CHAPTER I
SUNNY SKIES

AT this time, and for a long while afterward, it seemed to Wint that all was well with the world. He had some reason to think so. He kept his promise to Hetty; and that matter, which had threatened to cause a difference between him and his father and mother, had resulted in the end in a closer understanding between them. They had let him see their dependence on him; they had let him see something of the depths of affection in their hearts for him. The Chases were not a demonstrative family; not given to much talk of these matters, and Wint found their attitude in some sort a happy revelation. His father began, in an uncertain way, to defer to Wint; the elder Chase began to ask his son’s advice, now and then; he seemed to have recognized the fact of Wint’s manhood; he seemed to have discovered that Wint was no longer a boy. There was a new respect in his bearing toward his son.

Wint’s mother had changed, too; she was, perhaps, a little less loquacious. She and the elder Chase were beginning to be proud of Wint; and this pride forced them to see him in a new light. Not as their boy, their son, their child; but as a man whom other men respected.

For Wint was respected. That was one of the things that made the world look bright to him. He was surprised to find, as the days passed, and as it was seen that his orders to clean up the town were being enforced, that good citizens rallied to him. Hardiston was normally a law-abiding, decent place; its people were normally decent and law-abiding people. They would not have condemned Wint for failure to enforce the law. In fact, with his antecedents, they had expected him to fail. They were the more pleased when he did enforce it; and they took occasion to let him see it. Also, they took occasion to tell the elder Chase that his son was doing well; and Winthrop Chase, Senior, took a diffident pride in these assurances. Chase was never a hypocrite, even with himself; he could not forget that he had urged Wint to rescind those orders to Radabaugh.

Wint found a surprising number and variety of people rallying to his support, in those days after his clash with the carnival men and his victory in that matter. Dick Hoover’s father, for example; a solid man, a lawyer of the old school, and one who spoke little and to the point. Hoover told Wint he had done well.

Wint said he had tried to do well.

“You understand, young man,” Hoover drawled in the slow, whimsical fashion that was characteristic of him. “You understand, I’m no teetotaller, myself. I’ve been accustomed to a drink, when I chose, for a good many years. This—crusade—of yours has made it damned inconvenient for me, too. But it’s a good cause. I’ve no complaint. More power to your elbow!”

Wint laughed, and said: “I guess there would be no kick at anything you might do, sir.”

Hoover nodded. “Oh, of course, I could bring the stuff in if I chose. But a man can’t afford to be on the wrong side in these matters, you know; not if he wants to keep his self-respect. And I can do without it. I can do without it. Stick to your guns, young man.”

“I’m going to,” Wint told him, flushed and proud at the older man’s praise. “I’m going to, sir.”

Peter Gergue came to Wint, scratching the back of his head and grinning a sly and knowing grin, and told Wint he was making votes by what he had done. “That’s a funny thing, too,” said Gergue. “Man’d think you’d make a pile of enemies. But I could name two or three of the worst soaks in town that say you’re all right; got good stuff in you; all that.” Gergue scratched his head again. “Yes, sir, men are funny things, Wint.”

Wint had never particularly liked Gergue, because he had never seen under the surface of the man. He was coming to have a quite genuine respect and affection for Amos’s lieutenant. “I’m not doing it to make votes,” he said good-naturedly.

“That’s the reason you’re making votes by it,” Gergue assured him. “And that’s the way politics goes. Take James T. Hollow now; he’s always trying to do what is right. He says so hisself. But it don’t get him anywhere; and I reckon that’s because he does what’s right because he thinks there’s votes in it. You go ahead and do it anyway. Maybe you do it because you think it’ll start a fight. Make some folks mad. And instead of that, they eat out o’ your hand.”

Wint nodded. “Even Kite,” he said. “He made some fuss at first. But it looks as though he had decided to take it lying down.”

Gergue shook his head. “Don’t you make any mistake about V. R. Kite,” he warned Wint. “He don’t like a fight, much. Getting too old. But he’ll fight when he’s got a gun in both hands. He’ll play poker when he holds four aces and the joker. V. R. will start something when he’s ready. I wasn’t talking about him.”

“I’m ready when he is,” Wint declared.

“He won’t be ready till he thinks you ain’t,” Gergue insisted.

But Wint was in no mood to be depressed by a possibility of future trouble. In fact, he rather looked forward to this potential clash with V. R. Kite. It added to the zest of life.

Old Mrs. Mueller, who ran the bakery, whispered to Wint when he stopped for a loaf of bread one night that he was a fine boy. “My Hans,” she said gratefully. “He is working now; and that he would never do when he could get his beer regular, every second day a case of it. And there is more money in the drawer all the time, too.”

And Davy Morgan, the foreman of his father’s furnace, told Wint that save for one or two irreconcilables, the men at the furnace were with him. “And the men that kick the most, they are the ones who are the better off for it,” he explained, in the careful English of an old Welshman to whom the language must always be an acquired and unfamiliar instrument. “William Ryan has never been fit for work on Mondays until now.”

Murchie, Attorney General of the state, who lived up the creek, and who had been a speaker at the elder Chase’s rallies in the last mayoral campaign, happened into town one day and told Wint he had heard of the matter at Columbus and that people were talking about him, Wint Chase, up there. “They knew old Kite, you see,” he told Wint. “He comes up there to lobby on every liquor bill; and they like to see him get a kick in the slats, as you might say. But you’ll have to look out for him.”

“I’m going to,” Wint assured Murchie.

“If you can down Kite, there’ll be a place for you at Columbus, some day,” Murchie predicted. “They don’t like Kite, up there.”

Sam O’Brien, the fat restaurant man, stopped laughing long enough to tell Wint he was all right, had good stuff in him, was a comer. “The Greek next door,” he explained. “He thinks you’re a tin god. He runs the candy store, you know. Says there never was so much candy sold. He’ll vote for you, my boy. If he ever gets his papers. And learns to read. And if you live that long.”

Wint got most pleasure, perhaps, out of the attitude of B. B. Beecham. He had an honest respect for the editor’s opinion on most matters. Every one had. Beecham was habitually right. In his editorial capacity, he took no notice of what had come to pass in Hardiston. When the carnival men were arrested, he printed the fact without comment. “Michael Rand was fined for assault and improper language,” the Journal said. The other man for “illegal sales of liquor.” And the “permit of the carnival for the use of the streets was canceled.” Thus the news was recorded, and every man might draw his own deductions. B. B. was never one to force his opinions on any man, which may have been the reason why people went out of their way to discover them.

Wint stopped in at the Journal office one hot day in July. B. B. was in his shirt sleeves, and collarless. He wore, habitually, stiff-bosomed shirts of the kind usually associated with evening dress. On this particular day, he had been working over the press—his foreman was ill—and there were inky smears on the white bosom. Nevertheless, B. B.’s pink countenance above the shirt was as clean as a baby’s. There was always this refreshing atmosphere of cleanliness about the editor. Wint came into the office and sat down in one of the chairs and took off his hat and fanned himself. The afternoon sun was beginning to strike in through the open door and the big window; but there was a pleasantly cool breath from the dark regions behind the office where the press and the apparatus that goes to make a small-town printing shop were housed. Wint said:

“This is one hot day.”

“Hottest day of the summer,” B. B. agreed.

“How hot is it? Happen to know?”

“Ninety-four in the shade at one o’clock,” said B. B. “Mr. Waters telephoned to me, half an hour ago.”

“J. B. Waters? He keeps a weather record, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. Has, for a good many years. We print his record every week. Perhaps you haven’t noticed it.”

Wint nodded. “Yes. I suppose every one likes to read about the weather. Even on a hot day.”

B. B. smiled. “That’s because every one likes to read about things they have experienced. You won’t find a big daily in the country without its paragraph or its temperature tables devoted to the weather, every day in the year. And a day like this is worth a front-page story any time.”

“You know what a day like this always makes me think of?” Wint asked; and B. B. looked interested. “A glass of beer,” said Wint. “Cool and brown, with beads on the outside of the glass.”

The editor smiled. “The beads on the outside of the glass won’t cool you off half as much as the beads on the outside of your head,” he said. “Did you ever stop to think of that?”

“Sweat, you mean?”

“Exactly. You know, when troops go into a hot country, they get flannel-covered canteens; and when they want to cool off the water in the canteens, they wet the flannel and let it dry. The evaporation of your own perspiration is the finest cooling agency in the world.”

“May be,” Wint agreed. “But it doesn’t stop your thirst.”

B. B. said good-naturedly: “A thirst is one of the handicaps of the smoker. I quit smoking a good many years ago. A non-smoker can satisfy his own thirst by swallowing his own spittle. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that?”

“Is that straight?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Wint asked amiably: “Mean to say you wouldn’t have to take a barrel of water to cross the Sahara.”

“Oh, when the bodily juices are exhausted, of course....”

Wint grinned. “I’ll stick to my beer.”

B. B. laughed and said: “I expect a good many Hardiston men are cussing you to-day because they can’t get beer.”

“I suppose so. I’ve a notion to cuss myself.” He added, a moment later: “You know, B. B., it’s surprising to me how little fuss has been made over that.”

“You mean—the—enforcing the law?”

“Yes. I looked for a row.”

“Oh, you’ll find most people are on your side. You know, most people are for the decent thing, in the long run. That’s what makes the world go around.”

“Think so?”

“Yes, indeed. If that weren’t so, where would be the virtue in democracy?”

“Well,” Wint said good-naturedly, “I’ve always had an idea that a democracy was a poor way to run things, anyway. About all you can say for it is that a man has a right to make a fool of himself.”

“Well, that’s about all you can say against slavery, isn’t it?”

Wint considered. “I don’t get you.”

“There were good men in the South before the war, owning slaves,” said B. B. “And the slaves were better off than their descendants are now. Materially; perhaps morally, too. But that doesn’t prove slavery was right.” He added: “The darkies had a right to make fools of themselves if they chose, you see. Their masters—even the good masters—prevented them.”

“I suppose that’s what a benevolent despot does?”

“Exactly.”

“If it wasn’t so hot, I’d give three cheers for democracy.” He considered thoughtfully, fanning himself with his hat. “But that’s what I’m doing, B. B. I’m refusing to let some that would like to, make fools of themselves with booze.”

B. B. shook his head. “Not at all. It’s not your doing. The people are doing it themselves. They voted dry; they elected you to enforce their vote. See the distinction?”

“Think I’ve done right, then?” Wint asked.

And B. B. said: “Yes, indeed.” Wint got a surprising amount of satisfaction out of that. Because, as has been said, he valued B. B.’s opinion.

So, on the whole, that month of July was a cheerful one for Wint. Things were going his way; the world was bright; the skies were sunny.

The first cloud upon them came on the second of August. It was a very little cloud; but it was a forerunner of bigger ones to come. Wint did not, in the beginning, appreciate its full significance. In fact, he was not sure it had any significance at all. It merely puzzled him.

His month’s statement from the bank came in. When it first came, he tossed the long envelope aside without opening it; and it was not till that night that he compared the bank statement with the balance in his check book.

He discovered, then, that there was a mistake somewhere. The bank credited him with more money than he should have had. He said to himself, good-naturedly, that he ought not to kick about that. Nevertheless, he ran through his canceled checks, comparing them with his stubs, to see where the difference lay.

He located the discrepancy almost at once; and when he discovered it, he sat back and considered its significance with a puzzled look in his eyes.

The trouble was that his check to Hetty, for her expenses in Columbus, had never been cashed; and Wint could not understand that at all.

CHAPTER II
A FRIENDLY RIVALRY

THIS matter of the check that he had given Hetty stuck in Wint’s mind, disquieting him. This in spite of the fact that he tried to forget it, told himself it had no significance, that it meant nothing at all.

He gathered up the other canceled checks and put them back in the bank’s long, yellow envelope, and stuck the envelope in a drawer of his desk. Hetty had not yet cashed the check; that was all. She would cash it when she needed the money. He tried to believe this was the key to the puzzle.

But it was not a satisfactory key; and this was proved by the fact that his thoughts kept harking back to the matter during the next day or two. When he gave Hetty the check, he had expected her to cash it before she left town. In fact, his first thought had been to draw the money himself, and give it to her; but this had been slightly less convenient than to write the check. So he had written the check, and given it to her, and now Hetty had not cashed it.

It was characteristic of Wint that he saw no threat against himself in this circumstance. Wint was never of a suspicious turn of mind. He was loyal to his friends and to those who seemed to be his friends; he took them, and he took the world at large, at face value. So in this case, he was not uneasy on his own account, but on Hetty’s. For Hetty had needed this money; yet she had not cashed the check.

He knew she needed the money. Her wage from his mother left no great margin for saving, if a girl liked to spend money as well at Hetty did. She could not have saved more than a few dollars; twenty, or perhaps thirty.... Besides, she had told him she needed money. When he told her she had better go away, she had said: “A fat chance of that. Where would I get the money, anyway?” It was this that had led him to write a check for her.

She had needed the money; she had accepted it. That is to say, she had accepted the check, but had not cashed it. Not yet, at least. Why not? What was the explanation?

His uneasiness, all on Hetty’s account, began to take shape. He remembered the girl’s sullen hopelessness, her friendlessness. She had been ready to give up, to submit to whatever misfortunes might come upon her. There had always been a defiant, reckless, fatalistic streak in Hetty. And Wint, remembering, was afraid it had taken the ascendant in the girl. He was afraid.

He did not put into words, even in his thoughts, the truth of this fear. But he did write to a college classmate, who was working at the time on one of the Columbus papers, and asked him to try to locate Hetty at one of the hospitals. He told the circumstances. And two or three days later, the man wrote to say that there was no such person as Hetty in any hospital in Columbus under her own name; and that as far as he could learn, there was no one approximating her description.

When this letter came, it tended to clinch Wint’s fears. He was not yet convinced that Hetty had chosen to—do that which writes “Finis” as the bottom of life’s last page. But he was almost convinced, almost ready to believe.

It made Wint distinctly unhappy. He had an honest liking and respect for Hetty, an old friendship for the girl.

He did not tell either his father or mother of the matter of the check; nor did he tell them what he feared had come to pass. There was no need, he thought, of worrying them. There was nothing that could be done.

