wint? Who thinks it’s all right? It keeps me so busy looking after things here that it seems like I never hear what’s going on. What is it that—”

Chase told her quietly: “Wint has given Marshal Radabaugh orders not to allow any more selling of liquor in Hardiston.”

Mrs. Chase was astonished. She said so. “Well, I never,” she exclaimed. “You know, Wint, I never thought you’d do that. I think it’s time, though, something was done. I told Mrs. Hullis ... I was saying to Mrs. Hullis here only yesterday that it was a shame, the way men were getting drunk. That Ote Runns, that beats my carpets, came here yesterday to do some work for me, and I paid him; and Mrs. Hullis saw him coming home from town that afternoon, and he couldn’t even stay on the sidewalk, he was staggering so. I declare, it makes you feel like not paying a man like that for working for you, when he can go right off and spend his money on whisky, and his wife and children at home—”

Wint said, with a glance at his father: “Ote’s not married, mother. He hasn’t any wife; and as far as I know, he hasn’t any children.”

“Well, suppose he had,” she demanded, “wouldn’t it be just the same? I declare, Wint, you’re always contradicting me. But I said to Mrs. Hullis I thought it was a shame, and she said she thought so too, and it is. You’ve done just right, Wint. I didn’t think anybody could ever do that, or I’d have told you to do it before. I didn’t know the Mayor had the say of that, Wint. I thought the Mayor was the man you went to when your dogs got into the pound. I remember Mrs. Hullis’s dog got taken to the pound, three years ago, and she went to Mayor Johnson, he was then, and he got him out for her. And I told her—”

Wint had been watching his father. He had expected the older man to be proud of him, and had rather dreaded this pride. He had prepared himself to disclaim any praise that might come. But—Chase was not offering to praise him. There was no pride in his father’s face; there was rather an uneasy regret, and it fired the antagonism in Wint, and made him feel like defending himself. He asked, interrupting Mrs. Chase, whether the elder Chase thought the orders should be enforced.

“I suppose so,” Chase said, and Mrs. Chase lapsed into a momentary silence, pouring fresh tea into her cup.

“Don’t you think it’s a good thing?” Wint demanded challengingly. “Don’t you—aren’t you glad?”

Mrs. Chase said: “Of course it’s a good thing. It ought to have been done long ago. It’s a shame, the way things have been going on in this—”

Chase said to her: “Ordinarily, mother, I would think it a good thing. But in this case, it’s a part of Amos Caretall’s political game. A part of his—”

Wint looked at his father sharply, a word leaping to his lips. Mrs. Chase asked: “Congressman Caretall? Is he back here again, after the way he treated you? Wint, I should think you’d be ashamed to do anything to help him, after what he did to your father. I should think—”

Wint said quickly: “He has nothing to do with this. I decided to do it, and I gave the order, and I’m going through with it. Congressman Caretall isn’t in this at all.”

The elder Chase smiled and said: “You don’t understand, Wint. I’ve known him longer. He’s absolutely without principle or scruple. You know, for instance, that he’s a wet man; but he’s doing this for his own ends, using you—”

Wint protested: “He’s not doing this. I’m doing it.”

Mrs. Chase cried: “I should think you’d be ashamed, Wint, to do anything against your own father. He’s been a good father to you, Wint. You know he—”

Wint cut in, almost pleading: “But, mother, you said yourself this was a good thing. To clean up Hardiston. And father’s always been in favor of it.”

“That was before I understood that Congressman Caretall was doing it to hurt your father. I don’t think anything is good that hurts your father, Wint. You ought not to say that. You know I—”

“But he’s not doing it to hurt dad, mother. I told you that. I’m doing it myself; he’s not doing it at all.”

“Your father understands these things better than you, Wint. Didn’t he tell you Congressman Caretall was just using you? I shouldn’t think you’d be willing to—”

The elder Chase said uneasily: “I know him better than you, Wint.”

Wint pushed back his chair and looked steadily at the older man. “You talk like V. R. Kite, dad,” he said.

Chase confessed his guilt by the vehemence of his protestations. “That’s not so, Wint. And in any case, Kite is an honest man compared to Caretall. He plays square with his friends, at least. That’s more than Amos can say.”

Wint asked: “What makes you think Amos is playing crooked now? Not that he has anything to do with this....”

“I know him. He’s always crooked. A crooked, double-crossing politician.”

“I’m not defending Amos,” Wint said stubbornly. “He’s treated you badly. But he’s been decent to me. I’ll not turn against him. And anyway, this is my doing, my business. He’s not in it at all.”

“You said he was backing you.”

“I said he thought I was doing a good thing. I expected you to think that, too.”

Chase flushed uncomfortably. “Ordinarily, I would say so. If you’d done this without prompting from him, I would say so. But it’s significant that you didn’t; that you waited till he came home, and talked to you, and then gave your orders.”

“I’d been thinking about it for a long time.”

“But you didn’t act without word from him, Wint. That’s why I—regret it.”

Wint asked harshly: “Listen! Do I get this straight? You’d have me let them go on selling whisky in Hardiston just for fear I am helping Amos by stopping them?”

“I don’t like to see you letting Amos use you.”

“Aside from that, isn’t it a good thing to clean up the town, no matter what the motive?”

“You’ll find in your law books somewhere the statement that the motive determines the deed,” Chase told him.

“Don’t you think it important to clean up Hardiston?”

“I think it important not to cement Amos Caretall’s hold on this county, and this town.”

Wint said angrily: “Forget Amos. Forget he exists. I’m asking a flat question. Why don’t you answer it?”

Mrs. Chase interposed: “Don’t you talk to your father so, Wint. Don’t you do it. He knows best what’s good for you, and for Hardiston, and for everybody. You know he—”

“Is whisky good for Ote Runns?” Wint demanded.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t do him any hurt. It’s not as if he had a wife and children, Wint, you know. You ought to do what your father says. He—”

Wint faced the older man. “Well,” he asked, “what is it you say I should do, dad? In plain language. Just what do you claim I ought to do?”

“Refuse to let Amos Caretall make you his tool,” Chase said steadily.

“Let Hardiston wallow in booze?”

“That’s beside the point. Amos is the point.”

Wint got up swiftly. “Amos is not the point,” he said. “Hardiston’s the point. Hardiston’s the point, and I’m the point, too. If whisky is good for Hardiston, the town ought to have it. If lawbreaking is good for Hardiston, the lawbreaking ought to be permitted to go on. But if it’s right and decent to keep the law, then I’m right. And if it’s right to leave booze alone, then I’m right. And if I think what I’m doing is right, I ought to go on with it; and if I think it’s wrong, I ought to drop it. Amos has nothing to do with it. Anyway, a bad man doing good things is a good man. If Amos were doing this, the fact that he’s a crook wouldn’t make it crooked. The whole thing works the other way. If Amos is doing this, and it’s a good thing to do, then so far as this is concerned, Amos is a good man.”

He flung up his hand. “I don’t mean to hurt you, dad. I think you’re wrong on this. I can’t believe you want me to back down.”

Chase had his share of stubbornness, of the pride which had been a pitfall before Wint’s feet. He was too stubborn to admit himself in the wrong. He said swiftly:

“I do want you to back down. Call off Radabaugh. Tell Amos he can’t make a monkey out of you. Can’t get you to pull his chestnuts out of the fire.... Stand on your own feet. That’s what I advise you to do, Wint.”

Wint looked his father in the eye for a moment; then he shook his head as though to brush away a veil. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean to fight it out on this line. Stick to it.”

Chase said nothing. Mrs. Chase, silenced by the tension in the atmosphere, looked from father to son with wide eyes, and she was trembling. After a little, Wint asked gently:

“Does this mean—a break, father? Does it mean for me to get out of here?”

Chase got to his feet in swift protest. “No, no, Wint, not that.” For a moment, he had an overpowering impulse to open his heart, promise Wint his support, offer the boy his hand. But he could not bring himself to do it. The stubborn, prideful streak was strong in him. He fought down the impulse, said simply: “We can disagree without fighting, I guess. That’s all.”

“You mean we’re on opposite sides of the fence in this, dad? You really mean that?”

“Yes.”

Wint’s voice was wistful. “I—counted on you.”

Chase flung toward the door. “I can’t help it, Wint,” he said harshly. “I can’t link up with Amos Caretall. Not for any man.”

When the door shut behind him, Wint stood still for a little, thinking hard. Then his mother touched his arm, and he looked down and saw that she was crying with fright.

“Wint,” she pleaded, “don’t you go quarreling with your father again. Don’t you, Wint. Please.... He couldn’t stand it. Not again, Wint. I told Mrs. Hullis when you were gone before—”

He put his arm around her affectionately; and he smiled. “There, mother, it’s all right,” he said. “Dad and I are all right. Don’t you worry. We understand each other.”

“I told Mrs. Hullis he couldn’t stand it to have you go away again—”

“I’m not going away,” Wint promised.

“Don’t you....” she begged. “Don’t you go, any more.”

CHAPTER V
THE TRIUMVIRATE

A CONSCIOUSNESS of having acted unworthily does not make for a man’s peace of mind. The plain truth of the matter is that after his talk with Wint at supper that night, Winthrop Chase, Senior, was ashamed of himself. Not that he admitted it, even in his thoughts; but it was obvious enough in his uneasiness, his inability to sit still, his restless movements here and there about the sitting room. Wint was not blind. He guessed something of what was passing in his father’s mind, and wished there were some way for them to come together. But there seemed no move he could make to that end.

The older man at last announced that he was going to walk downtown for the mail. Wint said: “Good idea. I’ll go along.” But Chase said:

“I’ve got to see a man,” and Wint understood that his father did not want his company, so he stayed at home when the older man departed.

Chase wanted to see Kite. He had no definite idea why he wanted to see Kite, but he felt the need of reassurance from some one, and he knew Kite would reassure him as to what he had done. So he went downtown to find Kite and talk to him. The Bazaar was closed. He telephoned Kite’s home, and the old woman who kept house for him said Mr. Kite had gone uptown to see Mr. Routt. So Chase went to the building on the second floor of which Routt had his office, and saw a light behind the drawn blind in Routt’s window and went up. He heard their voices inside, Kite’s and Routt’s, before he tried the door. The door was locked; and when he touched the knob, silence fell inside. Routt called: “Hello, who’s there?”

Chase told him, and Routt said: “In a minute,” and unlocked the door and let him in. Chase saw Kite sitting by the desk, his side whiskers bristling angrily.

There are no modern office buildings in Hardiston. Routt’s office was on the second floor of the three-story building at the corner of Main and Broad streets. There was a hardware store on the first floor, and a lodge room on the floor above Routt’s office. Routt and three or four others had quarters on the second floor. Routt’s office faced the street; a single room with a hot-air register in the wall near the door. There were shelves around the wall, with a meager library of brand-new and little-used law books. Routt’s desk was shiny, yellow oak. A diploma, or perhaps a certificate of admission to the bar, framed in mission oak, hung on the wall above the desk. There was an electric light in the middle of the ceiling, and it shed a bald and naked light over the three men who faced each other in the room.

Kite said: “Hello, Chase,” and Chase responded to the greeting. Routt asked:

“How’d you happen to drop in? Glad to see you.”

“I was looking for Kite,” Chase said. “Heard he was with you.”

Kite asked eagerly: “Looking for me, Chase? Good news? What’s happened?”

Chase looked at Routt, with a curious, dull inquiry. The man was moving in something like a daze; he had not yet found himself in this new alliance. He was hating himself for opposing Wint, and he was flogging his courage to the venture. He wondered what Kite and Jack Routt were doing together. Routt was a Caretall man in politics; also he was a friend of Wint. Chase tried to puzzle this out, and Kite asked again:

“What’s happened?”

“I—spoke to Wint,” Chase said slowly.

Routt asked: “About withdrawing his orders to Radabaugh? He’ll never do it.”

“No,” said Chase. “He’ll never do it.”

Kite cried fiercely: “He’s got to. He doesn’t understand. Didn’t you tell him, Chase? Didn’t you make him see?”

“I couldn’t make him see anything. He would not change.”

“He’ll never change unless he’s forced to,” Routt said; and Chase looked at the young man and asked slowly:

“I thought you and Wint were friends, Routt?”

“We are,” Routt declared. “He’s the best friend I’ve got. That’s why I don’t want to see him made a fool of. That’s why I don’t want to see Amos make a fool of him. You’re his father, but you feel the same as I do, that he’s wrong, that he’s got to be made change his mind.”

“I thought you were with Amos,” Chase insisted mildly.

“Amos and I have broken,” said Routt hotly. “He tried to trick me as he tricks every one, and I wouldn’t stand for it. That’s all. I’m out to even things with him.”