The long, lazy summer dragged slowly past, and nothing happened. Which is the way of Hardiston. That is to say, nothing happened that was in any way extraordinary. The Baptist Sunday school held its annual picnic in the G. A. R. grove, south of town; and every one went, Baptist or not, Sunday school scholar or not. Everybody went, and took his dinner. Fried chicken, and sandwiches, and deviled eggs, and bananas; and there were vast freezers of ice cream. And some played baseball, and some idled in the swings, and there were the sports that go with such an occasion. Cracker-eating, shoe-lacing, egg-and-spoon race, greased pole, and so on and so on, to the tune of a great deal of laughter and general good nature. And the Hardiston baseball team played a game every week, sometimes away from home, sometimes on the baseball field down by the creek, where the muddy waters over-flowed every spring. And Lint Blood, the hard-throwing left fielder who was fully as good as any big leaguer in the country, if he could only get his chance, had his regular season as hero of the town. And there were a few dances, where the men appeared in white trousers and soft shirts and took off their coats to dance; and there were hay rides, on moonlight nights; and Ed Skinner’s nine-year-old boy almost got drowned in the swimming hole at Smith’s Bridge; and Jim Radabaugh and two or three others went fishing down on Big Raccoon, thirty miles away; and the tennis court in Walter Roberts’s back yard was busy every fine afternoon; and Ringling Brothers and Buffalo Bill paid Hardiston their regular summer visits. It rained so hard, for three days before Ringling Brothers came, that the big show had to be canceled, which made it hard for every father in town. And Sam O’Brien’s brother caught a thirty-five-pound catfish in the river, and sent it up to Sam, who kept it alive in a tub in his restaurant for two days, and killed and fried it for his customers only when it began to pine away in captivity. And Ed Howe’s boy fell off a home-made acting bar and broke his arm; and the Welsh held their County Eisteddfod in a tent on the old fair grounds, and John Morgan won the first prize in the male solo competition. Hardiston boys thought that was rather a joke, because John was the only entry in this particular event; and they reminded him of this fact for a good many years to come, in their tormenting moments. And the hot days and the warm days and the wet days came and went, and the summer dragged away.

In September, Joan suggested a picnic at Gallop Caves, a dozen miles from Hardiston; and Wint liked the idea, so they discussed who should go, and how, and in due time the affair took place. Joan and Agnes and two or three other girls made the domestic arrangements, with Wint and Dick Hoover and Jack Routt and one or two besides to look after the financial end, and the transportation. In the old days, they would have hired one of the big barges from the livery stable, with a long seat running the length of each side; and they would have crowded into that and ridden the dozen jolting miles, with a good deal of singing and laughing and talking as they went; but there were automobiles in Hardiston now, and no one thought of the barge.

They started early; that is to say, at eight o’clock in the morning, or thereabouts. There were three automobiles full of them, with hampers and boxes and freezers full of things to eat in every car. And they made the trip at a breakneck and break-axle speed over the rough road, and came to the Caves by nine, and unloaded the edibles and got buckets of water from the well behind the house at the entrance to the Caves. The farmer who lived in this house had an eye to business; and a year or two before he had put up a pavilion in the grove by the Caves, and had begun to charge admission. Besides the pavilion, there were swings, and there was a seesaw; and there were always the Caves themselves, and the winding, clear-watered little stream that came down over the rocks in a feathery cascade and wound away among the trees.

This day, they danced a little, in the pavilion—Joan had brought a graphophone—and when it grew too warm to dance, some of them went to climb about on the cool, wet rocks of the Caves; and some took off shoes and stockings, or shoes and socks as the case might be, and waded in the brook; and some sprawled on the sand at the base of the rocky wall and called doodle bugs. A pleasant, idle sport. The doodle bug is more scientifically known as an ant lion. He digs himself a hole in the sand like an inverted cone, and hides himself in the loose sand at the bottom of the hole. The theory of the thing is that an ant tumbles in, slides down the sloping sides, and falls a prey to the ingenious monster at the bottom. To call a doodle bug, you simply chant over and over:

“Doodle up, doodle up, doodle up....”

And at the same time, you stir the sand on the sides of the trap with a twig. Either the song or the sliding sand causes the bug to emerge from his ambush at the bottom of the pit, when you may see him for an instant; a misshapen, powerful little thing. If you happen to be an ant, he looks to you as formidable as a behemoth, bursting out of the sand and tumbling it from his shoulders as a mammoth bursts out of the primeval forest. If you happen to be a human, you laugh at his awkward movements, and find another pit, and call another doodle bug.

Routt and Agnes, Wint and Joan, all four together, investigated doodle bugs this day. They had a good-natured time of it till Jack Routt caught an ant and dropped it into one of the pits to see the monster at the bottom in action. The sight of the ant’s swift end was not pleasant to Joan; and she looked at Routt in a critical way. He and Agnes seemed to think it rather a joke on the ant. Wint and Joan moved away and left them there and went clambering up among the rocks, and picked wintergreen and chewed it, and came out at last on the upper level, on top of the Caves. They looked down from there and shouted to the others below. And when they tired of that, they sat down and talked to each other for a while. That was one pursuit they never tired of.

Wint had been meaning to ask Joan something. It concerned that letter which he had received the day after his election as Mayor. The letter had been anonymous; a friendly, loyal, sympathetic little note. He had torn it up angrily, as soon as he read it, because he was in no mood for good advice that day, and the letter had given good advice. He could remember, even now, snatches of it. He had wondered who wrote it; and this wonder had revived, during the last few days, and he had considered the matter, and asked a question or two.

Now he asked Joan whether she had written it; and Joan hesitated, and flushed a little, and then said, looking at him bravely: “Yes, I wrote it, Wint.”

He said in an embarrassed way: “But that was when you had told me you would have no more to do with me.”

She nodded.

“I tore it up,” he said.

“I thought you would.” She smiled a little. “But I hoped you—would remember it, too.”

“I do,” Wint told her. “You said I had ‘the finest chance a man ever had to retrieve his mistakes,’ and you told me to buckle down.”

“Yes, I remember,” she agreed.

Wint looked at her, and his heart was pounding softly. “You said there were some who would watch me—lovingly,” he reminded her.

For a minute she did not speak; then she nodded her head slowly; and she said: “Yes.” Her eyes met his honestly.

Wint had been very sure, before he asked her, that she had written the letter; he had meant to remind her of this word, and if she confessed it, to go on. But now that he had come thus far, he found that he could go no farther. It was not that she forbade him; not that there was any prohibition in her eyes. It was something within himself that restrained him. Something that held his tongue, bade him not risk his fortune—lest, perchance, he lose it.

Any one but a blind man would have seen there was no danger of his losing it; but Wint, in this matter, was blind—for the immemorial reason. So all the courage that had brought him thus far deserted him, and he only said:

“Oh!”

That did not seem to Joan to call for any answer, so she said nothing; and after a moment Wint got hurriedly to his feet and exclaimed:

“Well, I’m getting hungry. Better be getting back, hadn’t we?”

Joan looked, perhaps, a little disappointed. But she said she guessed so; and they made their way down to join the others.

After every one had eaten till there was no more eat in them, there was a general tendency to take things easy. The dishes had to be washed in the brook; and the girls undertook to do that. Dick Hoover found some horseshoes, and started a game of quoits. Wint would have taken a hand; but Jack Routt drew him aside and said:

“I’d like a little talk with you, Wint. Mind?”

Wint was surprised; but he didn’t say so. “All right,” he agreed. “Shoot.”

Routt offered him a cigar, and Wint took it, and they walked slowly away from the others, back toward the Caves. Routt came to the point without preliminaries. “It’s like this, Wint,” he said frankly. “A good many people have been telling me I ought to get into politics.”

Wint had ears to hear; and he had heard something of this. But he pretended ignorance, and only said: “I thought you were in politics. Thought you were linked up with Amos.”

“I have been, in the past,” Routt agreed. “But the trouble with that is, if you tie up with a big man, you get only what he chooses to give you. I’ve been advised to strike out for myself.”

Wint said: “I think that’s good advice. It ought to help your law practice, too.”

“Matter of fact,” said Routt. “They’re telling me I ought to run against you.”

“Against me?” Wint seemed only mildly interested. “For Mayor?”

“Yes. On the wet issue. You know my ideas on that. I’m not on your side of the fence there at all.”

“Well, I don’t find fault with any man’s ideas, Jack.”

“The trouble is this,” Routt explained. “You and I are pretty good friends. Always have been. I don’t want to start anything that will spoil that friendship.”

Wint laughed and said: “Good Lord, Jack; I guess there’s no fear of that.”

“By God, I knew you’d say so!” Routt exclaimed. “Just the same. I was leary. You know what kind of a fellow I am. When I go into a thing, I go in with both feet. If I run against you, Wint, I’ll give you a fight.”

“Go to it. We’ll show Hardiston some action.”

“I’ll lam it into you, Wint.”

“Well, I can give as good as you send,” Wint promised cheerfully.

“The only thing is,” Routt explained, “I just want an understanding with you first; that is, I want you to know there’s nothing personal in anything I may say. It’s politics, Wint; and if I go in, it will be hot politics. If you’ll promise to take it as that and nothing else.”

Wint said easily: “I don’t suppose you can tell Hardiston anything about me that it doesn’t already know.”

Routt grasped his hand. “Attaboy, Wint,” he exclaimed. “You’re a good sport. By God, I believe I’ll go into it!”

“Come ahead. It’s no private fight,” Wint assured him.

“The only thing is, I wanted to know first. I want you to know I’m on the level with you personally.”

“Well, I should say I know that, Jack.”

Routt thrust out his hand. “Shake on it, Wint.”

Wint laughed. “You’re dramatic enough.” But he shook hands.

They rejoined the others after a while, and Wint was glad of it. He had hidden his feelings from Routt; but as a matter of fact he was a good deal surprised and chagrined at Jack’s news. He had heard rumors; but he had not believed Routt would come out against him. It was a thing he, Wint, would not have done.... It smacked, he felt, of disloyalty to a friend. He had even, for a moment, a thought of withdrawing and leaving the field free to Routt. But he put it away. After all, he was first in the fight; it was Routt who had brought about this situation, not he. He could not well avoid the issue.

Nevertheless, he was troubled. The world that had seemed so bright and fair a month ago had a less cheerful aspect now. His fears for Hetty, his anxiety over her, were always with him, faintly oppressive. Now Routt’s desertion, his projected opposition. Try as he would to shake it off, Wint could not rid himself of the feeling that there were rough places on the road that lay ahead.

His anxiety over Hetty was relieved—though only to take a new turn—in the last week of September. For Hetty came back to Hardiston.

Wint met her on the street one day. He was immensely surprised; and he was immensely pleased to see her, safe and sound. He cried: “Why, Hetty, where did you come from?”

She looked around furtively, as though she would have avoided him if it had been possible to do so. “Didn’t you expect me to come back?” she asked sullenly.

“Of course. But.... How are you? All right? Where have you been?”

“Summering in New England,” she said ironically. “Where’d you think?”

“Mother’s been wondering when you’d come back. She needs you.”

“She’ll have to go on needing me.”

“Aren’t you—”

“I’ve got a job in the shoe factory.”

Wint said: “Oh!” He was disturbed and uncertain, puzzled by Hetty’s attitude. He asked: “Is the.... Did you....”

“The baby?” said Hetty listlessly. “Oh, he died.” There was dead agony in her tone, so that Wint ached for her.

“I’m sorry,” he told her.

“That’s all right. I can stand it.”

He asked: “Did you need any money? The check I gave you never came through the bank.”

“I lost it,” she said.

“Why, you must have had trouble. You didn’t have enough.”

“I went in as a charity-ward patient.”

“Columbus?”

“No. Cincinnati. I didn’t want any one knowing.”

Wint smiled in a friendly way and said: “I was worried about you.”

Hetty laughed. “You’d better worry about yourself. Do you know people are looking at you, while you’re talking to me? It won’t help you any to be seen with me.”

Wint said “Pshaw! You’re morbid, Hetty.”

“Besides,” she told him. “I’ve got to look out. Mind my p’s and q’s. If I want to hold my job.”

Wint flushed uncomfortably. “Why.... All right,” he said. “But if there’s ever anything....”

“Oh, I’ll let you know,” Hetty said impatiently, and turned away.

He had been afraid that she had killed herself; that her body was dead. He was afraid now, as he watched her move down the street, that something more important was dead in the girl.

It was at this moment that he realized for the first time that a man had been responsible for what had come to Hetty. He wondered who the man was; and he thought it would be satisfying to say a word or two to the fellow.

CHAPTER III
POLITICS

JACK ROUTT was as good as his word to Wint. Early in October, he announced his candidacy for Mayor; and he proceeded to push it.

In their talk at the Caves, he had warned Wint what to expect. But in spite of that warning, Wint had looked for no more than a polite and friendly rivalry, a congenial conflict, a good-natured tussle between friends.

He was to find that Routt had meant exactly what he said; that Routt as a political opponent and Routt as a friend were two very different personalities. On the heels of his open announcement that he was a candidate, Jack began a canvass of the town, and a direct and virulent assault upon Wint.

Wint heard what Routt was doing first through his father. The elder Chase came home to supper one evening in a fuming rage; and he said while they were eating:

“Wint, this Routt is a fine friend of yours!”

Wint looked at his father in some surprise. “Why, Jack’s all right,” he declared.

“All right?” Chase demanded. “Do you know what he’s doing?”

“I know he’s out for Mayor. That’s all right. I’ve no string on the job. I want to be re-elected, just as a sort of a—testimonial that I’ve made good. And I intend to be re-elected. But at the same time, any one has a right to run against me.”

“Nobody denies that,” his father exclaimed. “But no one has a right to hark back a year for mud to throw at you.”

Wint said: “Pshaw, there’s always mud-throwing in politics.”

Chase challenged: “Do you mean to say you think Routt has a right to do as he is doing?”

“Well, just what is he doing?” Wint asked good-naturedly.

“What is he doing? He’s saying you’re a common drunkard; that you always have been; that you are still, in secret.”

Wint flushed with slow anger. “Well,” he said, “if any one believes that, they’re welcome to.”