Chase looked around for a chair and sat down. Routt sat on the desk. Kite had not risen when Chase came in. The little man asked Chase now: “What did you say to Wint anyway? I should think he’d take your advice before he’d take Caretall’s.”

“I told him Caretall was using him, that he was being used to play politics.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“Said this wasn’t Amos’s doing at all. Said it was his own idea, that he had given the orders, that he meant to carry them through. Said, even if it were Caretall’s move, it was a good thing, and he was for it.”

Kite snarled: “He’s damnably moral, all of a sudden.” And Chase felt a surge of resentment at the other’s tone, and countered:

“He’s right, you know. Booze is dirty business.”

“It’s my business,” Kite snapped, stamping to his feet; and if Routt had not intervened, the old feud between Kite and Chase might have been revived, then and there. But Routt had no notion of permitting a break between these strange allies. He said cheerfully:

“Sit down, Kite. We’re not talking about booze. We’re talking about Amos Caretall. We’re not trying to settle the moral issue. We’re trying to settle Amos Caretall’s hash. Question is, how are we going to do it?”

“That’s right,” Chase agreed. Caretall’s name was like an anchor, to which he could make fast his disturbed thoughts. So long as he was opposing Amos, he could not go wrong.

Kite sat down, thinking; and he asked: “You say Wint told you Amos had nothing to do with this, Chase?”

“Yes. He probably thinks that’s true. Caretall got around him, somehow.”

Routt said: “Caretall’s a shrewd man, he can get around other men. He knows the trick of it.” Kite said nothing. He was thinking over what Chase had said. Routt continued: “What we want to do is to go out and get him.”

Chase suddenly found the atmosphere of this room unbearable; he wanted to get out in the air. So he got up, and said harshly: “I’m with you on that. I’ll do anything I can against Amos. Let me know what you decide.”

Routt said: “Don’t run away. Let’s talk things over.” But Chase told him he had business elsewhere; and Kite made no objection to his going. When he was gone, Routt told Kite:

“He’ll have to be handled carefully. He’s naturally a dry man, you know.”

Kite said thoughtfully, as though he were considering another matter: “Yes, that’s so.”

“I’ve been figuring on what you suggested—getting a handle to control Wint,” Routt told him. “You know, I think there’s a way.”

“To get something on Wint?”

“Yes. He’s not such a terribly upright young man. Any one’s foot is apt to slip.”

“You mean his has slipped?” Kite asked eagerly. Routt only grinned.

“I’ll let you know what I mean, in good time,” he said.

Kite grunted. It was evident that his mind was busy with another angle of the situation. A little later, still abstracted, he took himself away.

While he walked home, he turned over and over in his thoughts his new idea.

CHAPTER VI
EVERY MAN HAS HIS PRICE

KITE’S new idea was one that appealed to the mean heart of the man. There had been a time when Kite was bold as a lion in evil-doing; but as he grew old, he was becoming timorous. He had, now, no stomach for a fight, talk as ferociously as he pleased. He wanted life to move easily and smoothly; and fighting jarred on him. He thought, with a self-pitying regret, that things had been going so comfortably. It was a shame that Wint had come along and started all this trouble. He was an old man, not made for trouble.

There was very little pride in Kite, and a good deal of the shamelessness of the miser. If he was a miser, his illicit business was his hoarded gold. He was ready to go to any lengths of self-humiliation to protect this treasure. He would fight if he had to; but he had no stomach for it. There must be some other way.

The suggestion of that other way had come from Chase. When Chase first warned him that Amos would turn Hardiston dry, Kite had refused to believe; when Routt repeated the warning, he was still doubtful. When Wint actually gave the orders he had dreaded, Kite was half forced to agree that Amos had tricked him, but even in the face of the fact, he had still clung in his heart to the hope that this was none of Caretall’s doing, and that the two who had warned him were wrong.

He had hoped desperately that they were wrong, because if they were mistaken there was a chance to save himself without a fight. What Chase had told him this night strengthened his hope. Wint, Chase said, declared Amos had nothing to do with the case, that Amos had neither advised nor prompted his orders to Radabaugh, and that the whole crusade was his own idea and his own battle.

If this were true, if Wint were actually standing on his own feet, then there was a chance of coming at him through Amos. That was the thought from which Kite took hope. He and Amos were, on the surface, allies still. Amos would not willingly antagonize him. And if this move of Wint’s were not Amos’s doing, then Amos might be willing to take a hand on Kite’s behalf, call Wint off, return things to their original condition, smooth Kite’s existence into tranquillity again.

When he first conceived the idea, Kite cast it aside as grotesque and impossible. But it returned to his thoughts, and his hopes fought for it, until he convinced himself there was something in it; better than an even chance in his favor; worth trying, certainly. When he made up his mind to this—it was after he had undressed and got into bed that night—he dropped off into a restless sleep; and when he woke, as his habit was, at daylight, he began at once to consider what he should say to Amos.

He telephoned Caretall before breakfast and asked him when he could see him to talk things over. Amos told him good-naturedly that he could come right after breakfast. “I’m taking my ease, these few days,” he said. “Staying at home in my carpet slippers, and smoking my pipe. Drop in any time.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” Kite told him. And Amos said that was all right, and hung up the receiver. Immediately, he telephoned Peter Gergue to come right over, and Peter joined him at breakfast in ten minutes. It was not even necessary for old Maria to set an extra plate for Peter. Agnes had overslept—she nearly always did oversleep—and Amos was breakfasting alone, with Agnes’s empty place across the table from him.

Peter sat down there, and Amos helped him to fried eggs and bacon, and Maria gave him a cup of coffee. Amos said at once: “Kite just called up, Peter. He’s coming over.”

Gergue swallowed a gulp of coffee. “Guessed he would,” he assented. “Guessed he’d have things to say to you.”

“What do you guess he’s got to say to me, Peter?” Amos asked.

“He’ll want you to call Wint off, I’d say.”

Amos looked politely regretful, as though he were talking to Kite. “Why, now, you know, Wint’s his own boss. He does what he wants to do. I never saw any one that could run Wint, did you?”

“Not if Wint knew it, I never did.”

“What have you heard, Peter?” Amos asked. “What did Kite do yest’day, when he heard the sad news?”

“Lutcher told him,” said Peter. “Lutcher says he was wild. But when Jim Radabaugh saw him, he kept his head, and said it didn’t concern him. I hear he had some talk with Jack Routt; and then he posted off down to the furnace to see Chase.”

“To see Chase, eh?”

“What I hear.”

“What about, Peter?”

“I sh’d guess he wanted Chase to call Wint off. Kite don’t like a fight, you know.”

Amos nodded. “V. R. Kite,” he said pleasantly, “is a lick-spittle, Peter. That’s what V. R. Kite is. I don’t like to see Chase mixing with him.”

“You know,” said Peter, “Chase has changed some, since you put the laugh on him.”

“Chase is all right,” said Amos surprisingly. “He’s had the foolishness knocked out of him. Peter, he’ll make a good man, before he’s done.”

Peter looked at Amos sidewise and said he wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

“But he makes a mistake to tie up to Kite,” said Amos.

“Him and Kite had a talk with Routt, in Jack’s office, last night,” said Peter.

Amos chuckled. “Pete, it beats me how you find out things.”

“I don’t find ’em out,” said Peter. “People tell me.” He rummaged through the tangle at the back of his neck. “Looks like people aim to make mischief, so they tell me things to tell you that’ll start a fight, and the likes of that. That’s the way of it.”

“This won’t start a fight,” said Amos. “I’m home for a rest.”

Peter looked at him intently. “You backing Wint?”

“No.”

“What?”

“Pete,” said Amos thoughtfully, “this was Wint’s idea. He figured it out, the right thing to do. He’s started it. It won’t hurt him a bit to fight it out. I’m going to stand by and yell: ‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar.’ That’s me in this, Peter.”

“What are you going to tell Kite?”

“Going to tell him just that,” said Amos.

They had finished breakfast and moved into the sitting room and filled their pipes. Agnes came downstairs in her kimono, hair flying, and kissed Amos and pretended to be embarrassed at appearing before Peter in her attractive disarray. Then she went out to her breakfast. The two men smoked without speaking. Amos had looked after his daughter with a certain trouble in his eyes; and Peter saw it. Peter did not like Agnes.

Peter had gone before Kite arrived. Old Maria let Kite in, and Amos called from the sitting room:

“Right in here, Kite. I’m too darned lazy to come and meet you. Leave your hat in the hall.”

Kite obeyed the summons, and Amos said lazily: “Take a chair, Kite. Any chair.” And when the little man had sat down: “Fine day, Kite. I tell you, there isn’t any place that can beat Hardiston in May that I know of.”

Kite said: “That’s right, Amos.”

“Yes, sir,” Amos repeated. “They can’t beat old Hardiston.” He lapsed into one of those characteristic silences, head on one side, squinting idly straight before him, his pipe hissing in his mouth. You might have thought there were no words in the man. Kite said impatiently:

“Amos, I want to talk to you.”

Amos looked at him, and said amiably: “Well, Kite, you’ll never have a likelier chance. I don’t aim to move out of this chair.”

“Well,” said Kite uneasily, “I want to talk to you about young Chase.”

“Mayor Chase?”

“Yes. Wint.”

“Oh!” said Amos, without any curiosity.

“I mean to say,” Kite explained, “I want to talk about this move of his. You’ve heard about it.”

“I hadn’t heard he’d moved,” said Amos. “Thought he was living with his paw. Where’s he gone to now?”

“Damn it, Amos!” Kite protested, “don’t fool with me. You know what I mean.”

“Kite,” said Amos, “nobody ever knows what you mean, even when you say it. You’re such an excitable man.”

“Well, who wouldn’t get excited? I tell you, this is a—”

“What is?” Amos asked, interrupting without seeming to do so.

“This damned idea of enforcing a fool liquor law.”

“Oh, that,” said Amos.

Kite leaned forward. “Is it your doing, Amos? Did you get him to do this? Because if you did—”

“Why, man,” said Amos, “I’m not Wint’s boss.”

“You elected him.”

“You elected him as much as me, Kite. And I heard how he called you a buzzard. If he calls you a buzzard, what do you think he’d call me?”

“I hold no grudge for that,” Kite explained. “He was drunk. Fact remains, he’s friendly with you. I ask you, I’m asking you flatly: Did you prompt him to do this, or tell him to, or advise him to in any way?”

“Well,” said Amos, “if you ask me, I’ll say: No.”

Kite slapped his knee. “I knew it,” he exclaimed.

“Who says I did?” Amos asked. “Wint say I did?”

“No. He says you didn’t. Chase and Routt claim you did it.”

“Chase? And Jack Routt? Why, now, I take that unkind,” Amos protested, in a hurt voice, and Kite realized that he had blundered, and hurried past the danger point.

“Well, if you didn’t advise Wint to do this, what are you going to do now? Back him in his fight?”

“You know,” said Amos, “Pete Gergue asked me just that. Ever hear the story about the lady and the bear, Kite? Bear chased the lady around the tree, and the lady’s husband was up the tree. Lady yells to him to come down and kill the bear; but husband just sets on his branch, out of reach, and yells: ‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar.’ Ever hear that story, Kite?”

Kite chuckled without any mirth in his dry old eyes. “No,” he said.

“That man didn’t figure to play any favorites,” Amos explained. “And neither do I. Ain’t often I get a chance to set back and watch a fight. This time, I’m going to. On the sidelines. That’s me, Kite.”

Kite protested instantly. “That’s not the fair thing, Amos. You and I worked together to put him in there, with the understanding he’d let the liquor business alone.”

Amos lifted his hand. “Understanding was that Wint weren’t likely to monkey with it. You thought so. That’s why you was willing to help me. I didn’t make any promises, nor any predictions, Kite.”

“But, damn it,” Kite insisted, “you ought to be willing to help me out. I helped you out.”

“It would hurt me, Kite, to know I sanctioned nonenforcement.”

“Nobody would know.”

“They’d find out. Things like that do get out, you know, Kite.”

The little man tugged at his side whiskers feverishly. “Amos,” he pleaded, “isn’t there anything you can do for me? This is bad business. I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it. Isn’t there anything you can do?”

Amos considered, then he sighed, and said good-naturedly: “Kite, you’re an awful pest, stirring me up when I’m comfortable.”

“You’ve got to do something.”

“We-ell, I’ll tell you. I’ll take you to see Wint. You can put it up to him. That’s the best.”

“You’ll back me up?”

Amos shook his head. “You and him can have it out. I’ll not yell for either of you.”

Kite protested: “A lot of good that will do.”

Amos shrugged his big shoulders. “Well....” Kite got up hurriedly.

“All right,” he agreed, before Amos could withdraw his offer. “All right, come on.”

Amos looked ruefully at his feet, and wiggled his toes in his comfortable slippers. “I declare, Kite, I hate to put on shoes.”

“Damn it, man, it’s your own offer,” Kite protested; and Amos admitted it, and groaned:

“All right, I’ll come.”

Wint was in a cheerful humor, that morning. He had been depressed by his father’s attitude, disappointed that the elder Chase chose to oppose him. But at the same time, the opposition exhilarated him. After his father left the house, he went to see Joan for an hour; and without over-applauding the step he had taken, she spoke of the trouble and the opposition he would face, and the prospect pleased Wint. He took a cheerful delight in opposing people. He was never so good-natured as when he was fighting.

So Amos and Kite found Wint amiably glad to see them both. Amos sat on the broad window ledge, his back to the light, his face somewhat shadowed. Wint made Kite sit down near his desk; he himself tilted his chair back against one of the leaves of the desk, and put his feet on an open drawer, and asked what their errand was.

“Kite wanted to see you,” said Amos. “Asked me to come along.”

“No need of that, Kite.” Wint said good-naturedly. “I don’t keep an office boy. Anybody can see me any time.”

Kite shifted uneasily in his seat, not quite sure what he meant to say. Amos prompted him from the window. “Kite don’t think you ought to shut down on him,” he said.

Wint looked surprised. “Shut down on him? What’s the idea, Kite?”

Kite said, in a flustered way: “It’s not so personal as that. You know, I’m by conviction a believer in the sale of liquor. I believe the people of Hardiston agree with me. I’m sorry to hear you’ve taken steps to stop the sale.”

“Why, no,” said Wint cheerfully, “the town voted against it. I had nothing to do with that. I’m just enforcing the law.”

Kite smiled weakly. “There are laws, and laws,” he said. “Some laws are not meant to be enforced. The people of Hardiston objected to the open saloon; they did not object to the unobtrusive and inoffensive sale.”

“Oh!” said Wint.

“You didn’t object to it yourself,” Kite reminded him. “Isn’t that so?”

He expected Wint to be confused; but Wint only laughed. “I should say I didn’t,” he admitted. “I liked it as well as any one. Same time, this isn’t a question of liking; it’s a question of the law.” He leaned forward with a certain jeering earnestness in his voice. “Why, Mr. Kite, if I didn’t enforce the law, Hardiston people could remove me for misfeasance in office, or something like that.”

Kite said: “Bosh!” impatiently. And Wint asked him suddenly:

“What’s your interest in this?”

“That of a citizen.”

“Oh, I know you don’t sell it yourself,” said Wint, meaning just the contrary. “But, Mr. Kite, if you have any friends in the business, tell them to get out of it. It’s dead, in Hardiston. Dead and gone.”

Kite said weakly: “Amos and I came here to try and make you change your mind about that.”

Wint looked at Amos. “That so?” he asked. “You think I ought to back down?”

“‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar,’” said Amos cheerfully. “That’s me.”

“Not taking sides?”

“No.”

Kite explained: “Amos and I worked together to elect you, you know.”

Wint eyed him blandly. “Well, I’m much obliged. But I don’t see what that has to do—”

“You owe us some gratitude.”

“I’m grateful.”

“There’s a moral obligation.”

Wint grinned. “Kite, I’m afraid you’re an Indian giver. I’m afraid you elected me, thinking you could use me. But I didn’t ask to be elected, so I don’t see—”

Hopelessness was settling down on V. R. Kite; hopelessness, and the desperate energy of a cornered rat. There was no shame in him, and no scruple. Also, there was very little wisdom in the buzzard-like man. He was to prove this before their eyes.

“Wint,” he said, “Amos and I are practical men. You’re practical, too, aren’t you? There’s no place for dreams in this world, Wint. It’s a hard world. You understand that.”

“You find it a hard world? Why, Kite, I think the world is a pretty good sort of a place. That’s the way it strikes me.”

“I—”

“Maybe it’s your own fault you find it hard.”

Kite brushed the suggestion away. He was obsessed with a new idea, a last hope. He said: “Wint, if you drop this, Amos and I can do a lot for you.”

“You and Amos?” Wint looked at Amos again. “How about it, Congressman?”

“‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar,’” Amos repeated imperturbably.

“What I mean,” said Kite, “is that we can send you to the legislature, or anything.”

“Why, I’m not looking for anything,” said Wint mildly.

Kite snapped: “Every man has his price.” And when he met Wint’s level eyes, and knew he was committed, he went on hurriedly: “I know that. If politics isn’t yours, something else is. Speak out, man. What do you—”

Wint asked curiously, and without anger: “What’s the idea, Kite?”

“I could give you a start in business. Help you.... I’m a business man, you understand. Anything....”

Wint laughed. “You’re too vague.”

Kite looked at Amos. He looked at him so steadily that Amos got down from the window seat, and whistled softly under his breath, and walked out of the office into the council chamber above the fire-engine house. He shut the door behind him. Kite leaned toward Wint. “Five hundred?” he asked huskily.

Wint chuckled. “I say,” he exclaimed, “I had no idea there was any money in this job.”

“A thousand....”

“I’ve always wanted to know what it felt like to be bribed.”

“A thousand, Wint? For God’s sake....”

Wint shook his head, still perfectly good-humored. “There’s no question about it, Kite,” he said. “You surely are an old buzzard. Get out of my nest, you evil bird!”

Kite protested: “Wint, listen to—”

“Damn you!” said Wint, still without heat, “do you want me to throw you out the window?”

Kite got up. Wint had not even taken his feet down from their perch. Kite said: “You’ll change your—”

Wint’s feet banged the floor; and Kite stopped, and he went swiftly to the door. In the doorway, he turned and looked back, his dry old face working. He seemed to want to speak. But without a word, he turned and went away.

Amos strolled back in. Wint looked up at him and chuckled. But Amos looked serious.

“Went away all rumpled up, didn’t he?” Wint commented. “But he didn’t have a word to say.”

Amos nodded. “Not a word to say,” he agreed. “But, Wint,” he added, “knowing Kite like I do, I wish he had.”

“Wish he had had a word?”

“I never was much afraid of a barking dog,” said the Congressman.

CHAPTER VII
ANOTHER WORD AS TO HETTY

IF Wint had expected immediate conflict, he was to be disappointed. For after Kite left his office that day, nothing happened; neither that day, nor the next, nor the next. Amos told Wint that Kite would strike, in his own time, and strike below the belt. Wint laughed and said he was ready to fight, foul or fair. But—neither foul blow nor fair was struck. Radabaugh reported that his orders had been obeyed. Lutcher had left town, temporarily, it was said. His rooms off the alley were locked, and he had gone so far as to give Radabaugh a key, so that the marshal might make sure, now and then, that Lutcher’s store of drinkables was not disturbed. One shipment did come in for Mrs. Moody. It was labeled “Canned Goods”; but Jim Radabaugh made it his business to inspect all sorts of goods consigned to Mrs. Moody, and he found this particular box contained goods in bottles instead of cans. He emptied the bottles into the creek, across the railroad tracks from the station, and told Mrs. Moody about it. She threw a stick of firewood at him, then wept with rage because he dodged it successfully.

For the rest, Hardiston was quiet. The lunch-cart man whom Radabaugh had suspected took his cart and left town. Kite met Wint on the street and greeted him as pleasantly as usual. Jack Routt cultivated him, and joked him about his ideas of morality. One night, at Routt’s home, he offered Wint a drink. Wint looked thoughtfully through the smoke of his pipe as though he had not heard. When Routt repeated the offer, Wint declined politely.

The business of being Mayor occupied very little of Wint’s time. Early in June, Foster, the city solicitor, brought a stranger to see Wint about a street carnival which wanted to come to Hardiston the last week in June. Wint agreed to grant the permits necessary.

“You understand,” he told the man, “that this is a dry town.”

The stranger winked, and said he understood. Wint shook his head gravely. “I’m afraid you don’t understand,” he said. “This is a dry town. There’s no booze sold here. Last summer, I remember, there was some selling in connection with your carnival, here. If you try that this time, I’ll have to close you up.”

The man looked surprised and disgusted. “What is this, a Sunday school?” he demanded.

“No,” said Wint. “Just a dry town.”

“How about the games?”

Wint smiled good-naturedly. “Oh, don’t make them too raw. I’ve no objection to ‘The cane you ring, that cane you get.’”

“Hell!” said the man. “We won’t make chicken feed.”

“You don’t have to come.”

But the stranger said they would come, all right. After he had gone, Wint told Foster the carnival would bear watching. Foster agreed, but said the merchants wanted it. “Brings the farmers to town every day, instead of just Saturday, you know.”

“I know,” said Wint. “Well, let them come.”

After a week of quiet, Wint decided that Kite and his allies had put the lid on. “But they’re just waiting,” Amos warned him. “Waiting till they get a toe hold on you, somehow. Watch your step, Wint.”

Wint said he was watching. “I wish they’d start something,” he said. “Hot weather’s dull, with no excitement.”

“There’ll be enough excitement,” Amos assured him.

Routt walked home with Wint one afternoon, talking over a proposition that he had brought up a day or two before. Since Wint was going to be a lawyer, he said, they ought to go in together. Wint was already so well advanced in his reading that Routt thought in another year or eighteen months he could take the examinations. “There’s a big practice waiting for the right people down here,” he told Wint enthusiastically. “Dick Hoover and I are going to get together when his father dies. The old man is pretty feeble. You come in with us. We’ll do things, Wint.”

Wint was pleased and somewhat flattered by the suggestion, and thought well of Routt for it. But he only said, good-naturedly, that it was still a long way off, and that there would be times enough to talk about the matter when he was admitted to the bar. Nevertheless, Routt dwelt on it insistently, so insistently that instead of turning aside toward his own home at the usual place, he came on toward Wint’s father’s house, still talking. It did not occur to Wint that there was any purpose in Routt’s thus accompanying him. He had heard that Routt and Kite had been seen together, and asked Jack about it. Routt explained that he had to keep in touch with all sorts. A mixture of business and politics, he said, and Wint was satisfied.

When they came in sight of the house, it was still an hour before supper time; and Hetty Morfee was sweeping down the front steps and the walk to the gate. They saw her while they were still half a block away, and Routt said casually:

“Hetty still working for your mother, I see.”

Wint nodded. “Yes; I guess she’s pretty good.”

Routt agreed. “If she’d only keep straight. But....”

“I don’t think she’s that kind,” said Wint.

“I hope not,” Routt assented. “Hope she doesn’t—get into trouble. If she ever did, in this town....”

Wint said nothing; and Routt added: “She’d need a friend, all right.” And again: “She’d need some one to take her part. But he’d be in Dutch, whoever he was.”

He looked at Wint sidewise. They were near the gate now, and Wint said: “Come in and have supper.”

Routt shook his head. “Not to-night.”

Hetty looked up, at their approach, and Wint called: “Hello, Hetty.”

She said: “Hello, Wint.” Routt repeated Wint’s greeting, and the girl looked at him with curiously steady eyes, and said:

“Hello, Jack.”

Wint thought, vaguely, that there was some repressed feeling in her tone; but he forgot the matter in bidding Routt good-by, and went inside, leaving Hetty at her task, while Routt went back by the way they had come. Hetty watched him go. He did not look toward her, did not turn his head. She watched him out of sight.

Jack Routt took Agnes Caretall to the moving pictures that night. Wint saw them there. He was with Joan. Afterward, Routt and Agnes walked home together.

Routt did most of the talking, on that homeward walk. Now and then Agnes seemed to protest, weakly, at something he was urging her to do. One near enough might have heard him speak of Wint. But there was no one near.

When they reached her home, there was a light in the sitting-room window. That meant Amos was there; and Routt said he would not go in. “But you’ll remember, won’t you, Agnes,” he asked, “if you want to do something for me?”

She said softly: “I do want to do anything for you.”

He laughed at her gently. “How about him?”

“I hate him,” she said, with a sudden intensity that was not pretty to see. “I hate him. Hate him, I say.”

“What’s he ever done to you?” Routt teased; and she said:

“Nothing,” as though that one word were an accusation.

Routt put his arm around her; and she clung to him with a swift, terrified sort of passion, as though afraid to let him go. It seemed to embarrass him; he freed himself a little roughly.

He left her standing there when he hurried away.

CHAPTER VIII
AGNES TAKES A HAND

IF Jack Routt had meant to force Hetty into Wint’s thoughts, he had succeeded. Wint was not conscious of this when he left Jack at his gate; he was thinking of other things. But during supper, an hour later, when Hetty came into the dining room, Wint remembered what Jack had said; and he looked at the girl with a keen scrutiny. He studied her, without seeming to do so.