“But damn it, son, you’re not!” Chase exclaimed; and there was such a fierce rush of pride in his father’s voice that Wint was startled, and he was suddenly very happy about nothing; and he said:

“I’m glad you know it, anyway, dad.”

“Damn it!” Chase repeated. “Don’t you suppose I can see? Don’t you suppose I have a right to be proud of my own son, when he does something to be proud of? Your mother and I have.... Well, Wint, we’re—we’re a good deal happier than we were a year ago.”

Wint said gently: “I’m only sorry I didn’t make you happy a year ago.”

“That’s all right,” his father declared. “You were a headstrong youngster; and I didn’t know how to control you. An unruly colt takes careful handling. I’m not a—tactful man. But I’ll be damned if I can see how you can take this from the man you call your friend.”

Wint smiled slowly, and he said: “That’s three times in two minutes you’ve said ‘damn,’ dad. Cut it out. Don’t get profane in your excitement. Routt’s all right, really. Don’t swear at him.”

“Do you realize that he’s saying you’re drinking as regularly as ever, while you pretend to keep this a dry town?”

“Well, no one will believe him.”

“You can find men to believe anything; and there are plenty in Hardiston that want to believe anything against you.”

“Let them,” said Wint confidently. “There are plenty who will stand back of me.”

“But what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m not going to call names,” Wint told him cheerfully. “I’ll fight it out quietly and decently; and I’ll win. That’s what I mean to do.”

“You act as though you had expected this.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, Jack came to me and told me, before he told any one else, that he was going to run. And he warned me he was going to make it a real fight.”

“A real fight? This is assassination!”

Wint laughed. “You’re taking it too hard. I know it’s just because you’re—proud of me. Are you going to back me in this?”

Chase frowned. “As a matter of fact, Wint, I’m in a hard position. I want to back you—of course. But I can’t stomach Caretall. If you weren’t tied up with him.”

“He’s been a pretty good friend to me. Can’t you take him on that ground?”

“If I tied up with him, I’d be called a bootlicker, and justly. After what he did to me, I can’t cater to him and keep my self-respect.”

“Pshaw, dad! The world has a short memory. That’s all forgotten.”

“I’ve not forgotten.”

“Every one else has.”

“I’m not talking about every one else. I’m talking about my own self-respect.”

They had finished supper; and they got up and went into the other room. Mrs. Chase—she was doing her own work since Hetty had left her—began to clear away the dishes. In the sitting room, Wint said: “I’ve been counting on you, dad.”

Chase said: “I’ll do what I can—quietly. But I can not come out in the open and side with Amos. If he’d turn against you....”

Wint laughed. “I might kick up a row with him.”

“You’ll never regret breaking with Caretall. He’s a crooked politician of the worst type, without honor. A traitor to his own friends. He’ll be a traitor to you when it pleases him.”

His son said quickly: “Don’t. Please don’t talk against him to me. Let’s just not talk about him. After all, he’s been square to me.”

Chase flung up his hand. “All right. But how about Routt? Are you going to sit still and take the mud he’s throwing?”

“Jack will be too busy to throw mud, pretty soon,” Wint promised cheerfully. “Mud is trimmings. I’ll bring him down to brass tacks.”

“You ought to shut his lying—”

“Come, dad, don’t take it so seriously.”

“Well, then, you take it more seriously.”

Wint laughed. “All right. You wait and see.”

Nevertheless, he could not deny to himself that Routt’s move troubled him. Not for its effect on his candidacy, but for the light in which it showed Routt himself. For all his loyalty, Wint thought it was unworthy. Thought Routt was hurting himself and sullying himself. He met Jack uptown that night, and told him so in a friendly way. “Do as you like,” he said. “But I think it hurts you more than it does me,” he suggested.

Routt laughed, and asked: “It’s not getting under your skin, is it? I told you I’d give you a run.”

“Pshaw, no. Say anything you like about me. But it doesn’t get you any votes.”

“You’ll know better than that on the eighth of November,” Jack told him; and Wint smiled and let it go at that. After all, it was Routt’s own concern.

But if Wint took Routt’s tactics equably, Hardiston did not. Hardiston folk love politics. The great American game is the breath in their nostrils. They have an expert’s appreciation of the tactical value of this move and that; and they are keen spectators at such a battle as Routt and Wint were staging.

Wint would have liked to consult with Amos at this time; but it happened that Amos was out of town. He had gone to Columbus for a day or two. In lieu of Amos, Wint went to Peter Gergue, and asked Gergue how things looked to him. Gergue fumbled in his back hair in the thoughtful way he had and said he guessed Routt was making a lively fight of it, anyway.

“Do you think he’s making votes?” Wint asked.

“We-ell,” said Peter, “you can’t always tell what folks will do. I’d say he’s persuading every enemy you’ve got to vote against you.”

Wint said: “They would, anyway.”

“Sure.”

“The question is, is he persuading any of my friends?”

“I’d say not.”

“Then I don’t need to worry.”

Gergue spat at the curb. “Can’t say. You see, Wint, there’s about sixty per cent. of this town—or any town—that’s neither enemy nor friend. Just neutral. Them’s the votes you got to get.”

“I don’t believe Routt will get many of those votes by lies.”

“Not if they’re knowed to be lies.”

“Every one knows they are lies.”

“It’s a funny thing,” Gergue ruminated. “But lots of folks take a kind of pleasure out of believing lies about other folks.”

Wint shook his head. “I don’t believe Routt is accomplishing a thing.”

“We-ell,” said Gergue, “matter of fact, I’m thinking you may be right. Thing is, he’s laying a foundation, like.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s laying the tracks. He’s doing a lot of talk that won’t be believed much now; but he might bring on something later along that would make folks say: ‘Well, maybe that other was true, too.’”

“What can he bring?” Wint challenged.

“Has he got anything on you?”

“Every one knows all there is to know about me, I suppose.”

Gergue scratched his head. “We-ell, I dunno,” he said. “Anyway, that’s what I was kind of thinking.”

Wint met V. R. Kite one day, and the little man spoke to him so affably that Wint asked: “Well, how are things, Mr. Kite?”

“Excellent. First class, young man.”

“I suppose you’ll vote for me for Mayor?” Wint asked, grinning good-naturedly; and Kite chuckled and said he guessed not.

“Routt’s more my style,” he said.

“Don’t waste your vote on a loser,” Wint told him; but Kite said Routt might be a loser and might not. He left Wint with an unpleasant feeling that there had been a secretly triumphant note in the little old buzzard’s voice.

Jim Radabaugh met James T. Hollow at the Post Office one morning, and said cheerfully: “Well, James T., how’s it happen you’re not out for Mayor again?”

“I try to do what is right,” Hollow said earnestly. “But I really don’t know what to do, Mr. Marshal. I have thought of coming out, but Congressman Caretall gives me very little encouragement.”

“Don’t encourage you, eh?”

“No. In fact, I might say he discouraged—”

“Well, now,” said Radabaugh, “maybe you’d best just lie low.”

Hollow looked doubtful and said he didn’t know.

Thus all Hardiston talked, each man after his fashion. Ed Skinner of the Sun maintained a strict neutrality. He was closely allied with Wint’s father; and the elder Chase held his hand. B. B. Beecham seldom let the Journal take an active part in local politics, except on broad party lines. And Wint—since he had the patronage of Amos Caretall—was of the same party as Routt, who had been Amos’s ally. He carried the announcement cards of both men and let it go at that. But he went so far as to say to Wint, and to those who dropped in at the Journal office, that Routt’s methods were not likely to be profitable. “It never pays to open up old sores,” he said. “And it’s never a good plan to say anything that will unjustly hurt another man’s feelings. He may be in a position to resent it, some day.”

Sam O’Brien, the restaurant man, told Wint that Routt would never get his vote. “I like nerve,” he said, “and you’ve got it. You’ve made me laugh sometimes, Wint. Lord, I’ve thought you’d be the death of me. But you’ve took your nerve in your hands. You’ve got me, boy. More power to your elbow.”

The first two weeks of October slid swiftly by. Wint heard Routt was planning for a rally or two; and he began to make his own arrangements to a similar end. But in mid-October, word came to him which put the mayoralty race out of his mind.

The word came through Ote Runns, that hopeless drunkard whose cheerful services were in such demand by Hardiston housewives at rug-beating time. Wint met Ote one evening, on his way home, and Ote was bibulously cheerful. He greeted Wint hilariously; and told him in triumphant tones that Hardiston was itself again.

Wint, with a suspicion of what was coming, asked Ote what he meant; and Ote chortled:

“’S a good ol’ town. Good ol’ wet town! Plenny o’ booze now.”

Wint asked Ote where he got it, but the man put his finger to his nose and shook his head. Wint left him and went on his way.

When he got home, he telephoned Radabaugh. “They’re selling again, Jim,” he said.

The marshal asked: “Who?”

“Don’t know,” said Wint. “I met Ote Runns with a load aboard. I want you to get after them right away.”

“I’m started, now,” said Jim Radabaugh. “I’m on my way.”

CHAPTER IV
A CLOUD ON THE MOON

WINT was rather pleased than otherwise to learn that Kite and others of his ilk had resumed their illicit traffic in Hardiston. It gave him something to do. He had none of the instincts of a political campaigner; he could not for the life of him have made a really rousing speech. And it was next to impossible for him to ask a man for his vote. The old pride, the stubborn pride that had done him so much harm, was still alive in Wint; and this pride made him uncomfortable when he found himself asking favors.

He hated campaigning. If there had been no opposition for him to fight, if the way had been made easy before him, it is not unlikely that he would have quit the race. But there was opposition, and strenuous opposition. Jack Routt had kept his word; he was making a real fight out of it. When he encountered Wint, he was friendly—profusely so—and affable enough; but when he was canvassing, he made no bones of attacking Wint unmercifully, striking below the belt or above it as the moment might inspire him. He had dragged up Wint’s old drunken record and aired it until people were beginning to ask themselves if there wasn’t something in what he said, after all.

Against this, up till the middle of October, Wint had made a very poor fight indeed. He would not denounce Routt as Routt denounced him. As a matter of fact, there was no particular charge he could bring against Routt. Jack was no hypocrite, at least; he took an honest and straightforward stand. The liquor issue, for example. He was a drinker, he believed in it. And he said so. At the same time, he added that Wint was a drinker, but pretended not to be. He said Wint was a hypocrite.

The viciousness of Routt’s campaign stunned Wint at first; he was half incredulous. The thing didn’t seem possible. When he was forced to understand that it was not only possible but true, he was left at a loss. It was in the midst of his floundering attempts to find some means to advocate his cause that he got through Ote Runns the first word that the lawbreakers were at work again.

He grasped at that as though it were an opportunity. He telephoned Jim Radabaugh that night; and he sent for Jim the first thing in the morning and asked the marshal what he had discovered. Radabaugh shifted the knob in his cheek, and spat, and said he had discovered nothing.

“Did you find Ote?” Wint asked.

“Sure. I just listened, and then went where he was. He was singing, some.”

“Question him?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What did he say? Where did he get it?”

“He wouldn’t say,” Radabaugh explained.

Wint nodded. “I suppose not. What then?”

“We-ell, I scouted around.”

“Find out anything?”

“Skinny Marsh had a skinful, too. And there was a drunk in the Weaver House when I drifted over there.”

“Is it Mrs. Moody that’s selling?”

Radabaugh shook his head. “I guess not.”

Wint banged his desk. “Damn it, Jim! Who is it, then?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Well, I want you to find out.”

Radabaugh spat and considered. “They’s one thing,” he suggested mildly. “You might not have thought of it.”

Wint grinned. “You talk like B. B. Beecham. What is it, Jim?”

“I mean to say,” said Radabaugh, “this didn’t just happen. What I mean is, it didn’t just happen to happen. It was meant.”

Wint studied him. “What’s in your mind?”

“They’d have held off till after election, maybe,” Jim suggested. “Looks to me like they’re starting this to hit the election somehow. I can’t say just how. Don’t know. But it looks to me it was meant.”

“You mean they’re trying to discredit me, say I don’t enforce the laws.”

“Maybe that. Maybe something else. Just struck me it was something.”

Wint got up abruptly. “I don’t give a hoot. This campaign business bores me, anyhow. But I’m not going to stand for this. You get busy, Jim. If you need help, say so. I’ll bring a man in from outside, if necessary. But I want to grab the man that’s selling. You understand?”

“It’s your funeral,” said Radabaugh cheerfully, shifting the bulge in his cheek. “I’ll do my do.”

“Go to it,” Wint told him. “I’m leaving it to you.”

But nothing happened. A week dragged past; a week in which it was reasonably clear that Wint was losing ground to Routt. Wint himself saw this as quickly as any man, and it troubled him. He asked Peter Gergue for advice—Amos was still out of town—and Peter told him to get up on his hind legs and rear and tear, but Wint shook his head. “I can’t do that. It isn’t in me. The whole thing makes me sick.”

“You’ve naturally got to do it,” Gergue assured him. “Routt’s telling ’em to vote for him; and he’s telling them the same thing, over and over, till they know their lesson like a parrot. That’s advertising, Wint. Keep a-telling them the same thing till they know what they’re to do. You got to. Might as well come to it first as last.”

“I can’t ask a man to vote for me.”

“Why not?”

Wint grinned, and flushed, and gave it up. And Gergue told him again that he would have to make a noise if he wanted to be heard in Hardiston; and he left Wint to think it over.

B. B. Beecham, a day or two later, gave Wint the same advice, but to more purpose. Wint had dropped in at the Journal office casually enough, and talked with two or three others who were there before him, till they drifted away and left him with B. B. Wint asked:

“Well, how do things look to you, B. B.?”

B. B. looked doubtful. “You’re not making a very strong campaign,” he said.

Wint nodded. “I know it. It goes against the grain.”

The editor was surprised. “Is that so? Just how do you mean?”

“Oh, I hate to ask a man to vote for me. I hate to ask favors.”

B. B. smiled. “Who are you going to vote for, on the eighth?”

“Why, Routt, of course. I can’t vote for myself.”

The editor looked blandly interested, and commented: “Well, if that’s the case, of course you can’t ask any one else to vote for you?”

“Why not?” Wint was puzzled.

“You know yourself better than they do. If you can’t vote for yourself—”

“Oh, it isn’t.... Why, you naturally vote for the other fellow?”