He was surprised to discover in how many ways Hetty had changed, since she came to work for his mother. The changes were slight, they had been gradual. But they were appallingly obvious, under Wint’s cool appraisal now. He tallied them in his thoughts. Her laughter had been gayly and merrily defiant; it was sullen, now, and mirthless. Her eyes had twinkled with a pleasant impudence; they were overcast, these days, with a troubling shadow. There was a shadow, too, upon the clear, milky skin of her cheeks; it was a blemish that could neither be analyzed nor defined. Yet it was there.

Hetty had slackened, too. Her hair was no longer so smoothly brushed, so crisply drawn back above her ears. It was, at times, untidy. Her waists were no longer so immaculate; her aprons needed pressing, needed soap and water, too, at times. She had been fresh and clean and good to look upon; she was, in these days, indefinably soiled.

After supper that night, Wint went out into the kitchen where Hetty was washing dishes. He went on the pretext of getting a drink of water. There had been a time, a few months ago, when Hetty would have turned to greet him laughingly, and she would have drawn a glass of water and given it to him. But she did neither of those things now. Instead, she moved aside without looking at him, while he held the glass under the faucet; and when he stepped back to drink, she went on with her work, shoulders bent, eyes down.

Wint finished the glass of water, and put the glass back in its place. Then he hesitated, started to go, came back. At last he asked pleasantly: “Well, Hetty, how are things going?”

She looked at him sideways, with a swift, furtive glance. And she laughed in the mirthless way that was becoming habitual. “Oh, great,” she said, and her tone was ironical.

“What’s the matter?” Wint asked. “Anything wrong?”

“Of course not. Don’t be a kid. Can’t I have a grouch if I want to?”

“Sure,” he agreed amiably. “I have ’em, myself. Anything I can do to bring you out of your grouch?”

“No.”

“If there is,” he said, so seriously she knew he meant his offer. “If there is, let me know. Maybe I can help.”

“I’m not asking help,” she told him sullenly.

“Is there anything definite? Anything wrong?”

She said, with a hot flash of her dark eyes in his direction: “I told you no, didn’t I? What do you have to butt in for?”

Wint considered that, and he filled his pipe and lighted it; and at last he turned to the door. From the doorway he called to her: “If anything turns up, Hetty, count on me.”

She nodded, without speaking; and he left her. He was more troubled than he would have cared to admit; and he was convinced, in spite of what Hetty had said, that there was something wrong.

The third or fourth day after, Hardiston meanwhile moving along the even tenor of its way, Wint decided, after supper at home, that he wanted to see Amos. He telephoned the Congressman’s home, and Agnes answered. He asked if Amos was at home.

“He went uptown for the mail,” Agnes told him. “But he said he’d be right back. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Tell him I’m coming down, will you?” Wint suggested, and Agnes promised to do so. Wint took his hat and started for Amos’s home. He thought of going through town on the chance of picking Amos up at the Post Office; but the mail had been in for an hour, and he decided Amos would have reached his home before he got there, so he went on. Wint and Amos lived on the same street, but at different ends of the town. The better part of a mile lay between the two houses. The stores and business houses were the third point of a triangle of which the Chase home and Amos’s formed the other angles.

The night was warm and moonlit; a night in June. The street along which Wint’s route lay was shaded on either side by spreading trees, and lined with the attractive, comfortable homes of Hardiston folks who knew what homes should be. Wint met a few people: A young fellow with a flower in his buttonhole, in a great deal of a hurry; a boy and a girl with linked arms; a man, a woman here and there. At one corner, in the circle of radiance from a sputtering electric light, a dozen boys were playing “Throw the Stick.” Wint heard their cries while he was still a block or two away; he saw their shadowy figures scurrying in the dust, or crouching behind bushes and houses in the adjoining yards. As he passed the light, a woman came to the door of one of the houses and called shrilly:

“Oh-h-h, Willie-e-e-e-e!”

One of the boys answered, in reluctant and protesting tones; and the woman called:

“Bedti-i-ime.” Wint heard the boy’s querulous complaint; heard his fellows jeer at him under their breath, so that his mother might not hear. The youngsters trained laggingly homeward; and the woman at the door, as Wint passed, said implacably to her son:

“You go around to the pump and wash your feet before you come in the house, Willie.”

The boy went, still complaining. And Wint grinned as he passed by. His own days of playing, barefoot, under the corner lights were still so short a time behind him that he could sympathize with Willie. Is there any sharper humiliation than to be forced to come home to bed while the other boys are still abroad? Is there any keener discomfort than to take your two dusty feet, with the bruises and the cuts and the scratches all crudely cauterized with grime, and stick them under a stream of cold water, and scrub them till they are raw, and wipe the damp dirt off on a towel?... Wint was half minded to turn back and join that game of “Throw the Stick.” The bewildering moonlight, the warm air of the night had somewhat turned his head. It required an effort of will to keep on his way.

Agnes opened the door for him when he came to Caretall’s home. “Dad’ll be here in a minute or two,” she said. “Come right in.”

Wint hesitated. “Oh, isn’t he home yet?”

“No, but he will be.” She laughed at him, in a pretty, inviting way she had. “I won’t bite, you know.”

“I guess not,” he agreed good-naturedly. “But it’s a shame to go in the house, a night like this.”

She said: “Wait till I get a scarf. Sit down. The hammock, or the chairs. I’ll be right out.”

So Wint sat down, where the moonlight struck through the vines about the porch and mottled the floor with silver. Agnes came out with something indescribably flimsy about her fair head; and Wint laughed and said: “I never could make out why girls think a thing like that keeps them warm.”

“Oh, but it does,” she insisted. “You’ve no idea how much warmth there is in it.”

He shook his head, laughing at her. “That wouldn’t keep a butterfly warm on the Sahara Desert.”

She protested: “Now you just see....” And she moved lightly around behind him and wrapped the film of silken stuff about his head. “There,” she said, and looked at him, and laughed gayly. “You’re the funniest-looking thing.”

Wint unwound the scarf gingerly. “It feels like cobwebs,” he said. “I don’t see how you can wear it. Sticky stuff.”

“Men are always afraid of things like cobwebs. Always afraid of little things.”

Wint chuckled. “What’s this? New philosophy of life?”

“Can’t I say anything serious?”

“Why, sure. I don’t know but what you’re right, too.”

He had taken one of the chairs. She sat down in the hammock. “Come sit here with me,” she invited. “That chair’s not comfortable.”

“Oh, it’s all right.”

She stamped her foot. “I should think you’d do what I say when you come to see me.”

“Matter of fact, you know, I came to see your father.”

“Well, you’re staying to see me. If you don’t sit in the hammock, I’m going in the house and leave you.”

Wint held up his hands in mock consternation. “Heaven forbid.” He sat down beside her, as uncomfortable as a man must always be in a hammock; and she leaned away from him, half reclining, enjoying his discomfort. He could see her laughing at him in the moonlight. She pointed one forefinger at him, stroked it with the other as one strops a razor.

“’Fraid to sit in the hammock with a girl,” she taunted.

She was very pretty and provoking in the silver light; and Wint understood that he could kiss her if he chose. He had kissed Agnes before this. “Wink” and “Post Office” and kindred games were popular when he and Agnes were in high school together. But—he had no notion of kissing Agnes, moonlight or no moonlight. He had come to see Amos. Amos’s daughter was another matter.

“When is Amos coming home?” he asked. “Has he called up? Maybe I’d better walk uptown.”

“He called and said he was starting,” she assured him. “You stay right here. He’ll be here, unless he gets to talking some of your old politics. I suppose that’s what you came to see him for.”

“Oh, I just happened down this way....”

She sat up straight. “Good gracious. You act as though it were a secret. Tell me, this minute.”

“Why, as a matter of fact,” said Wint good-naturedly, “I want to talk to him about a sewer the city’s going to put in through some land he owns. I guess you’re not interested in sewers.”

She grimaced, and said she should say not. “I thought maybe it was something about the bootleggers,” she said. “Everybody’s talking about them. What are you going to do to them?”

Wint laughed. “That’s like the instructions for destroying potato bugs,” he said. “First, catch your potato bug.”

“You mean you haven’t caught any?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you trying to?”

“Why, we’ve got our eyes open.”

“I love to hear about criminals and everything,” she said. “What will you do to them when you get them? Send them to jail?”

“Well, I’ll do that, if I can’t do anything worse.”

She asked: “You’re really going to—you really mean to get after them?” He nodded, and she laughed. He asked:

“What’s the joke?”

“Oh, it seems funny for you to be so moral about whisky and things.”

He grinned. “It is funny, isn’t it?”

“I should think they’d just laugh at you.”

“Well, maybe they do.”

“I suppose you’re just going to give them a lesson, and then—sort of let things go, aren’t you?”

Wint shook his head. “No, I sha’n’t let things go. Not as long as I’m—in charge.”

“But lots of people will be awfully mad at you. Why, even your father buys whisky and things, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But he doesn’t sell them.”

“Well, some one’s got to sell them to him.”

“They’ll not sell in Hardiston,” said Wint. He was a little tired of this. “Looks to me as though Amos has stopped to talk politics, after all. Did you tell him I was coming?”

“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “He’ll be right home.” She got up abruptly. “There’s some lemonade in the dining room,” she said. “Would you like some?”

“Every time,” he said. “It’s warm enough to make it taste pretty fine, to-night.”

She came out with a tall pitcher and two glasses, and filled his glass and her own. They lifted the glasses together, and Wint touched his to his lips. Then he took it down, and looked at it, and said:

“Hello!”

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“There’s a stick in this, isn’t there?”

“Yes. I always put a little in. Peach brandy. I love it.”

“Peach brandy, eh?”

“Yes. Don’t you like it?”

“Well, I’ve been letting it alone lately I guess I’ll not.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Wint,” she protested, and stamped her foot at him. “I guess a little brandy won’t hurt you!”

“No, probably not,” Wint agreed. “But I’m on the wagon, you see.”

“You make me feel as though I’d done something wrong to offer it to you.”

“Why, no. Only, I....”

They were so interested that neither of them had heard Amos, and neither of them had seen him stop by the gate for a moment, listening to what they said. But when the gate opened, Agnes saw him, and the sight silenced her. Amos came heavily toward the house, and Agnes called to him:

“Wint’s here, dad.”

Amos said: “Oh! Hello, Wint!”

Wint said “Good evening.” Amos was up on the porch by this time, and seemed to discover the lemonade.

“Hello, there,” he exclaimed. “That looks pretty good. I’m hot. Pour me a glass, Agnes.”

She hesitated; and Wint said: “Take mine.”

“What’s the matter with it?” Amos asked good-naturedly. “Poisoned?” He lifted the glass to his nose. “Oh, brandy, eh? Well, got anything against that?”

“Oh, I’m on the wagon, myself, that’s all.”

Amos nodded. “Well, I never touch it. Not lately. Take it away, Agnes.”

His voice was gentle enough; but Wint thought the girl seemed very white and frightened as she faced her father. She took pitcher and glasses and went swiftly into the house. Amos turned to Wint, and sat down, and asked cheerfully:

“Well, young fellow, what’s on your mind?”

When their business was done, and Wint had gone, Amos sat quietly upon the porch for a while. Then, without moving from his chair, he turned his head and called toward the open door:

“Agnes!”

She answered, from inside. He said: “Come here.” And she appeared in the doorway. He bade her come out and sit down. She chose the hammock, lay back indolently.

Amos filled his pipe with slow care and lighted it. His head was on one side, his eyes squinted thoughtfully. If there had been more light, Agnes could have seen that he was sorely troubled. But she could not see. So she thought him merely angry; and grew angry herself at the thought.

He asked at last: “You offered Wint booze?”

“Just some lemonade,” she said stiffly.

“Booze in it,” he reminded her. “Don’t you do that any more, Agnes.”

“I guess a little brandy won’t hurt Wint Chase,” she told him.

“Don’t you do it any more,” he repeated, finality in his tones. She said nothing; and after a little he asked, looking toward her wistfully in the shadows of the porch: “What did you do it for, Agnes? What did you do it for, anyway?”

She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“What did you do it for?” he insisted. There was an implacable strength in Amos; she knew she could not escape answering. Nevertheless, she evaded again.

“Oh, no reason.”

“What did you do it for?” he asked, mildly, for the third time; and Agnes stamped to her feet. When she answered, her voice was harsh and hard and indescribably bitter.

“Because I wanted to get him drunk,” she said. “He’s so funny when he’s that way. That’s why.”

She stared down at him defiantly; and Amos saw hard lines form about her mouth. Before he could speak, she was gone indoors.

Amos sat there for a long while, after that, thinking.... His thoughts ran back; he remembered Agnes as a baby, as a schoolgirl. She was a young woman, now.

He thought to himself, a curiously helpless feeling oppressing him: “I wish her mother hadn’t’ve died.”

CHAPTER IX
A WORD FROM JOAN

WINT found himself unable to put Hetty out of his mind, next day. He had overslept, was late for breakfast, and ate it alone with Hetty serving him. When she came into the dining room, he said:

“Good morning.”

Hetty nodded, without answering. And he asked cheerfully: “Well, how’s the world this morning?”

She said the world was all right; and she went out into the kitchen again before he could ask her anything more. Wint, over his toast and coffee, wondered. He was beginning to have some suspicion as to what was wrong with Hetty. But—he could not believe it. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

A certain burden of work shut down on him that day and the next, so that he forgot her in his affairs. He saw her every day, of course; but they were never alone together. His mother was always about. And there were other matters on Wint’s mind. He was glad to be able to forget her. Wint, like most men, was willing to forget a perplexity if forgetting were possible. And Hetty kept out of his way, and seemed to resent his interest.

He met Agnes on the street one morning, and she stopped him and talked with him. She was very gay and vivacious about it, touching his arm in a friendly way now and then to emphasize some meaningless word. Her hand was on his arm thus when he saw Joan coming, a little way off. He did not know that Agnes had seen her some time before, without seeming to do so. Agnes discovered Joan now with a start of surprise, and she took her hand off Wint’s arm in a quick, furtive way, as though she did not want Joan to see. Yet Joan must have seen. Wint was uncomfortably conscious that he had been put in an awkward light; but he supposed the whole thing was chance. Nothing more.

Agnes exclaimed: “Why, Joan, we didn’t see you coming.” Her words conveyed, subtly enough, the impression that if they had seen Joan coming, matters would have been different; and Wint scowled, and looked at Joan, and wondered if she was going to be so foolish as to mind. Then Agnes turned to him and said:

“Run along, Wint, I’ve something to say to Joan.” And he looked at Joan, and thought there was pique in her eyes; and he went away in such a mood of sullen resentment as had not possessed him for months. It stayed with him all that day: he reverted into the prototype of the old, sulky, stubborn Wint who had made all the trouble.

Agnes and Joan walked uptown together, and Agnes chattered gayly enough. Agnes had always a ready tongue, while Joan was of a more silent habit. Agnes said Wint had come down to see her, a few days before.

“That is, of course,” she explained, “he pretended he came to see dad. But he telephoned, and I told him dad wasn’t at home, but he came anyway. We sat on the porch and drank lemonade. That night the moon was full. Wasn’t it the most beautiful night, Joan? I think Wint’s a peach. I always did. I never could see why you and he quarreled. Seems to me you were awfully foolish. I’ll never have a fuss with him, I can tell you.”

There was too much sincerity in Joan for this sort of thing; she was almost helpless in Agnes’s hands. That is, she did not know how to counter the other girl’s shafts. She did say: “Wint and I haven’t really quarreled. We’re very good friends.”

Agnes nodded wisely, and said: “Oh, I know.” She looked up at Joan. “Was it about that Hetty Morfee, Joan? I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help wondering. I shouldn’t think you’d mind that. Men are that way. I know it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. Not if—Well, I sha’n’t quarrel with Wint over Hetty, I can tell you.”

Joan had turned white. She could not help it; and Agnes saw, and added cheerfully:

“Of course, you can’t believe half you hear, anyway. But they do say that she.... No, I’m not going to.... I never was one to tell nasty stories about people, Joan.”

Joan could not say anything to save her life. She had to get away from Agnes, and she managed it as quickly as she could. She was profoundly troubled, profoundly unhappy. She had not realized how much Wint meant to her. The things which Agnes intimated made her physically sick with unhappiness at their very possibility. She finished her errands as quickly as she could, and hurried home. On the way, she passed Agnes and Jack Routt together, and they spoke to her, and she responded, holding her voice steady. She was miserably hurt and unhappy.

At home, she shut herself in her room to think. There was a picture of Wint on her bureau, a snapshot she had taken two or three years before. Wint had changed since then. The pictured face was boyish and round and good-natured; Wint’s face now had a strength which this boy in the picture lacked. Wint was a man now, for good or ill.

She had, suddenly, a surge of loyal certainly that it was for good, and not for ill, that Wint was become a man. There was an infinite fund of natural loyalty in Joan; she had been prodded by Agnes into a panic of doubt, but when she was alone, this panic passed. A slow fire of anger at Agnes began to burn in her; anger because Agnes had meant to injure Wint, not because Agnes had hurt her. In Wint’s behalf she took up arms; she considered Agnes; she questioned the girl’s motives, she went over and over the incident, trying to read a meaning into it.

There is an instinctive wisdom in woman which passes anything in man. In that long day alone, thinking and wondering and questioning, Joan came very near hitting upon the whole truth of the matter. Nearer than she knew. She came so near that before Wint appeared that evening—he had arranged, a day or two before, to come and see her—she had begun to hate Jack Routt.

She did not know why this was so. She had never particularly liked Jack Routt; yet he had always been cheerful, an amiable companion, a good fellow. Also, he was Wint’s friend, and Joan was loyal to Wint’s friends as she was to Wint. But—All that day, she had thought, again and again, of Jack’s eyes when she saw him with Agnes. She told herself there had been something hidden in them, something she could not define, something meanly triumphant. She mistrusted him; and before Wint came to her, she hated Routt. And feared him.

Nevertheless, she and Wint talked of matters perfectly commonplace for most of that evening together. They were apt to talk of commonplace things in these days; because safety lay in the commonplace. There was a strange balance of emotions between Wint and Joan. A little thing might have tipped it either way. At times, Wint wished to bring matters to an issue; he wished to cry out to Joan that he loved her. But he was restrained by a desperate fear that she was not ready to hear him say this. He was afraid she would cast him out once more. And—he could not bear the thought of that. It was something to be able to see her, talk with her, be near her. He dared not risk losing this much.

Thus they talked of ordinary matters, till Wint got up to go at last. Joan went out on the porch with him; he stopped, on one of the steps, a little below her. He had said good-by before Joan found courage. She asked, then:

“Wint! Will you let me?... There’s something I want to ask you.”

He was surprised; his heart began to pound in his throat. “To ask me?” he repeated. “Why—all right, Joan. What is it?”

“Are you and Routt pretty good friends, Wint?”

“Yes,” he said, at once. “Jack’s the best friend I’ve got.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. What’s the idea, Joan?”

She said reluctantly: “I don’t know. Only—I don’t seem to trust him. I don’t like him. I’m afraid of him.”

He laughed. “Good Lord! Jack’s harmless; he’s a prince.”

“I don’t think he’s as loyal to you as you are to him,” she said.

Wint exclaimed impatiently: “The way you girls get down on a fellow! Jack’s all right.”

Wint’s impatience made Joan quieter and more sure of herself. “I’m not sure,” she repeated, and smiled a little wistfully. “Just—don’t trust him too far, Wint.”

“I’d trust him with all I’ve got,” Wint said flatly. “I think you’re—I’m surprised at you, Joan.” The stubborn anger roused in the morning when Joan came upon him with Agnes reawoke in Wint. His jaw set, and his eyes were hard.

Joan was troubled; she wanted to say more, but she did not know how. And—she could not forget Hetty. She had not meant to speak to Wint of Hetty; but Joan was woman enough to be unable to hold her tongue. Also, Wint’s loyalty to Routt had angered her; she was willing to hurt him—as men and women are always willing to hurt the thing they love. She said slowly:

“Did you know people are beginning to talk about Hetty Morfee, Wint? You and Hetty!”

Wint’s anger flamed; he flung up his hand disgustedly. “You women. You’re always ready to jump on each other. Why can’t this town let Hetty alone?”

“I only meant—” Joan began.

“I don’t care what you meant,” Wint told her. “You ought not to pass gossip on, Joan. I hate it.”

“I don’t see why you have to defend her,” she protested; and he said hotly:

“I’m not defending her. She doesn’t need defending. If she did, I would, though. Hetty’s all right.”

Joan drew back a little into the shadow of the porch. After a moment, she said:

“Good night, Wint.”

He said harshly: “Good night. And for Heaven’s sake, forget this foolishness. Routt and Hetty.... They’re all right.”

She did not answer. He said again: “Good night,” and he turned and went down to the gate, and away.

Joan watched him go. She thought she ought to be angry with him, and hurt. She was surprised to discover that she was rather proud of Wint, instead; proud of him for being angry, even at her, for the sake of his friend, and for the sake of Hetty.

She was troubled, because she thought he was wrong; but she was infinitely proud, too, because he had stuck by his guns.

CHAPTER X
THE STREET CARNIVAL

JOAN’S warning as to Jack Routt, her word as to Hetty, and Wint’s rejection of both warning and advice did not lead to a break between them. They met next day, and Wint had the grace to say to her:

“I’m sorry I talked as I did yesterday, last night. I was tired, and—all that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Joan told him. “It’s natural for you to stick by your friends.”

“I needn’t have talked so to you, though.”

She laughed, and said he had been all right. “I guess you’ve been imagining you were worse than you really were,” she told him. “It’s quite all right, really.”

“But I’m sorry you—dislike Jack,” he said. “He’s an awfully decent sort.”

“Is he?” she asked. “Then I’m glad you and he are friends.”

“That’s the stuff,” Wint told her. “That’s the way to talk.”

Thereafter, for a week or so, life in Hardiston went quietly. V. R. Kite still bided his time; there was no liquor being sold; Ote Runns went home sober, day after day, with a look of desperate longing in his eyes. That sodden man who had embraced Wint in the Weaver House so long, whom Wint had jailed more than once for his drinking, suffered as much as Ote, or more. He came to Wint and unbraided him for what he had done. “It ain’t the way to treat a fellow,” he told Wint, pleading huskily. “You know how it is. I just gotta have a drink, Mister Mayor. I just gotta. I told Mrs. Moody she’s gotta give me a drink, and she told me you wouldn’t let her. You ain’t got a thing against me, now, have you?” The miserable man’s fingers were twitching, his lips twisted and writhed. “If I don’t get a drink, I’m a-going to kill some-buddy, I am.”

Wint did not know what to do. He could see at a glance that the man was suffering a very real torment. He had himself never become so soaked with alcohol that his system cried out for it when he abstained; but he knew what torture this might be. He had an idea that candy would alleviate the man’s distress; but the idea seemed to him ridiculous, and he put it aside. Yet there was an obligation upon him to do something.

He did, in the end, a characteristic thing, an impulsive thing; and yet it was sensible, too. There was no saving this man. Highest mercy to him was to let him drink himself to death. Wint told him to come to the house that night; and he gave the poor fellow a quart bottle from his father’s store. The derelict wandered away, calling Wint blessed. They found him under a tree in the yard next door, in the morning, blissfully sleeping.

The story got around, as it was sure to do. The man told it himself; he boasted that Wint was a good fellow. V. R. Kite heard of it, and waved his clenched fists and swore at Wint by every saint in the calendar. Also, he sent for Jack Routt. “We’ve got him,” he cried. “He can’t put over a thing like this on me, Routt. I’ll not stand for it. I’ll run him out of town. Or get out myself. Damn it, Routt, he’s a hypocrite! He’s a whited sepulcher. I’ll—”

Routt laughed good-naturedly, and held up a quieting hand. “Hold on,” he said. “We’ll have better than this on Wint before long. Good enough so that I—I’ll tell you a secret, Kite.”

Kite looked suspicious, and asked what the secret was; but Routt decided not to tell. Not just yet. “Wait till the time comes,” he told Kite. “A little later on.”

So Kite waited.

Toward the end of June, the street carnival came to town for a week’s stay. These carnivals are indigenous to such towns as Hardiston. They resemble nothing so much as an aggregation of the added attractions which usually go with a circus, broken loose from the circus and wandering about the country alone. A merry-go-round reared its tent and set up it clanking organ at Main and Pearl streets. Down the hill below the tent, the snake-eating wild man had his lair; and below him, again, there was an “Ocean Wave.” Along Pearl Street in the other direction the Museum of Freaks and the Galaxy of Beauty were located. Main Street itself was given over to venders of popcorn, candy, hot dogs, ice-cream sandwiches, lemonade, ginger pop, and every other indigestible on the calendar. There also, you might, for the matter of a nickel, have three tries at ringing a cane worth six cents, or a knife worth three. Or you might take a chance in the great lottery, where every entrant drew some prize, even if it were only a packet of hairpins. The arts and crafts were represented by a man who would twist a bit of gilded wire into likeness of your signature for half a dollar.

The first tents of the carnival began to rise one Saturday morning; and all that day and the next, the boys of the town and the grown-ups, too, watched the show take shape. It was almost as good as a circus. At noon on Monday, the carnival opened for business, with the ballyhoo men in full voice before every tent. The moderate afternoon crowd grew into a throng in the evening, when the kerosene torches flared and smoked on every pole, and the normal things of daylight took on a dusky glamour in the jerky illumination of the flares.