“This isn’t a class election at college, you know,” B. B. reminded him. “It’s more serious. Not play. You want to remember that. But if you don’t think enough of yourself to vote for yourself....”

Wint laughed. “All right,” he said. “I’ll vote for myself. You’ve persuaded me.”

B. B. nodded. “Who do you think will make the best mayor; you, or Routt?” he asked.

“I don’t....” Wint flushed. “Why, I....”

“Routt?”

“No, by God!” Wint exclaimed angrily. “I’ve done a good job; and I’ll do another. He’d open the town up. Let things go.”

“Do you want to be Mayor? For your own sake?”

“Why, yes.”

“Like the job so well?”

“No, not particularly. But I want—well, it would show that people think I’ve made good.”

“If you’re going to make a better Mayor than Routt, your election is best for the town, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then it’s best for every man in Hardiston, isn’t it?”

“In a way.”

B. B. tilted back in his chair and lifted his hand in a gesture of confirmation. “That’s what I was getting at. The fact of the matter is, when you ask a man to vote for you, you’re not asking him to do you a favor. You’re asking him to do himself a favor. I don’t suppose you ever thought of that.”

Wint grinned. “Well, no.”

“It’s true?”

“I guess it is.”

B. B. leaned forward. “Then go out and say so. Start something. Keep telling them to elect you; tell them louder and longer and oftener than Routt does, and they will.”

This was so like what Gergue had said that Wint told B. B. so; and the editor nodded and said Gergue was a wise man. “But I can’t do it,” Wint protested. “I don’t know how. I’ll never make a speaker.”

B. B. considered that for a while: and then he said: “You know, printed advertising was invented by the first tongue-tied man.”

“I don’t get it,” Wint confessed.

“He had something to sell, but he couldn’t tell people about it, so he put an ad in the papers; and after that, every one got the habit.”

“You mean I ought to advertise?”

B. B. said that was exactly what he meant. And Wint was interested; he asked some questions. He had heard of advertising rates as things of astounding proportions; and so he was surprised to find that a full-page advertisement in the Journal would only cost him ten dollars. He laughed and said he could stand half a dozen of those. B. B. told him to put an advertisement in each Hardiston paper, and let them appear in every issue till the election. “Say the same thing, over and over, in different ways,” he advised. “Try it. You’ll be surprised.”

In the end, Wint decided to do just this. B. B. helped him write the advertisements. In them, Wint recited what he had done and what he meant to do, but briefly. In each full, black-lettered page, the burden of his song was just three words, repeated over and over:

“Vote for Chase; vote for Chase; vote for Chase.”

Amos came home toward the end of October; and when Wint heard he was in town, he telephoned and made arrangements to see him at his home that night. When he got there, Amos was upstairs. He called to Wint to go into the sitting room and wait, and Wint went in there and sat down. After a moment, Agnes came in to restore a book to its place on the shelves, and Wint got up and stood, talking with her. He thought she seemed uneasy, on edge. Her eyes went now and then through the open door toward the stairs down which Amos would come. She fumbled with her hair, and a lock became disarranged and fell down beside her face.

She said, abruptly, that there was something in her shoe; and she held to his arm with one hand, and stood on one foot, and pulled off her slipper and shook it, upside down. Then she seemed to lose her balance and toppled toward Wint; and he caught her in his arms. She straightened up and pushed him away with what seemed to him unnecessary force; and then turned and went swiftly out into the hall without a word. He looked after her, and saw Amos, halfway down the stairs, watching them with a curiously grave countenance; and Wint, for no reason in the world, was confused, and felt his face burning. He looked down and saw Agnes’s slipper on the floor, where she had dropped it; and he slid it out of sight under the bookcase before Amos came into the room. He was sorry as soon as he had done this; but Agnes had somehow contrived to make him feel guilty. He could hardly face Amos when the Congressman came into the room. He had a miserable feeling that everything was going wrong; all the trifles in the world seemed conspiring to harass him.

But Amos seemed to have seen nothing. He was perfectly amiable, bade Wint sit down, filled his black pipe, squinted at Wint with his head on one side and asked how things were going.

Wint said they were going badly; and Amos smiled.

“Why, now, that’s too bad,” he declared.

“I wasn’t made for a campaigner,” Wint said. “I’ll never be able to make a speech.”

“You write a good ad,” Amos told him; and Wint asked:

“You’ve read them?”

“I guess everybody’s read them.”

“Are they all right?”

“First rate. They’ll do.”

Wint said impatiently: “I’m sick of the whole thing.”

Amos studied him. “Routt getting under your skin?”

“No. He’s playing it pretty strong, though.”

“I’ll say he is.”

“Of course, it’s just politics. He and I are as friendly as ever.”

“Oh, sure,” Amos agreed indolently. “He told you so, didn’t he?”

“Yes. He came to me, in the beginning.”

“I heard so.”

“I don’t know how to answer him—the line he’s taking,” Wint explained. “That’s all.”

“Don’t have to answer him, do you? Don’t have to answer a lie.”

Wint laughed uneasily. “Just the same, he’s stirring people up.”

“I never heard of anybody being permanently hurt by a lie but the liar,” said Amos.

Wint leaned forward. “I tell you, Amos, I want to be elected. I’ve gone into this; and I want to win. Routt and I are friendly enough; but he started this fight, and I want to beat him. I want to beat him to a whisper. I’d like to see him skunked. I don’t care if he doesn’t get two votes in Hardiston. That’s the way I feel.” His fierce enthusiasm dropped away from him; he said hopelessly: “But I’m darned if I know how to manage it.”

Amos nodded slowly. “Sick of it, eh?”

“Yes.”

The Congressman puffed for a while in silence, thinking; and Wint waited for the other man to speak. At last Amos looked at him and asked curiously: “Wint, you dead set on being Mayor?”

Something in his tone put Wint on guard. “Dead set? Why?” he asked.

Amos lifted a hand. “Why, just this,” he explained. “I’ve been talking around, here and there. Far as I hear, they’ve heard about you in Columbus. The way it strikes me, right now, if you was to run for the House, say, you could get it; and you’d have a good start up there. That’s all.”

Wint laughed uneasily. “That can come later. Maybe.”

“Thing is,” said Amos, “if you was to get licked for Mayor, it’d hurt you.”

“I’m not going to get licked,” Wint exclaimed. “I’m going to win.”

“Well—maybe,” Amos agreed. “Only I just want you to know that if you’d rather try for something else, I’d back you to the limit.”

“You mean after election? Next year?”

“I couldn’t do much if you was licked.”

Wint leaned toward him. “Just what do you mean?”

“Just what I say.”

“Are you asking me to withdraw?” Wint asked. His heart was in his mouth. “I know you and Routt have always worked together. Do you want me to get out and let him have it?”

“I’m not asking you to do a thing. I’m offering you a good excuse to—maybe—dodge a licking.”

“I’m not going to get licked,” Wint insisted. “And if there’s a licking waiting for me—by God, I won’t dodge!”

Amos looked at him curiously. “Well, that’s all right. I just put the thing up to you.”

“But I owe you enough,” said Wint, “so that if you asked me to quit—I’d do it.”

“I’m not asking you.”

“Then,” Wint declared, “I stick; and I win.”

Amos moved a little in his chair; and he sighed. “Well,” he drawled, “I’m watching you.”

Wint left Amos, a little later; and he walked home with a weight on his shoulders. He had counted on the Congressman; but—this was half-hearted support at best that Amos was offering. Wint was puzzled, he could not understand; and he was depressed, and worried, and unhappy. He had an impulse to get out, throw the whole matter to one side, forget it all; but on the heels of the thought, his jaw hardened and he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No; I’ll stick it out to the end.”

He would have been more concerned, and he would have been thoroughly angry, if he could have heard Agnes Caretall talk to Amos when he had left. She came in to retrieve her lost slipper; and she was fuming indignantly. Old Maria Hale, setting the table for breakfast as she always did, the last thing at night, overheard a word or two of their talk. She heard Agnes exclaim:

“I don’t see how you can be so calm, just because you elected him. But that doesn’t give him any right to think he can do a thing like that with me.”

And she heard Amos’s slow, even voice reply:

“No; it doesn’t give him any right.”

“I should think you could say something,” Agnes cried. “Your own daughter!”

Maria heard Amos say something about “fooling.” And Agnes retorted:

“It wasn’t fooling! It was—plain insulting!”

“Well, we can’t let him do that,” Amos agreed drawlingly. Then Maria departed to the kitchen and heard no more. She had paid no particular attention. The old darky lived in a world of her own. A quiet world. A world that was not far from coming to its end. She was very old.

After Agnes left him and went upstairs Amos sat for a long time, very still, before the fire. His eyes were weary, and his calm face was troubled.

Once he lifted his glance from the fire and saw a picture of Agnes on the mantel; and he got up and took it in his big hands. It had been taken two or three years ago; and it was very beautiful. A gay, happy face; the face of a child without cares. A good face, Amos thought. An honest one.

He compared it in his thoughts with Agnes as she was now; and the trouble in his countenance deepened. After a little, he said to himself as he had said once before: “I wish her mother hadn’t ’ve died.”

He put the picture slowly back on the mantel, and sat down and once more became motionless, staring into the fire. To one watching him it would have seemed in that moment that Amos, too, was very old.

CHAPTER V
A LOST ALLY

CONGRESSMAN Amos Caretall staged, next morning in the Post Office, one of those dramatic incidents which had checkered his career and done a good deal to make him what he was. These scenes were meat and drink to Amos. He liked to hark back to them and chuckle at the memory. In Washington, last winter, for example, he had told over and over the story of his speech at the rally of Winthrop Chase, Senior; his pledge to vote for a Chase, and the sequel to that pledge. The thing appealed to his sense of humor.

This morning he met Wint in the Post Office and snubbed him. And within half an hour all Hardiston knew about it, and was talking about it. The way of the thing was this.

Wint had met Jack Routt on the way uptown; and they came up Broad Street together, and down Main to the Post Office. Wint was thoughtful and a little silent; Routt expansively amiable in the fashion that had become habitual with him since the campaign opened. He asked Wint, jocularly, whether he was downhearted, and Wint said he was not. Routt told him he would be. “You’ll be ready to quit before I’m through with you, old man,” he warned Wint. “You’ll be ready to crawl into your hole. Oh, I’m laying for you.”

“Go ahead,” Wint told him quietly.

“All your ads in the papers won’t do you a bit of good, either. That’s good money wasted. You have to get out and talk to the voters, Wint. Take a tip from me. It’s the word of mouth that does the trick.”

Wint said if this were so Routt would surely come out on top. “You’ve used word of mouth pretty freely,” he remarked.

“Getting into the quick, am I?” Routt chuckled.

“Why, no. I just commented on the fact that....”

Routt asked solicitously: “Look here. You’re not sore, are you? You know, the understanding was that this was to be a real fight.”

“Of course,” Wint agreed. “And I’m not sore. Go as far as you like.”

A moment later, Routt said: “I heard Amos was going to throw you down. Anything in that? If he does, you haven’t got a chance.”

“Nothing in it,” Wint told him. “I had a talk with Amos last night.”

Routt laughed and said Amos’s promises didn’t amount to anything. “Is he backing you; or is he holding off?” he asked. “I haven’t heard that he’s doing much.”

“You’ll hear in due time,” Wint told him.

He thought, afterward, that it was a curious coincidence that Routt should have said this about Amos on this particular morning. It was almost as though Routt had really had some foreknowledge. But at the time, the question made no great impression on him.

When they turned into the Post Office, the mail had not yet been distributed, and the windows were closed. There were perhaps a dozen men there, waiting before their boxes, talking, smoking, spitting on the floor. Routt and Wint took their places among these men; and Routt stuck near Wint. There was some good-natured chaffing. And after a little, Amos and Peter Gergue came in together. Every one had a word for Amos. It was a minute or two after he came in the door before he worked back through the groups to where Routt and Wint stood. He looked at the two, head on one side, and Wint said:

“Good morning, Amos.”

Amos squinted a little; then, without replying to Wint, he turned to Jack Routt, at Wint’s side, and thrust out his hand. “Morning, Routt.”

He and Routt shook hands, and Wint went a little white with surprise, still not fully understanding. Routt said cheerfully:

“Back in time to see the election, Amos.”

Amos nodded cordially. “And back in time to shake hands with the next Mayor, Routt,” he said. “You’re making a first-rate campaign. If you need any help—”

Routt took it all as a matter of course. Wint had stepped back a little; he was leaning his shoulders against the wall, and it seemed to him the world was swimming. “I’ll surely call on you,” Routt said.

Amos turned toward his mail box and unlocked it. Gergue shook Routt by the hand. “Morning, Mister Mayor,” he said; and then, casually, to the other: “H’lo, Wint.”

Every one had seen; no one had a word to say. The windows opened as sign that the mail was all distributed. Every one bustled forward to open their boxes; and they went out, ripping open letters and papers, talking in low voices, glancing sidewise at Wint. Routt had gone out with Amos and Peter. Wint pulled himself together, got his mail, and went out into the street by himself. Hardiston seemed like a new town; it was changed, terribly changed, by a word or two from Amos.

Every one seemed to know what had happened, almost as soon as it had happened. The people who spoke to him on his way to Hoover’s office—he was planning a day with the law books—seemed to Wint to be grinning maliciously. He was still dazed, unable to think clearly. When he was settled in the back room with the leather-bound books, Wint tried to put his mind on them; but he could not. He was groping for understanding. He felt as a child feels, when it has received a blow it cannot understand. He was incredulous. The thing could not have happened; but it had happened. The ground was cut from under his feet. Cut from under his feet. He was lost, helpless. He had been supported for so long by Amos; he had felt the Congressman’s substantial strength upholding him for so many months that it had come to seem to him as an inevitable feature of his very life. He did not see how he could go on without it.