Every one went uptown to the carnival that first evening. Wint was there, and Jack Routt, Agnes, Joan, V. R. Kite—every one. In mid-evening, the quieter folk drifted home, but Wint stayed to watch what passed. A little after eleven, he bumped into a drunken man.

In spite of his warning to the advance agent of this carnival, Wint had been expecting to see drunken men. It was the nature of the carnival breed. He wandered back and forth till he came upon Jim Radabaugh, and called the marshal aside.

“Jim,” he said, “they’re selling booze.”

Radabaugh shifted that lump in his cheek, and spat. “So?” he asked mildly.

“I want it stopped,” said Wint. “If you pin it on the carnival bunch, I’ll shut them up.”

“I’ll see,” Radabaugh promised.

“Come along, first, and let’s talk to the boss,” Wint suggested; and they sought out that man. He was running the merry-go-round; a hard little fellow with a cold blue eye. Wint introduced himself; and the man shook hands effusively.

“My name’s Rand,” he said. “Mike Rand. Glad t’ meet you, Mister Mayor.”

Wint said: “That’s all right,” and he asked: “Did your advance man give you my orders?”

“What orders?”

“I told him I didn’t want any booze peddling.”

“Sure, he told me.”

Wint jerked his head backward toward Main Street. “I ran into a drunk up there,” he said.

Rand grinned. “Can’t help that. We’re not selling any.”

“I’m holding you responsible,” said Wint. “If there’s any sold, I’ll cancel your permits.”

The little man stared at him bleakly. “You’ve got a nerve. You can’t pin anything on us.”

“I can’t help that,” Wint told him. “In fact, I don’t care. If there’s booze sold, you get out. If I pin in on any man, he goes to jail. Is that clear?”

“What is this town, anyway—a damned Sunday school?”

“If you like,” said Wint sweetly; and he and Radabaugh turned away. Rand’s engine man left his throttle to approach his chief and ask:

“What’s up? Who was that?”

“Mayor of this burg and the marshal. Say we’ve got to shut down on the booze.”

“Like hell!”

Rand grinned. “Sure. He can’t run a whoozer on me.”

When he left Radabaugh, Wint ran into Jack Routt, and they strolled about together through the crowd. Once they saw Hetty, and Wint thought she was unnaturally cheerful and gay. He wondered if it were possible she had been drinking again; and he stared after her so long that Routt asked:

“Takes your eye, does she?’

“I was wondering,” said Wint.

Routt touched his arm. “You take it from me, Wint, you want to keep clear of her. I’d get her out of the house, if I were you. They’re beginning to talk.”

Wint asked angrily: “Who’s beginning to talk? What about?”

“Everybody. About Hetty—and you, naturally.”

“I wish they—I wish people in this town would mind their own business.”

Routt grinned and said: “You act as though there was something in it.”

“Don’t be a darned fool.”

“Well, I’m telling you what people say. If I were you—you’re a public official, you know, in the public eye—I’d be careful. Tell your mother to get rid of her. Safest thing to do.”

“I’m not looking for safe things to do.” Wint liked the defiant sound of that.

Routt nodded. “I’d be worried, if it was me. That’s all.”

“I’m not worried,” said Wint. “Hetty’s all right. And if she weren’t—I don’t propose to be scared.”

“We-ell, it’s your funeral,” Routt told him.

Wint laughed. “I guess it’s not as bad as that. It’s almost twelve. I’m going home.”

CHAPTER XI
FIRST BLOOD

IT was upon the carnival that Wint was to score first blood in his fight to clean up Hardiston. Mike Rand, carnival boss, was a hard man, willing to take a chance, afraid only of being bluffed. So he took Wint’s warning as a challenge. Nevertheless, for the sake of making things as sure as might be, he went to see V. R. Kite. He and Kite had known and understood each other for a good many years.

He dropped in to see Kite Tuesday morning; and the little man remembered his church connections and his outward respectability, and worried for fear some one had seen Rand come in. His worry took the form of resentment at Rand’s imprudence. “Ought to be more careful,” he protested. “Have more sense, man. I have to watch myself in this town. Don’t you know that? I have a position to keep up. You’re all right, of course.” This as Rand’s eyes hardened in a stare that made Kite wince. “But I can’t afford to be hitched up with you openly. It wouldn’t do either of us any good.”

Rand said dryly: “You don’t need to worry about me. I can stand it.”

“I can be useful to you now, whereas my usefulness would be gone if I were less respected.”

“Respected, hell!” said Rand without emotion. “Don’t they call you ‘The Buzzard’ around here? I’ve heard so. That don’t sound respectful.”

“That’s a jest,” said Kite. “Nothing more.”

“Pinned on you by this shrimp Mayor, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Good-naturedly. He was drunk.”

“Drunk? Him?” Rand lifted his hands in pious horror. “I thought he was one of these ‘lips-that-touch-liquor-shall-never-touch-mine’ guys, to hear him talk.”

“He’s not drinking now; not openly. He was a sot, a few months ago. Dead drunk in the Weaver House, the night he was elected Mayor. I saw him there.”

Rand drawled: “I’ll say this is some town.” He leaned forward. “What I want to know is: how about this booze? He serves notice on me that I’m responsible if any’s sold. How about it? Will he go through? Or is it a bluff?”

Kite considered. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Has he shut you down?”

“He gave us orders not to sell; and we’re not selling. But we’re not idle. We’re preparing to spring a mine under that man.”

“He’s got you bluffed.”

Kite’s face twisted with a sudden rush of fury. “I tell you, we’re going to destroy him—blast him!—in our own good time.”

Rand studied the little man; then he nodded. “Well, that’s all right. Just the same, he’s got you shut down.”

“Yes.”

“Has he pulled any one yet for selling?”

“No.”

“How about the marshal? Is he reasonable?”

“I believe he will obey the Mayor’s orders.”

“Only question is the Mayor’s nerve, then?”

“Yes.”

“And you haven’t tried it out?”

“No; we’re waiting to strike when we’re sure of winning.”

“Hell!” said Rand disgustedly. “He’s got you bluffed. I don’t believe he’s got the nerve to go through with it; but one thing’s sure. He’s got your number, you old skate.”

Kite answered hotly: “If you’re so brave, why don’t you go ahead and fight him?”

“Are you with me?”

“I’m not ready to fight.”

Rand got up. “Well, I am. I never dodged a fight yet. You watch, old man; you’ll see the fur fly yet.”

He stalked out, head back and shoulders squared aggressively. Kite watched him go, and nodded to himself with a measure of satisfaction. He was perfectly willing to see Wint forced to fight—provided some one besides himself did the forcing. Rand looked like a fighter.

Wint and Jack Routt met, on the way uptown after supper that day. Routt asked if Wint were going to the carnival again, and Wint nodded. “Keeping an eye on it,” he said.

They went to the Post Office first; and Routt stopped at his office. “Come up,” he said. “I’ll only be a minute.”

Wint went up with him. Routt dropped a letter or two on his desk; then from a lower drawer produced a bottle. “Don’t mind if I mix myself a highball, do you, Wint?” he asked cheerfully. “I don’t suppose you’ll feel called on to arrest me.”

“Go ahead,” Wint said. Routt poured some whisky into a glass, filled it from a siphon.

“You’re wise to leave the stuff alone,” he said, between the first and second sips from the glass. “It’s bad stuff unless a fellow can handle it.”

Wint nodded uneasily. There was no physical craving in him; nevertheless there was an acute desire to drink for the sake of drinking, for the sake of being like other men, for the sake of defying the danger. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m off it.”

“At that,” Routt remarked, the highball half gone, “I guess you’ve shown you can take it or let it alone. I lay off of it myself, once in a while, just to be sure I can.”

“Oh, I don’t miss it,” Wint said brazenly.

“Sure you don’t,” Routt agreed. “You’re no toper. Never were. Any one likes to drink for the sake of being a good fellow. That’s all I drink for.” He finished the glass, poured in a little more whisky. “Long as I’m sure I can stop when I want to, the way you have done, I go ahead and drink whenever I feel like it.”

Wint nodded. Routt looked at him with a curious intentness. “Another glass here, if you’d like,” he said.

“I guess not.”

Routt laughed. “All right. You know best. If you can’t let it alone when you get started—”

“Oh, I can take a drink and quit.”

“Want one?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Routt chuckled. “Funny to see you afraid of anything,” he said. “I never expected to see it.”

Wint got up abruptly. The old Wint would have reached for the bottle; this was the new Wint’s impulse. But he fought it down, steadied his voice. “Jack,” he said, a little huskily, “you’re a friend of mine. I don’t want to drink, never. Don’t offer it to me. Some day I might accept. Don’t ever offer me a drink, Jack. Please.”

Routt was ashamed of himself, and angry at Wint for making him ashamed. “Hell, all right,” he said, and dropped the bottle into its place. “Come on, let’s take the air.”

At a little after eleven that night, Mike Rand sought out Wint. Wint was standing before the cane booth, watching the ring-tossers. Rand pushed up beside him and touched his arm, and Wint looked around. The carnival boss said harshly:

“Hey, you!”

Wint looked around at him, and said quietly: “Evening. What’s the matter?”

“Your damned hick marshal has pulled one of my men. I want to bail him out.”

Wint took a minute to consider this, get his bearings. He had not seen Radabaugh all evening. He asked Rand: “You mean he’s made an arrest? What’s the charge?”

“Claims the man was selling booze to a bum.”

“Was he?” Wint inquired gently.

“Was he” Rand growled. “No, of course not. You must think we’re bad men, coming here to dirty your pretty little town. He was selling liver pills, or pink tea. What the hell of it? I want to bail him out.”

“No bail accepted,” said Wint quietly. “He’ll have to stay in the calaboose over night.”

Rand exploded, as though he had been half expecting this. He said some harsh things about Hardiston, and some harsher things about Wint, none of which will bear repeating. In the midst of them, Wint stirred a little and struck the man heavily in the mouth with his right fist; at the same time, his left started and landed in the other’s throat, and the right went home again on Rand’s hard little jaw. Rand fell in a snoring heap.

Wint was curiously elated. He looked around. A crowd had gathered, and some of the carnival men were pushing through the crowd. There was a belligerent look about them. Then he saw Marshal Jim Radabaugh elbowing through the circle, and Wint was glad to see Jim. He called him:

“Marshal, here’s a man I’ve arrested.”

That halted Rand’s underlings. Rand himself was groaning back to consciousness. Wint pointed down at him. “Take him to jail,” he said.

One of the carnival men protested. Wint turned to him. “Close up your shows, all of you,” he told the man. “Your permit’s cancelled. Get out of town to-morrow.”

Radabaugh had Rand on his feet; he gripped the man, his left hand twisted in the other’s collar. Two or three of Rand’s men surged toward them, and Radabaugh’s gun flickered into sight. It had a steadying effect; no one pressed closer.

All the fighting blood had flowed out of Rand’s smashed lips. He was whining now: “Come, old man, what’s the idea?” Wint and Radabaugh marched him between them through the crowd. Two or three score curious, cheering or cursing spectators followed them to the cells behind the fire-engine house. Rand submitted to being locked up there with no more than querulous protests. He seemed thoroughly tamed. He asked for a lawyer, but Wint said there was no need of a lawyer that night. Two of the fire department, on duty, had come out to see the business of locking up this second prisoner. Radabaugh bade them keep an eye on the cells, and they agreed to do so. Then the marshal scattered the crowd. Wint washed his bruised hands in the engine house. After a little, Radabaugh came in; and Wint asked:

“Is it true you got a man selling?”

“Yes. The capper at the lottery.”

“How’d you get him?”

Radabaugh chuckled, and shifted the lump in his cheek.

“Saw Ote Runns,” he said. “Figured Ote would nose out any loose booze, so I kind of kept an eye on Ote. He talked to two or three men, and finally to this fellow. They went in behind the billboard by the hotel, and I saw him slip Ote the bottle and take Ote’s money. So I nabbed him.”

“Ote? Get him too?”

“Yes; him and his half pint. I let him keep it. He was pretty shaky. Needed it, I guess.”

Wint nodded. “Be around in the morning?” he asked. “I’ll be down early.”

Radabaugh assented. Wint hesitated, then he said: “Good work, Jim.”

The marshal grinned. “Well,” he told Wint, “from the looks of Rand’s face, you did some good work, too.”

They shook hands. There was a distinctly mutual liking and admiration in their grip. Then Wint started for home, and Radabaugh went back to keep an eye on his prisoners.

One of Rand’s men went to V. R. Kite with the news of the trouble; and Kite, uncertain what to do, sent for Jack Routt and told him what had happened. This was at midnight. “I’ve got to stand by Rand,” Kite said. “The question is, are we ready to get after Wint?”

Routt shook his head. “Time for that. Hold off,” he advised.

Kite asked impatiently: “How long? What makes you think you can get anything on him?”

“It’s ripe,” said Routt. “Apt to break any time. I’ve been working on it.”

In the end, he persuaded Kite to wait. “Well, then,” Kite asked, “what are we going to do about Rand?”

“He’s got to take his medicine.”

“He won’t. He’ll fight.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Routt. “I’ll go see him. Fix it up with him.”

“Can you do it without Wint’s finding out?”

Routt laughed. “I’m a lawyer. I’ve a right to have clients, even in the Mayor’s court. I’ll take their case.”

Kite, in the end, agreed to that. When Routt left the little man, he intended to go direct to the jail; but on the way, he changed his mind. As well to let the men cool their heels. It would make Rand more ready to listen to reason.

He went up Main Street toward the carnival, and found that the tents were coming down, one of Radabaugh’s officers keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. Wint’s orders that the shows be closed could not be evaded. This much, at least, he had scored. Routt went home and did some thinking.

He appeared at the jail half an hour before Wint came to hold court; and Radabaugh let him talk with Rand and with the other man. When Wint appeared, the two were brought into court, with Ote Runns as a witness, for good measure. Wint was surprised to see Routt. Jack nodded to him, and came up to Wint’s desk, and said: “Rand sent for me. Wanted me to take his case. He knows he’s licked, I think. He’ll take his medicine, if you don’t make it too stiff.”

“I’m charging him with assault and with using profane language,” said Wint.

“Assault?” Routt laughed. “Thought it was you that did the assaulting.”

“He made threats. Threats constitute an assault. You know that as well as I do.”

Routt nodded. “Oh, sure.” He added: “You know, the carnival’s shut up. It’s costing Rand money. You might go as light as you can.”

“I’m going to give the other man the limit,” said Wint.

“That’s all right,” Routt agreed. “Rand’s sore at him for getting caught. He’ll let the poor gink take his medicine.”

Wint nodded abstractedly. Foster, the city solicitor, had just come in, and Wint beckoned to him, and asked: “What’s the worst I can do on a charge of illegal liquor selling?”

“Two hundred dollars’ fine on the first offense,” Foster told him.

Three minutes later, the offender was protesting that he could not pay such a fine; he was appealing desperately to Rand. Wint bade the carnival boss stand up. Rand got to his feet.

“I’m sorry for this business,” he said humbly. “I thought you were just trying to save your face. Running a bluff.”

“Are you paying his fine for your friend?” Wint asked coldly.

Rand said: “No, blast him! If he wants to get caught by a hick constable, let him take his medicine. Work it out.”

“I wouldn’t call Radabaugh a hick to his face,” Wint suggested in a mild voice, and Rand apologized.

“I didn’t mean a thing,” he said.

Wint, in a swift hurry to be done, told him: “You’re fined ten for assault, and five for profanity. And costs.”

“That’s all right,” Rand cheerfully agreed. “I’ll pay.”

Wint nodded, disgusted at the man because he submitted so tamely. He sat back in his chair, listening idly to what Routt was saying, paying no apparent heed. Rand settled his fines and costs with the clerk, shook hands with Routt, and departed. When he was gone, Wint sat up with new energy.

“I hope we’re rid of him for good,” he said.

“You are, I’ll say,” Routt told him. “He’s had all he wants.”

The carnival got out of town that day; but before he departed, Rand had a word with Kite, and Kite comforted him. “Don’t worry,” Kite said. “This won’t last. You’ll make a harvest here, next summer.”

Rand said ruefully: “I’m not making any harvest now. And they tell me you helped elect this guy.”

“He was a common drunk, then. How could I know?”

Rand fingered his swollen face gingerly. “I’ll say he’s got a punch.”

“He won’t have any punch left when we’re done with him,” Kite promised. “Wait and see.”

“I’m waiting,” said Rand. And a little later, he and his cohorts went their way.

CHAPTER XII
POOR HETTY

IN mid-July, Wint at last found out the truth about Hetty. That is to say, he found out a part of the truth; enough to make him heartsick and sorry.

His eventual enlightenment was inevitable as to-morrow morning’s sunrise. A more sophisticated young man—Jack Routt, for example—would not have remained in the dark so long. But Wint, aside from noticing that Hetty looked badly, and aside from some casual consideration of Routt’s repeated warnings, gave very little thought to his mother’s handmaiden. There were too many other and more important things to occupy him. His work as Mayor, his studies, his Joan. Joan was bulking very large in his life in those days. He found understanding, and sympathy, in her. They were better than sweethearts; they were friends. The other—this thought must have been lying, unspoken, in the mind of each—the other could wait and must wait till Wint had proved himself for good and all. Then.... Once in a while, Wint allowed himself to look forward, and to dream. But not often. The present was too engrossing to give much time for dreaming of the future.

So, though he saw Hetty daily, when she served the meals at home, or when he went into the kitchen, or when he encountered her at her cleaning in the front part of the house, Wint gave her very little consideration. His mother protested, once in a while, that Hetty was growing lazy. “She slacks things,” the voluble little woman said. “She leaves dust about; and she’s not so neat as she used to be. I declare, you just can’t get a girl that will keep up her work. They all get so lazy after a while, but I did think that Hetty was going to be—”

Wint’s father said, tolerantly, that Hetty was all right; that she was a good cook, and did her work well enough, so far as he could see. The elder Chase had always been a good-natured man; but a new generosity in his appraisal of others was developing in the man now. He had been in some trouble of mind since that day in May when Amos Caretall came home. Chase was oppressed by the conviction that he had acted unworthily in that matter; yet he could not admit as much. His hostility toward Amos would not let him. The result was that he felt at odds with his son; that they avoided discussions of the town’s affairs; that they lived together in a polite neutrality. It was working changes in Chase. He was becoming, in some fashion, a sympathetic, rather likable figure. You felt he was unhappy, needed comforting.

So, on this day, he spoke well of Hetty; and because Mrs. Chase was always the loyal mirror of her husband’s opinions, she also ceased to criticize the girl. Wint had heard the conversation, but it made little impression on him. He was thinking of other things; wondering, for example, when Kite would make the first move in the conflict that was sure to come. He had heard, that day—Gergue told him—that Routt was thinking of running for Mayor against him in the fall. Wint was having difficulty in understanding that. He knew Routt was his friend; and, of course, political opponents might still be personal friends. Nevertheless.... The thing puzzled him. It did not jibe with his opinion of Routt.

After supper that night, the elder Chase went downtown. Wint had some writing to do, and went upstairs to his room to do it. Mrs. Chase had a caller, Mrs. Hullis, from next door. They were sewing and talking together in the sitting room. Wint could hear the murmur of his mother’s voice, steady and persistent. Mrs. Hullis was a good listener.

About an hour after supper, Wint realized that he wanted a drink of water. There was water in the bathroom; but there was a filter on the faucet in the kitchen, and Hardiston water needed filtering. It was pure enough, clean enough, but there was a proportion of iron in it that sometimes gave the water a slightly rusty color. So Wint went down by the back stairs, in order not to disturb his mother, into the kitchen.

He found Hetty sitting in a kitchen chair with her arms hanging limply and her feet outstretched before her. The girl’s whole body was slumped down, as though she had fainted; and at first Wint thought this was what had happened, for Hetty’s eyes were closed. He cried out:

“Why, Hetty? What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

And he went quickly toward her across the kitchen.

But when he spoke, Hetty opened her eyes and looked at him, and shook her head. “No,” she said, in the sullen tone that had become habitual to her. “No, I’m all right.”

“You are not,” Wint protested. “You’re as white as a rag.” He saw the dishes piled in the sink. “You’ve not cleaned up after supper. How long have you been this way?”

Hetty closed her eyes wearily, and opened them again, and managed a smile. “Oh, I’m all right, Wint,” she said. “You’re a nice boy. Run along. Don’t bother about me.”

Wint laughed. “I’m not bothering. I want to help. What happened?”

“I—just felt terribly tired—all of a sudden,” she said. There was a suggestion of surrender in her voice; as though the barriers of reserve were breaking down. “That’s all, Wint; I’m just tired.”

“You need a rest,” Wint agreed. “You’ve been plugging away, taking care of us, for a long time, now. Come in and lie down on the couch in the dining room.”

Hetty shook her head in a frightened little way; the bravado was going out of her. She seemed very helpless and feminine. “No, no,” she protested. “I’ll be all right as soon as I rest a little. Do run along, Wint.”

Wint put his hand on her forehead. “There’s more than just being tired the matter with you. You’re sick, Hetty. Your head’s hot. I’ll tell you, you go up and go to bed, and I’ll clean up down here. I’m a champion dish washer.”

Hetty laughed wearily. “You’re a champion decent boy, Wint,” she said. “But you’ll just have to let me alone. There’s nothing you can do for me.”

“I can see that you go up to bed.”

“No, no; I’m all right. Nearly.”

Wint started for the door. “I’m going to telephone for a doctor,” he declared. “You’re sick, Hetty. That’s the plain English of it. I’m going to telephone.”

She had moved so swiftly that she startled him; moved after him, caught his arm, shook it fiercely. “You’ll not telephone for any one, do you hear?” she told him hotly. “You let me alone, Wint. What do I want with a doctor!”

Wint was honestly uneasy about her. He said: “Then let me call mother. She’s a good hand to make sick people well. She—”

“No, no, not your mother,” Hetty protested. And half to herself she added: “Not your mother. She would know.”

The little phrase was profoundly revealing. “She would know.” It struck Wint like a splash of cold water in the face. “She would know.” It told so old a story. Wint understood, at last; and Hetty saw understanding in his eyes, and braced herself to defy him. But Wint only said softly:

“Hetty? That.... You poor kid! I’m so sorry.”

Hetty laughed harshly; and her face began to twist and work and assume strange contortions, and abruptly she began to cry. She turned and groped her way to the chair again, and sat down with her head pillowed on her arms on the table, and sobbed as though her heart was broken. Wint stood very still, stunned and miserable, watching her. There was no sound at all in the kitchen except the sound of Hetty’s racking, choking sobs. In the stillness, Wint could hear the even murmur of his mother’s voice, three rooms away, as she talked to Mrs. Hullis. He could almost hear the words she said. And Hetty sobbed, with her head on her arms.

Wint went across to her and touched her head with his hand; and she brushed it away with an angry gesture, as a hurt dog snarls at the hand that comes to heal its hurt. She was like a hurt animal, he thought; she was quite alone in the world. Worse than alone, for she was here in Hardiston, where every one would make her business their business. For that is the way of small towns. Wint was terribly sorry for her, terribly anxious to help her. He had no thought, in this moment, of Jack Routt’s warnings; and if he had remembered them, they would only have hardened his determination to help her. Which may have been what Jack intended.

He said: “Cry it out, Hetty. Then I want to talk to you.”

She said thickly: “Go away. Let me alone.” But Wint did not move, while she cried and cried.

He stood just beside her. Hetty at last shifted her position, so that she could look down between her arms and see his feet where he waited. She said again:

“Go away.”

Wint chuckled comfortingly. “I’m not going away,” he said. “This is the time your friends will stick by you. I’m going to stick by you.”

“I don’t want you to,” she said. “I don’t want any one to. Go away. Let me alone. Let me do what I want to.”

Wint said: “You mustn’t think this is too desperately hopeless, Hetty. I’m going to do anything I can; and mother will take care of you.”

She lifted her head at that and looked at him and laughed in a hard, disillusioned way. “A lot you know about women, Wint,” she said.

“I know that you think things are darker than they are,” he assured her. “You’ll see. We’ll manage. Mother and I.”

“Your mother’ll order me out of the house, minute she knows,” said Hetty unemotionally.

Wint protested. “No; you don’t know her. Mother couldn’t hurt any one. You’ll see. She’ll do everything.”

Hetty got up and went to work on the dishes like an automaton. She had to busy herself with something, or she would have screamed. She was trembling, hysterically astir. Wint watched her for a little; then he said:

“You’re going to let us help you.”

“All the help I’ll get will be a kick,” she said. “Your mother won’t want the like of me in her house.”

“You don’t know her,” he insisted. “Mother’s fine, underneath. She’s always doing things for people. You’ll see.”

Hetty looked at him sideways, smiling a little. “You never would believe anything was so till you’d tried it, Wint,” she told him. “But you’re pretty decent, just the same.”

He said, studying her: “You’re looking better already. Feeling better?”

She nodded. “It helps some—just to tell some one,” she admitted. “And the spell is over, anyway.”

“Having friends always helps,” he told her. “You’ll find it so.” She smiled wistfully; and he went on: “I’m going to speak to mother to-night.”

Hetty said: “Well, she’s got a right to know. I’ll pack up my things.”