Yet in the end he had to believe, had to accept the new condition. He remembered Amos’s attitude, the night before. Amos had suggested his withdrawing from the fight; the Congressman had almost asked him to withdraw. He had refused; now Amos would force him. Would beat him to his knees. At least, Amos would try to do that. A slow anger began to grow in Wint; a slow determination not to be beaten. Or if he was to be beaten, he would not be beaten without a fight. In simple words, Wint got mad; and he always fought best when he was mad. His resolution hardened; a certain fire of inspiration came to light within him. He began to make plans to meet this new contingency. He would go to the people of Hardiston with the facts. Appeal to them. Prove to them that he deserved their good will; and that he deserved their votes. An hour after the scene in the Post Office, Wint was more determined to win than he had ever been before. Even Amos was not invincible. The man could be beaten. Not only in this fight, but in others. Wint began to cast forward into the future, and plan what he would do.

Dick Hoover came in, after a while, and gripped him by the shoulder. “I say,” he exclaimed excitedly, “they tell me Amos has thrown you down. Is it true?”

Wint nodded. “Yes,” he said crisply.

Hoover swore. “The dirty, double-crossing hound. What are you going to do?”

“Lick him,” Wint replied.

Hoover looked doubtful. “Lick him? You can’t, Wint.”

Wint said nothing.

“Can you?” Dick Hoover asked.

“I’m going to,” said Wint.

Hoover banged his fist on the book that lay open before Wint. “By God, you’ll find some that are willing to help!”

“I know it,” Wint agreed.

“My father and I.... Whatever we can do.”

“Thanks!”

“Get after him, Wint,” Hoover urged. “Show him up. No one has ever gone after Caretall the right way. Start something. The people are always looking for fun, for a change. By God, I believe you can do it!”

“I told you I was going to,” Wint repeated.

That night, his father spoke to him of the matter. The elder Chase had heard it during the day, had heard what Amos had done. And there was fire in his eye. He had no sooner come into the house, before supper, than he called:

“Oh, Wint!”

Wint was upstairs, getting ready for supper. He answered: “Hello, dad.”

“Coming down?”

“Right away.”

“Well, hurry.”

Wint was surprisingly cheerful. The elation of battle was on him. He chuckled at the impatience in his father’s tone; but he did make haste, and a moment later joined the other man in the sitting room. The elder Chase was standing, stirring about, his face hot and angry.

“Look here, Wint,” he exclaimed, without parley. “I hear Amos Caretall turned you down, to-day.”

“Yes.”

“In the Post Office.”

“Yes, this morning.”

“Told Routt he was going to win.”

“Just that, dad.”

Chase threw up his hands furiously. “By God, Wint, I told you he’d cut your throat! The dirty....”

Wint put his hand up to his neck. “Cut my throat?” he repeated. “I seem to be all here.”

“You wouldn’t believe me, Wint. But I warned you.”

“Yes, you did.”

“What do you say now to this fine friend of yours? Damn the man!”

“I say he’s started trouble for himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m going to prove that when he said Routt would be elected, he was either a fool or a liar.”

Chase banged his hand on the table beside him till the lamp jumped in its place, and the shade tilted to one side. Mrs. Chase came bustling in just then, and straightened it, and protested anxiously: “I declare, Winthrop, you’re the hardest man around the house. You do disturb things so. I don’t see—”

“Caretall has turned against Wint,” Chase told her.

She nodded wisely. “Well, didn’t you always say he would?”

“Of course I did. Wint wouldn’t believe me. Now he’s done it.”

“He ought to be ashamed of himself,” Mrs. Chase declared. “But I always did think you were wrong, Wint, to be so friendly with a man who had treated your father as he did. He—”

“I know you did, mother.”

Chase cried: “You take it almighty calmly, Wint. Isn’t there any blood in you, son? Don’t you ever get mad? Damn it, the man ought to be kicked out of town.”

Wint laughed good-naturedly. “Oh, I don’t know. He has a right to support Jack if he wants to.”

“A right? What have his rights to do with it? By God, I’d have more respect for you if you could get good and mad!”

Wint chuckled. “I’ll try to work up a fever if you like. I always want your respect, dad.”

Chase said in a softer tone: “You always have it, Wint. You’ve earned it. But it makes my blood boil to see Caretall do this to you. To my son.”

“It’s terrible,” Wint agreed whimsically; and Chase protested:

“I believe you’re laughing at me.”

Wint shook his head anxiously. “No. But I don’t see that it does any good to get excited. I’m aiming to keep my head—and my job.”

“You’re going to fight?”

“Fight?” Wint echoed. “Why, dad, you won’t be able to see me for dust.”

“You’ve waked up at last. You’re not going to sit back and let Routt lie about you, and let Amos trick you.”

“I’m going to fight,” said Wint. “Also I’m going to win.”

Chase exclaimed: “I believe you can. If you try.”

“You know,” said Wint, “in a way I’m glad this has happened.”

“Glad?” Chase asked. “For God’s sake, why?”

Wint touched his arm in a comradely way. “Because now you and I can line up together. Fight side by side. I’d rather have you with me than Amos.”

Chase said, with a sudden humility: “Amos might be able to help you more than I can.”

“I’d rather have your personal vote than all the votes Amos can swing.”

“You’d have had that, anyway.”

“Well, isn’t that worth being crossed by Amos?”

Chase said: “But don’t fool yourself, Wint. Don’t imagine this is going to be easy. Caretall is powerful.”

Wint said with a slow energy: “I’ve done some thinking, dad. Amos is powerful. But—I don’t know just how to say it, but what I mean is this. I think I’ve been a good Mayor. I’ve tried to be a good one, anyway. And if a fellow tries to do the right thing, it seems to me the world has a habit of turning his way. I’ve done my share, straight out and out. And I’m going to the voters on that record. If there’s anything in—democracy—then I can beat Amos. He’s cleverer; he’s better at tricks and contraptions. But he can’t beat the right thing, dad. And—I’ve a hunch that the right is on my side, on our side, in this.”

“Right or wrong,” Chase declared, “we’ll lick him if there’s any way in the world it can be done.” His eyes lighted. “I believe I can get Kite to line up with you.”

Wint shook his head. “No.”

“I think I can,” Chase urged. “He hates Amos.”

“I don’t want him,” said Wint. “This is a clean fight.”

“You want all the help you can get.”

“All the decent help. There are enough decent folk in town to put this thing through.”

“You can’t be too squeamish, Wint.”

“I’m too squeamish to take help from Kite,” said Wint. “That’s flat, dad. Put it out of your head.”

Mrs. Chase was still doing her own work. She called them to supper, just then; and while they ate, she told them how tired she was. “I declare,” she said, “I wish Hetty would come back here. I saw her, uptown, yesterday; and I asked her to. But she wouldn’t. Said she had a better job. I told Mrs. Hullis last night that the girl—”

“Hetty never cooked a better supper than this,” her husband told her; and the little woman smiled happily, and bridled like a girl, and said:

“Now, Winthrop, you’re always telling me things like that, when you know they’re not true. I’m just a—”

Wint laughed: “Quit apologizing for yourself, mother. It’s a darned bad habit. Tell people you’re a wonder, and they’ll believe you. I’ve found that out. That’s the way I’m going to be re-elected.”

“You can tell them that, but you have to back it up,” his father reminded him. “Brag’s not so bad, if there’s something to base it on.”

“Well, isn’t there?” Wint asked quietly; and his father’s eyes lighted, and he cried:

“Yes, son, by Heaven, there is!”

Wint made no move, during the next day or two; but he laid his plans. He intended to do a great many things in the last week before election. He would concentrate his effort in those last days, so that the effect should not have time to disappear. He talked with Dick Hoover, and Dick’s father; he talked with others. And he was surprised to find that such loyal supporters of Amos as Sam O’Brien and Ed Howe and even James T. Hollow were inclined to support him. Support him in spite of Amos. Sam told him as much.

He met Sam at the moving-picture show that night; that is to say, he met Sam just outside. And Sam and Hetty Morfee were together. That surprised Wint; he had not even known that they were friends. But it was obvious that they were very good friends indeed. When he stopped to speak to them, Hetty looked at him with an appealing defiance. He wondered if Sam knew. He did not think it would matter. Sam was the sort who could, if he chose, forgive.

He spoke to Sam of the coming election; and Sam said: “Sure, I’m for you. Amos’s all right in Congress. But he’d make a mighty poor Mayor. I’m for you, Wint, m’boy. You’ve got nerve; and you’re funny, sometimes. Lord, but I’ve thought there was times when I’d die laughing at you. But you’re there, Wint. You can have me.”

He and Hetty went away together, and Wint watched them, forgetting what Sam had said in wondering about Sam and Hetty.

He got further comfort the next day from a man as close to Amos as Peter Gergue. Peter told him it looked as though Routt would win. “But there’s a pile that’ll vote for you,” he added. “It ain’t hurt you much, Amos quitting.” He looked all around furtively, and fumbled in his back hair, and said: “Amos didn’t do you such a bad turn, even if he meant to. I might give you a vote myself, Wint. I don’t know but I might.”

Wint laid plans for rallies on Friday and Saturday nights of the week before election. On Monday and Tuesday of that week, he worked all day, preparing the words he meant to say at those rallies. It was tough work; it was hard for him to put his own determination into words.

Tuesday night, the first of November, there came a diversion. Jim Radabaugh telephoned to him at midnight, summoning him out of bed. When Wint answered the ’phone, the marshal asked:

“That you, Wint?”

“Yes.”

“You r’member you told me to get after the bootleggers?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’ve done that little thing.”

Wint exclaimed: “First rate. You mean you’ve arrested some one?”

“I should say I had.”

“Who?” Wint asked.

“You know Lutcher?”

“Of course.”

“Him,” said Radabaugh.

CHAPTER VI
KITE TAKES A HAND

THAT Radabaugh should have arrested Lutcher was almost as though he had arrested Kite himself; and Wint knew it. It brought matters to an issue, direct and unavoidable. Lutcher, for all practical purposes, was Kite. His arrest meant an open defiance to the head and front of the opposition. Wint, characteristically, leaped at the chance. He might have been more lenient with a lesser man.

He asked the marshal: “Where is he?”

“Locked up,” said Radabaugh.

“In the calaboose?”

“Yeah. Him and the fire horses are all little pals together.”

“You’ve got the evidence?”

“Sure.”

“No doubt about it?”

“Not a bit. I’ll tell you—”

“That can wait till morning. What does he say?”

“Acts like he wasn’t surprised. Acts like he expected it. Matter of fact, he pretty near invited me to pinch him.”

Wint nodded to himself. “That means they’re looking for trouble.”

“I’d say so.”

“Haven’t seen Kite, have you?”

“Hear he’s out of town. Be back Thursday.”

“All right. We’ll hold Lutcher till then and have it out.”

Wint heard a gulp that told him Radabaugh was shifting that bulge in his cheek. “He’s wanted to furnish bail,” the marshal said.

“Nothing doing,” Wint told him.

“We-ell—he’s got a right to want to.”

“We’re sound sleepers here. You couldn’t raise me with the telephone,” Wint suggested.

“Lutcher’s all dressed up in a yellow vest and everything; and he didn’t fetch his jail pajamas with him.”

“He can sleep in the yellow vest.”

“It’s your funeral,” Radabaugh decided philosophically. “Whatever you say.”

“That’s right.” And Wint added: “I’m glad you got him, Jim. Good work.”

“Oh, he weren’t so much to get. I told you he put himself in the way of it.”

“Just the same, you had good nerve.”

“We-ell—maybe so.”

Wint went back to bed; but he didn’t go to sleep. He was tingling with the pleasurable excitement of combat; and he was immensely pleased at this chance to give evidence of the sincerity of his fight for a clean Hardiston. Those orders to Radabaugh which had become something like a proverb in Hardiston.... This was their test. He meant that they should meet the test.

He could not decide whether the incident would help him or hurt him at the polls; it was impossible to tell. But—he did not care. Hurt or help, his course would be the same. Unchangeable. Lutcher should get the limit. Whatever the evidence justified. The rest was on the lap of the gods. Let them take care of it.

It may have been an hour or two before he was asleep again; and he woke in the morning a little tired because of the sleep he had lost. But the cold tub revived him; he was cheerful enough when he came down to breakfast; and when his father appeared, Wint told him the news.

“Something doing, dad,” he said.

Chase looked at him in quick and surprised interest; and he asked: “What? What do you mean, Wint?”

“Did you hear the telephone last night, about midnight?”

“No.”

“I did,” said Mrs. Chase. “I thought I heard the bell; but your father was asleep, and I wasn’t sure. I came to the head of the stairs, but you were already down.”

“I answered as quickly as I could. The bell only rang once or twice.”

“Who was it?” Chase asked quickly.

“Radabaugh. Jim. The marshal. He’s arrested Lutcher.”

“Lutcher! What for?”

“Bootlegging!”

Chase uttered an involuntary exclamation. “Lutcher? He’s Kite’s right-hand man.”

“Absolutely.”

“Radabaugh arrested him?”

“Yes.”

“Has he got a case?”

“Jim always has a case, when he makes an arrest.”

“But Lutcher.... He’s shrewd. Knows how to cover his tracks.”

“He didn’t cover well enough this time.” Wint’s elation was singing in his voice.

“But he—”

“As a matter of fact,” said Wint, “Radabaugh thinks Lutcher allowed himself to be caught. Thinks he wanted to get arrested.”

“By God, that doesn’t sound reasonable!”

“He’ll be sorry.”

“They’ve got something up their sleeves, Wint.”

“So have I!”

“You—What?”

“My arms,” said Wint cheerfully. “With a fist on each one and a punch in each fist.”

Chase looked uncertain. “They’ll try some trick.”

Wint touched the other’s arm. “Don’t worry. They’ve got to fight in the open, now. The time’s short. And I’m not afraid of them in the open.”

“They’re treacherous. They’ll strike behind your back.”

“I’m not worried.”

But the older man was worried. He said little more; nevertheless his concern was plain. Wint was sorry, a little disappointed. His father’s uneasiness did not affect his own confidence. He was as sure of himself as before. But he had expected his father to be as confident as himself, as sure. To him, the matter of Lutcher simply offered an opportunity for a telling blow; but it was evident that to his father the incident was rather a threat than an opportunity.

He and his father walked downtown together; they separated when Wint turned aside toward the fire-engine house where his office was. The older man gave him a word of warning there. “Go carefully, Wint,” he urged. “Watch yourself.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Be sure of the law, Wint. Don’t make a mistake. They would jump on it.”