“After Mrs. Hullis goes.”

“Why not tell her, too? Your mother will, first thing in the morning.”

Wint laughed. “You like to look at the black side, don’t you? I tell you, it’s going to be all right.”

She whirled to face him, and said, under her breath, with a terrible earnestness: “All right? All right? If you say that again, I’ll yell at you. You poor, nice, straight fool of a kid. You talk like I was a baby that had stubbed its toe. And all the time, I’d better be dead, dead. This is no stubbed toe, Wint. Wake up. Don’t be a—”

And abruptly she collapsed again, weeping, into the chair.

Wint said insistently: “Just the same, Hetty, you’ll see I know what I’m talking about. Things will come out better than you think.”

She cried: “Oh, get out of here. Get out of here. You poor little fool.”

Wint went up to his room. Mrs. Hullis was still with his mother. He would wait till Mrs. Hullis was gone.

CHAPTER XIII
THE MERCY OF THE COURT

MRS. HULLIS stayed late, and Wint had time to do some thinking before she finally departed. But he did very little. He was in no mood for thinking. It was characteristic of Wint that when his sympathies were aroused, he was an unfaltering partisan; and there was no question that his sympathies had been aroused in behalf of Hetty.

It was equally characteristic of him that he wasted very little time wondering who was to blame for what had happened; and that he wasted no time at all in considering what Hardiston would say about it all. He was going to help the girl; he had made up his mind to that. The rest did not matter at all.

He counted on his mother’s sympathy and understanding; and when, after a time, he heard her showing Mrs. Hullis to the door, and heard their two voices upraised in a last babel as they cleaned up the tag ends of conversation and said good-by, he went out into the upper hall, to be ready to descend. Hetty had gone upstairs a little earlier; he could hear her now, moving about in her room.

His mother went out on the front steps with Mrs. Hullis, to be sure no word had been forgotten; and when she came in after her visitor had gone, Wint was waiting for her. She said: “Why, Wint, I thought you’d gone to bed long ago. I told Mrs. Hullis you were studying the law books up in your room. Mr. Hullis is a lawyer, you know. She says he brings his books home and sits up half the night, but I told her you were always one to go early to bed, ever since you was a boy. And she said she—”

Wint took her arm good-naturedly. “There, mother,” he interrupted. “I don’t care what Mrs. Hullis said. I want to talk to you about something that has just come up. Come in and sit down.”

Mrs. Chase, like most talkative women, was habitually so absorbed in her own conversation and her own thoughts that it was hard to surprise her. She took Wint’s announcement as a matter of course; and they went into the sitting room arm in arm, and she picked up her sewing basket and sat down in the chair she had occupied all evening, and began to rock primly back and forth while she stretched a sock on her fingers to discover any holes it might have acquired. “...do get such a comfort out of talking to Mrs. Hullis,” she was saying, as she sat down. “She’s such a nice woman, Wint. I never could see why you didn’t like her more. She and I—”

Wint said: “I don’t want to talk to you about Mrs. Hullis, mother. I want to talk to you about Hetty.”

Mrs. Chase did drop her work in her lap at that. “About Hetty?” she echoed. “Why should you want to talk about Hetty? Wint! You’re never going to marry her, are you? I—”

Wint laughed. “No, no. Not that Hetty isn’t a nice girl; and she’ll make some fellow a mighty fine wife. But I want to—”

“There,” said Mrs. Chase, immensely reassured. “I knew it couldn’t be that. I always knew you and Joan.... I said to Mrs. Hullis to-night that you and Joan were friendly as ever. She’s a nice girl, Wint. I don’t see why you don’t get married right away. Your father and I were married before—”

Wint said, persistently bringing her back to the point: “I don’t want to talk about Joan, either, mother. It’s Hetty.”

“Well, I should think you would want to talk about Joan,” Mrs. Chase declared. “She’s worth talking about. I’m sure she wouldn’t like it very much to know you didn’t want to talk about her, Wint. She—”

“Mother,” Wint insisted. “Hetty needs our help. I want you to—”

Mrs. Chase looked at him with a face that had suddenly turned white and cold. She put one trembling hand to her throat. “Wint?” she asked, in a husky whisper. “What’s the matter with Hetty? What are you talking about? What is the—”

“Hetty’s going to have a little baby,” said Wint gently.

Mrs. Chase exclaimed: “Wint! You’re not.... You haven’t.... It isn’t you?”

“No, no,” Wint said impatiently. “Of course not. I—”

“The shameless girl!” his mother cried, all her alarm turning into anger. “The shameless hussy. In my house. I declare—”

“Please,” her son protested. His mother got up.

“She sha’n’t sleep another night under my roof,” she declared. “I never thought to live to—”

“Mother,” said Wint, so sternly that his mother stopped in the doorway. “Come back,” he told her. And she obeyed him, protesting weakly. “Sit down,” he said. “Hetty needs our help. Don’t you understand?”

When a wolf is injured, his own pack pulls him down; when a crow is hurt, his fellows of the flock peck him to death relentlessly; but wolf and crow are merciful compared to womankind. There is no deeper instinct in woman than that which condemns the sister who has strayed. It is true that, in many women, the compassion overpowers the cruelty of wrath. But Mrs. Chase was a very simple person, elemental, a woman and nothing more. She sat down at Wint’s command; but she said implacably:

“I won’t have her in the house, Wint. A girl like that. I should think you’d be ashamed to stand up for her. A shameless, worthless thing.... You can talk all you’re a mind to, but I’m going to send her packing. You and your father have your own way, most of the time, but this is once that I’m going to have mine. I always knew she was too pretty for any good. Pretty, and impudent, and all. I won’t have her—”

Wint asked: “Hasn’t she worked hard enough for you? Done her work well? Tried to do what you wanted?”

“Course she’s done her work, or I wouldn’t have kept her. That hasn’t a thing to do with it, Wint. I’m surprised at you, standing up for her. I told Mrs. Hullis, only the other day, that she was too pretty for her own good. I might have known she would get into trouble. The nasty little—”

“Mother,” Wint cried sharply, “I won’t let you talk like that. I told Hetty we’d help her; and she said you’d be against her; and I wouldn’t believe it. I can’t believe it. A poor girl without a friend anywhere, in the worst kind of trouble, and you—”

“Wint, I don’t see why you stand up for her if you aren’t—”

“You know I’m not. Don’t be ridiculous, mother. But I’ve known her all our lives. Grew up with her. And I’m going to—”

His mother shook her head positively: “I’m not going to have her in the house, Wint. You don’t need to talk any more. That’s all there is to it. I won’t!”

“I counted on you.”

“Well, you needn’t to count on me any more. I know what’s best; and I’m not going to have that shameless—”

She was interrupted, this time, by the arrival of Wint’s father. They heard the front door open, and heard him come in. Wint got up and went to the door that led into the hall. The elder Chase was hanging up his hat. Mrs. Chase, behind Wint, was talking steadily. Wint said to his father:

“Come in, will you? Mother and I are talking something over.”

Chase nodded; but he had news of his own. “Heard uptown to-night that Routt’s going to run against you in the fall,” he said. “Did you know that, Wint?”

Wint nodded. “I’d heard so.”

“I thought you and he were good friends.”

“We are,” Wint said good-naturedly. “But that doesn’t prevent our being political enemies. He’s had some break with Amos. Come in, dad. I want you to hear—”

But the older man heard it first from Mrs. Chase. She came across the room to meet them, pouring it out indignantly. “And Wint wants me to keep her,” she concluded. “Wants me to keep that girl in the house after this. I told him—”

Chase asked: “What’s that? Wint, what is this? Hetty—in trouble?”

“Yes, sir,” said Wint. “I found it out to-night; and I promised her we’d stand by her. Help her.”

Chase demanded sharply: “What right had you to commit us? If she chooses to destroy herself, how does that concern us? I’m surprised at you, Wint. It’s impossible.”

Wint said, in a steady voice: “She needs friends badly. She hasn’t any one to turn to. And Hetty’s a good sort, underneath. I told her—”

“Why doesn’t she turn to the man?” Chase interjected. “He’s the one that ought to—”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t thought of him,” said Wint. “But if he were likely to help her, it seems to me he would have taken a hand before this. Don’t you think so?”

“Don’t I think so?” Wint’s father was outraged and angry. “I don’t think anything about it. It’s no concern of ours, so long as she packs herself out of here. Let her get out of her own mess.”

“I’m going to make it a concern of mine,” said Wint, his jaw stiffening. “I’m not going to see her turned adrift. I’m going to help her.”

Chase looked at him keenly. “By God, Wint, is this your doing? Are you—”

Wint said, a little wearily: “That was the first thing mother asked. You people don’t think very highly of me, do you?”

“Isn’t it the natural question to ask?” his father demanded. “Isn’t it the only possible explanation of this attitude on your part? Is it true, young man? That you—”

“Have it any way you want,” Wint exclaimed, too angry to deny again. “I don’t care. The point is this. Hetty is in trouble; she needs friends. I’ve promised that we would help her. I’ve promised you and mother would back me up. I counted on you.”

Chase lifted his hand in a terrible, silent rage. “You want to shame us, your mother and me, in the face of all Hardiston. I tell you, Wint, whether it’s your doing or not, you’re crazy. If it’s you—then we’ll give her some money and get rid of her. If it’s not, then she gets out of here to-night. Inside the hour.”

Wint said, half to himself: “We’d have to send her away, in any case. Somewhere. For a while.”

Chase laughed bitterly. “All right. If this is a new scrape you’ve got yourself into, I’ll buy you out of it. How much does the girl want?”

Wint flamed at him: “It’s not my concern, I tell you. You ought not to need to be told.”

“Then get her out of the house,” Chase exclaimed; “as quick as you can. Or I will. Where is she?” He turned toward the door.

But Wint was before him; blocked the doorway. “Father,” he said. “You and mother.... I’ve promised her help. Promised you would be good to her.”

“The more fool you. She goes out to-night.”

“If she goes,” Wint cried, “I go with her. You can do as you please.”

For a little after that, there was silence in the room. Wint stood in the doorway, head high and eyes hot. His father faced him. His mother stood by her chair, across the room, her lips moving soundlessly. It was she who first found voice. She came toward Wint in a clumsy, stumbling little run; and she caught his arms, and she pleaded with him.

“Don’t you do that, Wint. Don’t you. Don’t go away and leave us again. We’re getting old, sonny. Your father and I. Your old mother. Don’t you go away. We’d.... We couldn’t ever stand it again. We—”

Wint said gently: “I don’t want to go. I want to stay at home here with you both, and be proud of you, and love you.”

“You shall stay,” she told him. “You shall. Anything you want, Wint, sonny. I don’t care whether you did it or not. I’ll be good to her. I will, Wint. If you’ll stay—”

The boy said, half abashed: “I don’t want to seem to drive you to it. Only—I’ve promised her. I can’t break my word to her. Please, can’t you see?”

“It’s all right,” his mother protested. “I’ll do anything.” She clutched her husband’s arm. “Tell him to stay, Winthrop,” she begged. “Don’t let him go away. We’ll take care of Hetty.”

Chase said: “You’re making lots of trouble for us, Wint.” He smiled a little unsteadily. “We’re too old for so much excitement. You’ll have to remember that. Remember to take care of us—as well as Hetty.”

Wint could not hold out. He said: “All right. I won’t go away. Do as you think best about Hetty. I hope you’ll let her—”

“I’ll keep her,” his mother cried. “I’ll be as good as I know to her.”

And his father echoed: “We’ll take care of her, Wint.”

“You’re doing it because you want to,” Wint pleaded. “You don’t have to. I’ll stay anyway. But I—hope you’ll want to help her, anyway.”

“Yes,” Chase said. “We’ll keep her—because we want to. Do what we can.”

But they were not to keep her very long, for Hetty’s time was near. It was decided that she should go to Columbus for a little while, returning to them in the fall. Wint wrote a check to cover her expenses. Hetty’s old sullenness had returned to her. She took the check without thanks, and tucked it away in her pocketbook. She was to go to the train alone, to avoid talk.

The night of her going, Jack Routt met V. R. Kite, and took Kite to his office. And he told him certain things, an evil elation in his eyes. Told him in detail that which he had planned.

Kite listened with eyes shining; and at the end he said: “He’ll deny it. What can you prove?”

“This proves the whole thing,” said Routt triumphantly, and slid a slip of paper across the desk to Kite. Kite looked at it. A check, drawn by Winthrop Chase, Junior, to the order of Henrietta Morfee.

The buzzard of a man banged his hard old fist upon the table. “By God, Routt!” he cried, “we win. We’ll skin that cub. We’ll hang his hide on the barn!”

Routt reached into the drawer of his desk. “And that means,” he said, “that it’s time to have a drink. Say when?”

END OF BOOK IV