“That’s Foster’s job. And I’m no ... I’ve studied up a bit.”

“Take care.”

“Right, dad.”

They separated, and Wint went on to his office. Radabaugh was not there, but he appeared a little later. “I’ve just had Lutcher up to Sam O’Brien’s for breakfast,” he explained. “He wanted to go to the hotel; but I told him Sam had the contract to victual the city prisoners.”

Wint chuckled. “Where is he now?”

“Down in the calaboose.”

“Does he still want to furnish bail?”

“Says he does.”

“Kite comes home to-morrow, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’ll let Lutcher out on bail till then. I’m curious to hear what Kite will have to say.”

Radabaugh shifted the plug in his cheek. “Think he’ll have anything to say?”

“Don’t you?”

“We-ell, he might.”

“Bring Lutcher up, and we’ll turn him loose.”

Lutcher came. Wint chuckled inwardly at sight of what Radabaugh had called a yellow vest. It was an ornate affair; no doubt of it. He was inclined to expect an outbreak from Lutcher, but the big, bald man was cheerfully amiable. Wint said: “Sorry we had to hold you in jail. The marshal tried to get me, but I’m a sound sleeper.”

“Well, the bed wasn’t soft,” Lutcher admitted. “But I can stand it.”

“I’m going to hold you till to-morrow,” Wint said. “Unless you want to plead guilty and accept sentence now.”

“Guilty? No, sir. You can’t pin anything on me, Wint. You ought to know that.”

“We’ll see,” Wint told him. “Want to stay in jail, or furnish bail?”

“Bail, of course. I can get any one.”

“I’d rather have money.”

“Check any good?”

“I’ll cash it before you leave here.”

Lutcher said amiably that that was all right, and asked the amount. Wint said “Four hundred.” And Lutcher whistled, and protested: “That’s pretty hard.”

“Harder than the bed in the calaboose?”

Lutcher grinned, and wrote. Wint took the check and his hat and left Lutcher with the marshal. He went to the bank, drew the money, and deposited the cash to the city’s account. “Just so there can be no question of stopping payment on that check,” he explained.

Back at his office, he told Lutcher he was free to go. Lutcher, contriving to look dapper and well-dressed in spite of his night, took himself away. Then Wint turned to the marshal.

“Now, Jim, how about it?” he asked. “What’s the case against him?”

Radabaugh shifted the knob in his cheek to clear the way for speech; and he sat down, and hitched his trousers up, and opened his coat and put his thumbs in his armholes. “We-ell,” he said, “it was like this.”

He had been scouting around for two weeks past, he said, according to Wint’s orders, without discovering anything. But the afternoon before, an automobile had come into town with some boxes in the tonneau and a stranger driving. It made some stir on Main Street; and then it drove openly enough to Lutcher’s place, on the alley. He had seen the boxes carried up Lutcher’s stair.

“First off,” he explained, “I figured it couldn’t be what it looked like. Didn’t seem as if they’d be so open about it. Lutcher had been lying low. I figured they might be aiming to get me excited, just to make a fool of me. So I held off a spell.

“But the thing stuck in my head. They might be trying a game, and they might not. I decided to keep an eye on Lutcher’s place, and I did. All that afternoon.”

Wint said: “They were brazen, eh?”

“I’d say so,” Radabaugh agreed; and he shifted his plug and went on.

“Nothing happened, particular, all afternoon. I et my supper; and after it was dark, I took another walk down that way. Met Jack Routt coming out of the alley; and he stopped me and talked to me. It was on his breath. Plain enough. He must have knowed that; must have meant me to smell it. He was so darned open, I suspicioned there was a trick. So I still held off.

“But I took a walk through the alley about nine o’clock. All quiet. A light in Lutcher’s place, that was all. Some men up there. I wondered.

“I walked through again, after a while. Sounded like they was having a game. Finally, about a quarter past eleven, I come along through, and some one yelled. Sounded boozy. So I says to myself: ‘Jim, you’re the goat. You got to bite, if it’s only to see the joke.’ So I went up the stairs. Quiet.”

“No search warrant?” Wint asked.

“Why, no,” said Radabaugh innocently. “I was just dropping in for a drink, like I’d done before. Some time back.”

Wint grinned. “Of course. Go ahead.”

“We-ell, the door wasn’t locked,” said Radabaugh. “So I knew I was meant to come in. And I went in. On in where they were. Four of them. Tuttle, and Harley, and Gates, and this Lutcher. I went in; and Tuttle throws a five-dollar bill to Lutcher and says: ‘Here’s for that last bottle, Lutch.’

“Lutcher took it. And he’d seen me before he took it. Then he got up and says: ‘Hello, Jim. Have a drink?’

“So I told him to come along.”

He stopped; it was evident that his story was done. Wint nodded. “Well, that’s plain enough,” he agreed.

“It’s my evidence against theirs,” Radabaugh reminded him. “But that’s the way it’s got to be.”

“Your evidence is good enough for me.”

“Sure. But he’ll fight.”

“We can’t help that,” Wint reminded him. “All we can do is—soak him.” There was a sudden heat in his voice; and Radabaugh eyed him curiously and asked:

“In earnest, ain’t you?”

“Absolutely,” said Wint.

“Well, it never hurt any, to be in earnest. Go to it, boss.”

Hardiston talked it over that day, and wondered what Wint would do. Most people thought he would sentence Lutcher; some declared he would wait till after election, for fear of influencing the vote. Sam O’Brien laughed at this view. “Wint wasn’t ever afraid of anything,” he declared. “Why man, you make me laugh. He’ll soak Lutcher so hard Lutcher’ll need to be wrung out like a sponge.”

There were others who were loyal to Wint; and there were some few—not very vociferous except among those of like views—who were loyal to Lutcher. But for the most part, people waited. Waited for Kite to come home. This was his fight; that was understood. Lutcher was his man.

He came on the early morning train next day; and his coming was marked. Lutcher met him at the train. They came up the hill from the station together, and went to the Bazaar, and were alone there for a little while. Routt joined them presently. Routt would represent Lutcher in court, he said. But Kite laughed at that.

“It will never come to court, man,” he told Routt. “You know that.”

“I’m not so sure,” Jack objected.

“Then we’ll smash that young rip, flat as an egg,” said Kite harshly, with a gesture of his clenched fist. “But he’ll crawl, I say.”

Lutcher got up. “I’m willing to see that,” he declared amiably. “Come along and stage the show.”

So they went down to the fire-engine house together, and they found the council room where Wint held court crowded with Hardiston folk who wanted to see what was going to happen. Radabaugh was there; and he told them Wint was in his office, in the rear. Kite bade Routt and Lutcher sit down. “I want to see the Mayor,” he told Radabaugh, in a peremptory tone. “Take me in.”

Radabaugh shifted the bulge in his cheek, and told Kite to stay where he was. “I’ll see if he wants to see you,” he said, and went into Wint’s office. A moment later, he appeared at the door and beckoned to Kite, and there was an instant’s hush in the big room as every one watched Kite go in. Then they began to whisper and talk together; and instantly were still again, trying to hear what Wint and Kite were saying. Radabaugh had shut the door behind Kite and stood, with his back against it, indolently studying the crowd.

They tried to hear; but they did not hear anything except a murmur of voices now and then. They could only guess at what had been said from what happened when Kite had been with Wint five minutes, or perhaps ten. At the end of that period, the door opened so suddenly that Radabaugh was thrown off balance. He stumbled to one side, and Wint came out and sat down at his desk. Kite was on Wint’s heels; he whispered to Wint fiercely, but Wint, without heeding Kite, said to the clerk:

“Call Lutcher’s case.”

And at that Kite looked at Wint for a moment with a red and furious face, and then he turned and bolted for the stairs and was gone.

Wint’s countenance was steady, his lips were white. He heard Radabaugh’s story of the arrest of Lutcher; and when it was done, he asked Routt, who was appearing for Lutcher, whether the man denied anything. Routt hesitated, uncertain what Kite would wish him to do. He whispered with Lutcher. Then he stood up and said:

“He has decided to plead guilty, your Honor.”

Wint nodded, consulted in a low voice with Foster, and said: “Two hundred and costs.”

That was all. While Routt and Lutcher arranged the payment of the fine, the crowd began to disperse, a few lingering in the hope of some fresh sensation. And those who lingered and those who went their way were agreeing, one with another, that this matter was not ended.

“Kite’s got something up his sleeve,” Gates told Bob Dyer. “You wait and see.”

And Dyer nodded, and grinned, and said: “Yes, wait till old V. R. takes a hand.”

When every one was gone except Radabaugh, and Foster, and one or two others, Wint got up and went into his office and shut the door.

CHAPTER VII
A FEW WORDS TO THE WISE

THOSE minutes—five or ten—which Wint spent with V. R. Kite in his office behind the council chamber, before he sentenced Lutcher, left Wint depressed, shaken by foreboding. He was like one beset in the darkness by enemies he could not see. He felt the imminence of disaster without being able to avert it. The world was all wrong. Life had turned her thumbs down. There could be only destruction ahead.

He felt this, without being able to put a name to the peril. It was intangible; Kite had only hinted at it. But the little buzzard of a man had been in deadly earnest. Wint was sure of that. So.... There was nothing to do but wait for the blow to fall; and waiting is the hardest thing in the world to do.

Kite had come into Wint’s office that morning with a smile in his dry eyes. It was a smile that had triumph in it; and it held also a certain mean magnanimity to a fallen foe. It was as though Kite knew Wint was beaten, and expected him to surrender, and was willing to accept the surrender while despising Wint for yielding. Wint had expected the little man to come in anger, with protestations, and open threats, and a desperate sort of defiance. He was prepared for these things; he was not prepared for the confidence in Kite’s bearing. And his first glimpse of it disturbed him, made him uneasy.

Kite sat down without being invited; he put his hat on Wint’s desk; and he said in an amiably triumphant way:

“Well, young man?”

He seemed to expect Wint to speak; but Wint had nothing to say to Kite. He replied: “You wanted to speak to me?”

“Not exactly,” said Kite. “I wanted to hear what you have to say.”

“I?” said Wint. “I have nothing to say, except what I shall say to Lutcher in court presently.”

“Ah, yes, Lutcher,” Kite murmured. “Lutcher, to be sure.” And he nodded as though Lutcher were scarce worth considering, and kept silent, to force Wint into speech.

This trick of keeping silent, forcing the other man to make the advances, was a favorite with Amos Caretall. Amos had beaten V. R. Kite at the game more than once; but Wint had beaten Amos. He beat Kite, now. The older man was driven to speak first. He said, in a quick rush of words:

“You know you’re done for. Done. Skinned. Licked. Down. What have you got to say?”

Before a direct attack, Wint recovered himself. He laughed. “I should say you were wide of the mark, Kite,” he said cheerfully. “That is, if I know what you’re talking about. The mayoralty?”

“Of course. Your hide is on the fence.”

Wint shook his head. “I haven’t felt it being removed; and they say the process is painful. So I would have felt it go.”

“Don’t joke, young man. You know what I mean.”

“I know,” said Wint, “that I’m going to be elected Mayor. I know Routt is licked. If that’s what you mean.”

Kite laughed, a harsh, short, mirthless laugh. “What’s the use of bluffing? I tell you, I know.”

Wint said a little impatiently: “You’re talking in a mysterious way, Kite. I don’t see your object. If you’ve no plain words in your system, we’re wasting time.”

“I’ve a plain word for you. Hardiston will have a plain word for you.” There was a deadly menace in the little man’s tone, and Wint felt it, and was a little impressed. But he managed a smile.

“I’ve a plain word for Lutcher, too,” he said. “You’re keeping Lutcher waiting.”

“Oh, Lutcher,” said Kite again. “You’ll let him go.”

“Hardly,” said Wint; and Kite cried:

“I say you will. Don’t be a fool. I tell you I know.”

“You may know some things,” said Wint slowly. “But you are wrong about Lutcher. He gets the limit.”

Kite leaned forward; and his voice was almost kind. “Young man,” he said, “you’ve good nerve. You’re a good fighter. You’re a vote getter, too, in an awkward way. If I didn’t have the winning hand, I should be worried about what you can do. But I have; from the person who knows. You’re beaten. You might as well accept it.”

“If I’m beaten,” said Wint, “I’ll know it by midnight of the eighth. Not by your telling.”

Kite lost his temper for an instant; and he cried: “You miserable little dog! With not even the grace to know you’re whipped.”

Wint said coldly: “Just what are you talking about, Kite? You wanted to see me. Well, here I am. What have you got to say? I’ll give you about thirty seconds more.”

“Thirty seconds?” Kite echoed. “You’ll give me all the time I want. I tell you, you’re done.”

“What have you got to say?”

“Go out there, and.... No, first write out for me a notice of your withdrawal from the mayoralty fight. Then go out there and turn Lutcher loose. If you do these two things, they’ll save you, for a while. And nothing else in the world can save you.”

Wint—there could be no question of this—was frightened. He was afraid of the certainty in Kite’s manner, afraid of the mystery behind the other’s confidence. But it is braver to appear brave when you are frightened than when there is no fright in you; and Wint, frightened though he might be, was yet brave. He rose.

“Time’s up, Kite,” he said.

Kite exclaimed: “Don’t be a fool. I don’t want to ruin you. Save yourself, boy.”

Wint opened the door and stepped out into the other room.

That was Thursday morning, five days before election. A fair, fine day of the sort you will see in Hardiston in the fall. The sun was warm, the air was crisp and dry. It was a day when simply living was pleasant; when to draw breath was a joy. Ordinarily, Wint would have drunk this day to the full. But there was abroad in Hardiston a whispered word; men looked at him curiously as he passed them. No one seemed to know exactly what was coming; yet they looked upon Wint as one looks upon a man about to die. Kite had said nothing. From the fire-engine house he had gone direct to his Bazaar and stayed there. One or two of his lieutenants visited him there during the morning.

Kite said nothing; no one had any definite word. Yet Hardiston was whispering its guesses. Somehow the rumor had gone abroad that Wint was done, that Kite was about to strike. There was a lively and an eager anticipation. It is always easy to anticipate the misfortunes of others; and there will always be those to rejoice in the imminent downfall of one who has held himself high. Wint had enemies enough; even some of those whom he had counted his friends looked askance at him this day.

When he went to the Post Office for the noon mail, he encountered Hetty on the street. Because he was thoughtful and abstracted, he spoke to her curtly. Hetty did not speak to him at all. She turned away her head. But Wint, already passing by, did not mark this.

He met B. B. Beecham in the Post Office, and stopped in with B. B. at the Journal office afterward. B. B. talked pleasantly of a number of things, till Wint could be still no longer. He asked abruptly:

“B. B., have you heard anything?”

The editor looked surprised. “How do you mean?” he asked.

“What’s Kite up to?”

B. B. said: “I don’t know. Is he up to something?”

“He came to me before court this morning and demanded that I withdraw from this fight and let Lutcher go.”

“Demanded it?”

“Yes.”

“On what ground?”

“He made some covert threat. He was not specific.”

B. B. shook his head. “I hadn’t heard.”

“Oh, no one knows this,” Wint told him. “I refused, of course, and fined Lutcher. Now every one in town seems to know that something is going to drop on me.”

“What is there that he can bring against you?”

“Not a thing. Except the old stuff. What everybody knows.”

B. B. nodded. “I should not worry, if I were you, if there’s nothing.”

“There isn’t anything, I tell you,” Wint exclaimed impatiently.

“Then what can he do?”

Wint got up, a little weary. “All right,” he said. “I thought you might have heard.”

B. B. shook his head. “Not a thing.”

Wint went to Sam O’Brien’s restaurant for dinner. It was a little after his usual hour, and there were only two or three others on the stools before the high, scrubbed counter. O’Brien waited on Wint himself, and Wint ate in silence, under the other’s sympathetic eye.

When he paid for his dinner, O’Brien asked heartily:

“Well, Wint, m’ boy, how’s tricks?”

Wint looked up at the other and smiled wearily. “Rotten, Sam,” he said.

O’Brien protested. “Lord, now, I’d not say that. As fine a day as it is.”

“I wasn’t talking about the weather,” Wint told him. “It’s just.... I guess I’m in the dumps, Sam. I’ve got a hunch. I’ve got a hunch something’s going to drop on me like a ton of bricks.”

“A hunch like that is bum company,” O’Brien commented. “Where did you get it, Wint?”

Wint shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Lord, boy! You act like you’d lost your nerve, Wint.”

Wint said: “Maybe I have.” He was terribly depressed, almost ready to drop out and surrender.

“You’d nerve enough when you soaked Lutcher, this morning,” Sam reminded him. “I was proud of you, m’ son. You’ve give me many a laugh, Wint, but I was proud o’ your cool nerve this day.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about Lutcher.”

“I’d not be. Him nor his. The old buzzard of a Kite, neither.”

Wint said: “I don’t know. Kite’s got something up his sleeve.”

“That’s as much as to say that he’s tricky. It’s these magicians that has things up their sleeves. Full of tricks. You stick to the middle of the road, Wint, and never mind their tricks. They’ll trick their own selves.”

Wint shook his head. “That’s all right. But what can I do?”

“Do?” Sam echoed. “Why, fight ’em like that dog of yours fit Mrs. Moody’s Jim.” He nodded to Muldoon, curled as always near Wint’s feet; and Wint dropped his hand to Muldoon’s grizzled head. He was apt to turn to Muldoon in trouble. The dog was his shadow, always with him; but it was when he was troubled that Wint gave most heed to the terrier. At Wint’s caress, Muldoon rolled his eyes up without moving his head; and Sam said:

“Look at him grin; the nervy pup. He’s telling you to take a brace, m’ son. You can’t scare the dog.”

“I’m not scared.”

“You act damn like it,” said Sam frankly; and Wint protested:

“It’s only that I’m sick of it all. Sick of the fight, and the mud-throwing. And getting no thanks.”

“Hell’s bells,” Sam exclaimed. “You talk like a woman!”

Wint looked at him curiously. “What’s Kite up to, Sam? Have you heard?”

“Heard some rats say he would rip you up. And I told them you’d be doing some ripping, about that time. You’re not going to make me out a liar, Wint. Are you now?”

“Oh, I suppose I’ll fight.”

He left the restaurant and walked down to Hoover’s office and secluded himself in the back room; but his studies could not hold him. There was a curiously passive despair upon the boy. He could not shake it off. The whole thing seemed so little worth while. If there had been a chance to fight.... But the peril was intangible. He could not come to grips with it. He could not even be sure there was peril. He could not be sure of anything. Not even of himself. He asked himself despairingly: “Are you going to be a quitter, Wint?” And then thought hopelessly: “Oh, what’s the use?”

In mid-afternoon, Dick Hoover looked in and said Gergue wanted to see Wint. Wint was surprised. “What does he want?” he asked. “Gergue?” He got up and went to the door and saw Peter waiting; and he called: “Come along in here.”

Gergue came at the invitation. His hat was off; he was fumbling in the tangle of hair at the back of his neck. There was a curiously furtive uncertainty about the man. Wint thrust a chair toward Peter with his foot, and said: “Sit down.” When Gergue was seated, and slicing a fill for his pipe, Wint asked:

“What’s on your mind?”

Gergue looked at him sidewise, stuffing the crumbled tobacco into the black bowl. And he asked: “Wint, where do you figure I stand?”

Wint was surprised. “You mean—in this business between Routt and me?”

Gergue nodded. “Yeah.”

“Why, with Routt, I suppose,” Wint told him.

“Why d’you figure that?”

“You’re tied up with Amos.”

Gergue scratched a match. “Wint,” he said, “Amos is a fine man. He does things his own way; but in the end, he pretty near always turns out pretty near right.”

“Well, that’s his record,” Wint agreed. “He’s usually on the winning side.”

“Don’t let that get away from you,” said Gergue. “Don’t you forget that, Wint!”

Wint laughed harshly; and he said: “I’m not likely to. I counted on him in this, you know.”

Gergue leaned toward him. “Thing is, Wint, I’m wonderin’ what you’d think if I told you something?”

“That would depend on what you told me.”

“Something for your own good. Help you some.”

Wint said, amiably enough: “I want to win this fight, Peter. But—after Amos’s stand—I don’t particularly want any help from him. I’d mistrust it.”

“Say this come from me, personal.”

“You’re linked with Amos.”

Gergue nodded resignedly. “Have it so,” he agreed. “Anyway, I’m going to tell you.”

Wint said: “All right. What do you want to tell?”

Gergue hesitated for a while, choosing his words. At last he asked: “You wondering what Kite aims to do to trim you?”

“Yes.”

“Got any ideas?”

“No.”

Gergue looked at him shrewdly. “Know any way he could hit at you?”

“No. Not with the truth.”

Gergue hesitated; then he asked slowly: “Know any way he could hit at you with Hetty?”

“Hetty?” Wint echoed. “Hetty Morfee?”

“Yes. Her.”

Wint was stupefied with surprise. “Good Lord, no!”

“She got any reason to be against you?”

“No. I—She’s friendly, I think. Ought to be.”

Gergue puffed at his pipe. Then he got up. “Wint,” he said, “take it for what it’s worth. I hear he’s going to hit you with her.”

Wint exclaimed angrily: “You’re crazy, Peter. Or you’re.... Look here, did Amos send you?”

“No.”

“Is this some damned trick of his?”

“No.”

“Well, what in God’s name are you talking about?”

Gergue said thoughtfully: “I’ve said all I know. Think it over, Wint.”

He went out, with a surprising quickness, and was gone before Wint could frame other questions. The young man was left to consider the thing.

When Wint went home for supper, he was still mystified; but he was beginning to grow angry. Angry at the mere suggestion that lay behind Peter’s words. Angry at Gergue for saying them. And this anger was a more hopeful sign than his depression of the morning had been. He was fiercely resentful at Hardiston, at the whole world.

He met Joan, halfway home. That is to say, he overtook her on her way, and they walked home together. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not see there was something troubling the girl until she spoke of it. She said: “Wint, I met Agnes Caretall uptown.”

He nodded, scarce hearing; and Joan said: “She’s a good deal of a gossip, you know.”

There was something in her tone which caught his attention; and he looked at her sharply and asked: “What do you mean? What did she say?”

“She said Mr. Kite was going to ruin you,” Joan told him.

Wint laughed shortly. “Well, that’s no secret. At least it’s no secret that he wants to.”

“She said he was going to,” Joan insisted.

Wint asked: “How, since she knew so much, did she know how?”

Joan touched his arm. “Don’t be angry, Wint.”

But Wint was angry, even with Joan. He exclaimed harshly, after the fashion of angry men: “I’m not mad. What did she say?”

Joan told him. “She said they were going to link you up with Hetty.”

Wint exclaimed: “Lord! You too? I’m sick of that tale. Hetty!”

Joan begged: “But there isn’t anything, is there?”

Wint faced her hotly. “If you don’t know without being told.... Can’t I even count on you, Joan?”

“I only asked.”

They were at her gate, and Wint lifted his hat abruptly. “Think what you like,” he told her sharply. “Good afternoon!”

He left her there; left her, and Joan looked after him with troubled sympathy in her eyes, and something more. There was a mist of tears in them when she went on toward the house.

While they were at supper that night, the telephone rang, and Wint’s father answered. After a moment he came back into the dining room. “Wint,” he said, “it’s Kite.”

“Kite?” Wint demanded, pushing back his chair. “What does he want?”

“He wants to see you—and me. He says he’ll be out here at eight. He wants us to be here.”

Wint’s face turned black with anger; then he threw up one hand. “All right,” he cried, “tell Kite we’ll be here.”

CHAPTER VIII
POOR HETTY AGAIN

WHEN Chase came back from the table after telling Kite that they would expect him at the appointed time, Wint asked:

“Did he say what he wanted?”

Mrs. Chase exclaimed: “I don’t think you ought to have let him come, Winthrop. I don’t want that man in my house. He—”

Chase answered Wint. “No. Just said he wanted to see us.” He was troubled; and he showed it. “What do you think he wants, Wint? Something about Lutcher?”

Wint shook his head. “I think he’s going to hit at me. Somehow. There’s been a rumor around town all day. They say he has something.”

Chase asked quickly: “Has he? Has he got anything on you, Wint?”

“Not that I know of. There’s nothing he could get. Nothing to get.” He looked at his father in a quick, appealing way. “Dad, I wish you’d just remember that, whatever happens. You know the worst there is to know about me. Anything else is just flat lie.”

His father nodded abstractedly. “Of course. But Kite is confoundedly clever. Now I wonder what he’s—”

“I always told you, Wint, that you hadn’t any business in politics,” Mrs. Chase exclaimed. “I don’t think it’s decent, the way men talk about each other. Why, Mrs. Hullis told me that Jack Routt is going around saying the most terrible things about you. That you—”

“I know, mother. That’s Jack’s idea of a campaign. We’ll show him his mistake next Tuesday.”

“But he says that you—”

“Now, mother,” her husband interrupted, “never mind. Wint, did you hear anything definite about Kite? What he’s planning....”

Wint hesitated; he had heard something definite. Definite but incredible. That which he had heard could not possibly be true; he could not believe it. To tell his father would only disturb the older man; he could not be sure how Chase would react to the report. He held his tongue. “No, nothing definite,” he said.

“Is he’s coming to see you about it, he must have something.”

Wint got up from the table. “Well,” he said abruptly, “we’ll soon know. It’s after seven, now.”

They went into the sitting room to wait; and the waiting was hard. Wint tried to read the daily; his father took a book from the shelves. But Wint’s eyes strayed from the printed columns. He was in a curiously numb state of mind. This was part hopelessness, part the sheer suspense of waiting. Wint was one of those men who in their moments of greatest passion and excitement become outwardly serene and calm. Their own emotions put a physical inhibition on them so that they are still, and do not speak. Once or twice Chase glanced toward his son and saw Wint motionless, apparently absorbed, apparently quite at ease. But actually Wint was stirring to the throbbing of his heart, held still by the very fury of his own dread and anger and suspense.

At fifteen minutes before eight, some one knocked on the front door. Wint said: “There he is,” and got up and went to the door; but when he opened it, Jack Routt stood there. Wint was surprised; he said slowly:

“Oh, you, Jack?”

Routt nodded, a little ill at ease. “Is Kite here?” he asked.

“No. He’s coming.”

Routt smiled ingratiatingly. “I don’t know what he wants. He told me to meet him here about eight, to have a talk with you.”

“Told you to?”

“Yes. I asked him what he meant; and he said to wait. I supposed he had made arrangements with you.”

Wint said dully: “Yes, he has. He’s coming.” And after a moment, he added: “You might as well come in.”

Routt grinned. “You’re damned cordial,” he remarked.

“Oh, that’s all right,” Wint assured him abstractedly. He was thinking so swiftly that he seemed stupefied. His father came into the hall, and Wint said: “Here’s Jack Routt. Kite told him to come.”

Chase looked at Routt uncertainly; and Routt said: “I’ll get out if you say so.”

Wint shook his head. “No. Sit down. Go on in.”

They went into the sitting room; but before they could sit down, some one else knocked. This time it was B. B. Beecham. He stood in the door when Wint opened it, and smiled, and said:

“I’m not sure I understand, Wint. V. R. Kite telephoned me there was to be some sort of a conference here, about a matter for the good of Hardiston. I thought it curious that the word should come from him.”

Wint laughed harshly. “All right, come in,” he said. “I don’t know any more about it than you do. I suppose Kite thought it would be cheaper to use our house than to hire a hall.”

B. B. said simply: “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

“Come in,” Wint repeated. “I’m up in the air, that’s all. Routt’s here already. Kite will be along, I suppose.”

“Routt?” B. B. echoed, in surprise.

“Yes; in there.”

Wint and B. B. went into the sitting room where Chase and Routt were talking awkwardly. After the first greetings, no one could think of anything more to say. B. B. broke the silence. “I saw a robin to-day,” he said. “They stay here, sometimes, right through the winter.”

Birds and flowers were B. B.’s hobbies; he knew them all. And other people recognized this interest in him, and shared it. They liked his enthusiasm. Chase said: “Is that so? I had no idea they stayed. It doesn’t seem to me I ever saw one in winter.”

“They live in the sheltered places,” said B. B. “You’ll find them in the woods, and the brushy hollows, and around houses where there is a good deal of shrubbery. Especially if the people put out a lump of suet for them to feed on.”

“Why, everybody ought to do that,” Chase declared, with a quick interest. “You ought to tell them to, in the Journal, B. B.”

B. B. smiled and said he was telling people just this, every week. He spoke of other birds. Chase seemed interested. Routt and Wint said nothing. Routt seemed uncomfortable; and that was a strange thing to see in this assured young man. Wint’s eyes were lowered; he was thinking. Lost in a maze of conjectures. Kite would be coming, any minute now.

B. B. was still talking about birds when Kite came. Wint heard footsteps on the walk in front of the house, heard them come up the steps. There were several men. Not Kite alone. The sounds told him that. He waited, sitting still, till they knocked on the front door. Then he went out into the hall and opened the door and saw Kite standing there, his dry little face triumphant, malignantly rejoicing.

Wint looked at Kite steadily for a moment; and then he lifted his eyes and saw, behind Kite, Amos Caretall. And at one side, Ed Skinner of the Sun. He had thought there were others. But he saw no one else.

Kite stepped inside the door. Skinner and Amos stood still till Wint asked: “Well—what is it?”

Kite said then: “Come in, Amos. You too, Ed.”

Amos, his big head on one side, his eyes squinting in a friendly way, drawled a question: “How about it, Wint? Kite says he’s got something to talk over. Asked me to come along. But I don’t allow he’s got any right to ask me into your house.”

“Come in, Amos. Both of you,” Wint said; and Kite repeated:

“Yes, come in. I know what I’m talking about. This young man isn’t likely to object.”

“All right, Wint?” Amos asked again; and Wint nodded, and Amos lumbered into the hall. Then Chase came to the door that led from the sitting room into the hall; and at sight of Amos, he stopped very still, with a white face. Wint crossed to his father’s side and told him quietly:

“It’s all right. Kite brought him. It’s all right, dad.”

Chase exclaimed: “How do I know it’s all right? I don’t understand all this mystery. Kite, by what right do you use my house for a meeting place? What is all this, anyway? What is the idea, Kite?”

Kite smiled his dry and mirthless smile; and he said mockingly: “Do not fret yourself, Chase. Our concern is with this young man, with Wint. You shall hear.” He was stripping off his overcoat in a business-like way. This was Kite’s big hour, and he meant to make the most of it. He dropped the coat on the seat in the hall; and Amos and Ed Skinner imitated him; and Kite said briskly, rubbing his hands:

“Now, then, where can we have our little talk?”

Chase looked at Wint uncertainly; and Wint, still held by that curious inhibition which made his voice level and low, said quietly:

“The sitting room. Come in, gentlemen.”

There were not chairs enough for them in the sitting room. Wint went into the dining room for another, and found his mother there, putting away the dishes. She asked in a whisper:

“Who is it, Wint? Mr. Kite?”

Wint nodded. “Yes, mother. Several men. You’d better go upstairs the back way.”

He was so steady that she was reassured; he did not seem excited or disturbed. Yet was there something about him that made her think of a hurt and weary little boy; and she laughed softly, and put her arm around him and made him kiss her. He did so, patting her head; and then he said:

“There, mother. Run along.”

She went out toward the kitchen, and Wint took the chair he had come for into the other room. He found the others all sitting down. Amos had slumped into the biggest and the easiest chair in the room. B. B. sat straight in the straightest chair, his round, firm hands clasped on his knees. B. B.’s legs were short and chubby; and his lap was barely big enough to hold his clasped hands. Ed Skinner and Chase were on the couch at one side of the room. Routt sat on the piano stool, twirling slowly back and forth through a six-inch arc. Kite, in the manner of a presiding officer, had pulled his chair to the table in the middle of the room and sat there very stiffly, his head held high in that ridiculous likeness to a turkey.

Wint placed his chair just inside the door, and sat down. He and Kite were the only composed persons in the room. B. B. looked acutely embarrassed and uncomfortable; Chase was angry; Skinner was nervous; Routt’s ease was palpably assumed. And Amos was fumbling uncertainly with his black old pipe. He asked, when Wint came in:

“Your mother mind smoke in her sitting room?”

Wint said: “No; go ahead.” He filled his own pipe, and Amos sliced a fill from his plug and deliberately prepared his smoke and lighted it. Kite seemed in no hurry to begin. He had taken a letter or two and a slip of paper from his pockets and was studying them in silence. Wint thought he recognized that slip of paper. A check.... It seemed to him that a cold hand clutched his throat. He felt a sick sense of the hopelessness of it all; a sick despair. Not so much on his own account.

Kite at last looked around the room, and said importantly:

“Well, gentlemen!”

Wint’s father could be still no longer. He cried: “See here, Kite, what’s all this tomfoolery? What’s this nonsense? It’s an outrage. Be quick, or be gone. I’ve no time to waste.”

Kite looked at Chase; and then he looked at Wint and asked maliciously: “Do you bid me be gone, too, young man?”

Wint shook his head. “Say what you have to say,” he suggested; and there was a great weariness in his voice.

Kite nodded. “I mean to.” And to Chase: “You see, the young man understands it is in his interest to handle this thing among ourselves.”

“To handle what thing?” Chase demanded. Kite cleared his throat.

“A matter,” he said importantly, “that concerns first of all the good name of Hardiston. A matter that concerns, very intimately, the good name of your son. A matter that will be decisive in the mayoralty campaign now pending. A matter—” His poise suddenly gave way before the fierce rush of his exultation; and he cried: “A matter that will stop this damned Sunday-school nonsense of denying grown men the right to do as they please. That’s what it is, by God! A matter that will show up this young hypocrite in his true light. If I were not merciful, I would have spread it before the town long ago.”

He stopped abruptly, looking from one to the other as though challenging them to deny that he was merciful. No one denied it. B. B. cleared his throat; and the sound was startling in the silence that had followed Kite’s words. Amos puffed slowly at his pipe and squinted across the room at Wint. Wint said nothing. He had scarce heard what Kite said; he was curiously abstracted, as though all this did not concern him. He was like a spectator, looking on.

Chase looked at his son; and there was fear in the man’s eyes. For Kite was so terribly confident. Chase looked at his son, expecting Wint to make denial, to defend himself. But Wint said nothing; Wint did not lift his eyes from the floor. He only puffed slowly and indolently at his pipe, moving not at all.

Kite cleared his throat again; and his dry little eyes were gleaming.

“I have given this matter some thought,” he said. “Some thought, since the facts came into my hands. And I must confess, at first they seemed incredible. I made investigations, I was forced to believe—the whole, black story.” He paused again. He wanted some one to question him, but no one spoke. He went on:

“My first impulse was to cry the truth to the whole town. But I held my hand. I went to the city for the final proof. Got it. And when I came back, it was to find that this young man had caused the arrest of one of my friends, Lutcher, on a ridiculous liquor charge. Simply because Radabaugh discovered Lutcher and three others engaged in a game of cards, drinking as they had a right to do.

“I was indignant; but even then I was merciful. I wanted to give this young man a chance; and I went to him and offered him the chance to save himself.”

He paused, moved one of his hands as though to brush the possibility aside. “But it is unnecessary for me to tell you that his chief trait is a blind and unreasoning stubbornness. It betrayed him, on this occasion. He rejected my offer; refused to take the easy way out.

“That was this morning. I considered. My chief concern was for the good name of Hardiston; that such a man should not be chosen Mayor. This seemed to me the simplest and least painful way to arrange his withdrawal. So I asked you to come here.”

Amos drawled from the depths of his chair: “Did you fetch us here to talk us to death, Kite?”

Kite smiled bitterly. “No, Amos. Be patient.”

Chase was watching Wint, still with that desperate hope in his eyes. They were all watching Wint; but Wint was looking at the floor, following with his eyes the pattern in the rug. This was the end. He had just about decided that. There was in him no more will to fight. He had been a good Mayor. If they didn’t want to re-elect him—that was their affair. He would do no more. He had a sick sense of betrayal. His lips twisted in a bitter little smile.

Kite addressed him directly. “So, young man, we want your withdrawal from the mayoralty race. And this whole matter will end right here.”

Wint still did not lift his head. His father thought the boy was shamed; and his heart was torn. Kite asked sharply: “Come! What do you say?”

Wint looked at Kite, then, for the first time; looked at him with a slow, steady, incurious gaze that made Kite twist in his chair. And he repeated, in a low voice:

“You want me to withdraw?”

“Exactly. Now.”

Wint shook his head gently. “No,” he said, “I won’t withdraw.”

Kite threw up one clenched fist in a furious gesture. “By God, if you don’t you’ll be run out of town!”

“I’m in the fight,” said Wint steadily. He spoke so low they could scarce hear him. “I’m in the fight. I’ll stay.”

“Then I’ll smash you, flat as a pancake. You young fool.”

“Kite,” Wint murmured gently. “I don’t give a damn what you do. I’m in to stay.”

Kite banged his fist on the table. “Then the whole story comes out.”

“Let it come,” said Wint.

“You mean you want me to tell these men here? The black shame?”

“Yes,” Wint assented. “Tell them anything you please.” He lowered his eyes again, resumed his study of the carpet, puffed at his pipe. Kite stared at the boy’s bent head as though he could not believe his eyes, or his ears. He had counted so surely on Wint’s surrender; he had been so sure that Wint would yield.

But Wint.... The fool sat there, passively defying him; daring him. Kite’s face twisted with a sudden furious grimace. He jerked back his head. So be it. He flung defiant eyes around the room; he said abruptly, curtly:

“Very well. Here it is. This young rip is the father of Hetty Morfee’s child.”

There was a moment’s terrible silence in the room. Then Jack Routt cried: “Good Lord, Kite, that can’t be! Wint’s a decent chap.”

Kite snapped at him: “Can’t be? It is. Here’s the very check he gave her, to go away.” He shook the slip of paper in the air. “What do you say to that?”

“I don’t believe it,” Routt insisted. “I’ve known Wint too long.” He got up and strode across and gripped Wint’s shoulder. “Tell him it’s a damned lie, Wint,” he begged.

Wint looked up at Routt with slow, steady eyes; and Routt, after a moment, could not meet them. He turned back to Kite, protesting Wint’s innocence. Their wrangling voices jangled in the silence. B. B. pretended not to hear, stared straight ahead of him. Ed Skinner twisted uneasily where he sat. Amos, deep in his chair, was watching Wint; and Wint’s father was watching Wint, too. Watching his son with a desperate, beseeching look in his eyes.

Wint did not see; he was looking at the floor; and he was thinking of Hetty, thinking what this would mean to her. That which had come to her was already guessed at, in Hardiston; now every one would know beyond need of guessing. She would be outcast; no saving her; but one black road ahead. For the thing would be believed. He knew that. People had been ready to believe before this; ready to accept the mere rumor. His own father, his own mother.... This had been their first thought when he wished to help Hetty. Joan.... She had sought to question him. Yes, they would believe. Every one.

He was not angry at them for their credulity; he pitied them. That they should be so malignant, and so blind. He was quite calm, not at all sorry for himself. Sorry for them. And most of all, he was sorry for Hetty. He had always liked Hetty; a good girl, give her a chance. The stuff of good womanhood in her. Blasted now.... He wished he might find a way to help her. Some way....

A word from Kite to Routt cut through his thoughts. “If you won’t believe me,” Kite exclaimed, “will you believe her?”

“Hetty never said this,” Routt protested; and Kite got up and went swiftly out into the hall, saying over his shoulder:

“Just a minute, then.”

Every one looked toward the door, listening. They heard Kite open the front door and call:

“Lutcher.”

A man answered, outside. Kite asked: “Is she there?” The man said:

“Yes.”

“Send her in,” Kite directed. And they heard the sound of moving feet.

So she had been waiting there, all this time, with Lutcher. Wint thought she must have been miserably unhappy as she waited. When he heard her step in the hall, he looked up and saw her. Her eyes met his for an instant; and Wint was curiously stirred by the pitiful appeal in them. As though she begged him to forgive.... Then her eyes left his. She came in and stood, just inside the door. Kite said:

“Sit down.” He gave her his own chair, by the table. The girl moved apathetically across the room and took the chair. Kite looked down at her.

“Now, Hetty,” he said, in the tone of one who questions a child. “I have been telling them what you told me. They think I am lying. Am I lying?”

She shook her head slowly; and Kite looked from man to man triumphantly. Routt cried:

“Hetty, you don’t understand. He said Wint was your—your baby’s father? That’s not true. It can’t be.”

She looked at Routt; and there was a somber light in her eyes. She said, in a low, steady voice:

“Yes. Sure it’s true.”

Her eyes remained on Routt. He stepped back as though she had struck him. Wint raised his head and looked around the room; saw Amos squinting at his pipe; saw B. B. ill at ease, and Skinner squirming; saw his father white and shaken in his seat. Then Routt turned to him, exclaiming:

“Wint, for God’s sake.... You heard what she said.”

Wint hardly knew himself; he was, suddenly and surprisingly, very calm, and happy with an anguished happiness of renunciation. The old stubborn, prideful Wint would have denied, have fought, have sworn. But Wint looked at Hetty; he was terribly sorry for her. He surrendered himself to a great and splendid magnanimity.

“Yes,” he told Routt. “I heard.”

“But it’s a lie!”

Wint got up slowly, looked around the room, studied them all; and he smiled. “Hetty would not lie about me,” he said. “She and I have always been friends. We are going to be married, right away.”

He held them a moment more with his steady gaze; they were frozen, every man. And then he looked at Hetty, and saw her eyes widen pitifully, and saw her face twist with anguish. And he smiled reassuringly, and he said: “It’s all right, Hetty. Truly. Don’t be afraid.”

While they were still motionless, he turned and went quietly into the hall. Muldoon had been dozing under his chair; the dog scrambled up now and followed him. Wint got his hat and went out of the house, Muldoon upon his heels.

In the room he had left, every man was very still. Only poor Hetty crumpled slowly in her chair; and she dropped her head in her arms upon the table and began to cry, with great, gasping sobs. And she whispered to herself, so harshly that they all could hear:

“My God! My God! Oh, my God!”

END OF BOOK V