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2
ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 7
10. A foreign key value must exist in the table where it is a primary key.
11. A composite key usually comprises fields that are foreign keys in other tables.
ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 10

3
12. Database design is usually a very simple task since it is always obvious what tables should be created
and how they are related.
13. There are two main tasks involved with the design of a database: developing an entity-relationship (ER)
model and regulating the database tables.
14. In an ER diagram a 1:M relationshipshows a simple straight line between two entities.
ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 11-12
15. A student can take many different classes in the same term, and each class can be composed of many
different students; this is an example of a many-to-many relationship.
16. During the design of the actual database tables, the N:M relationship is broken down into a series of two
or more 1:M relationships through the use of a linking table in the process of normalization.
17. The purpose of normalization is to store data efficiently in the least possible amount of space.
18. Data is considered to be normalized as long as a primary key has been designated.
19. First normal form means that the data has been organized in such a manner that it has a primary key and
no repeating groups.
20. A shorthand method of identifying a table and its contents is to give the name of the table followed by a
list of the column names and data types, separated by commas, within a set of square brackets.
21. A transitive dependencymeans that the fields within the table are dependent only on part of the primary
key.
22. The final step in the normalization process is to convert the tables to fourth normal form (4NF).

4
23. During the normalization process, it is common to decrease the number of tables in the database design.
ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 16-17
24. A terminalis a program that requests and uses server resources.
25. MS Access is an example of a client/server database.
26. It is possible to use a personal database in a multiuser environment.
27. A personal database should only be used for non-mission-critical applications.
28. Personal databases are preferred for database applications that retrieve and manipulate small amounts
of data from databases containing large numbers of records.
29. Client/server databases create a lot of network traffic because the entire database is sent between the
client and server for every request.
30. It is not necessary to specify a data type for all database columns - only the ones that you want the
database to perform error checking on.
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. In a data file, fields are also called .
a. columns c. rows
b. records d. entities
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 2
2. Who typically installs and maintains a database?
a. the project leader c. a dba
b. a manager d. any programmer
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 4

5
3. Most modern databases are databases.
a. hierarchical c. object-oriented
b. relational d. structured
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 5
4. What is the preferred data type for primary key fields?
a. text c. numeric
b. date d. character
5. Why is an address a bad choice for a primary key?
a. it can change c. it contains letters and numbers
b. it is too long d. not everyone has an address
6. If no candidate keys exist in a table, which of the following is used?
a. surrogate key c. primary key
b. dummy key d. index key
7. Which data type do surrogate keys have?
a. numeric c. character
b. boolean d. text
8. What type of key may be helpful in eliminating redundant data from a table?
a. link c. duplicate
b. foreign d. composite
9. If your database table has a lot of redundant data, how can you fix it?
a. delete the redundant data
b. eliminate the table
c. split the table into two and use a foreign key
d. split the table into two and use a composite key
10. When two fields are combined to form a unique value, this is known as a key.
a. double c. surrogate
b. composite d. foreign

6
11. Which of the following is used to represent entities in ER models?
a. squares c. circles
b. lines d. diamonds
12. Which relationship type cannot be physically represented in the database and requires the use of a link
table?
a. one-to-one c. one-to-many
b. many-to-one d. many-to-many
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 12
13. Which normal form is the highest level usually achieved by database designers?
a. unnormalized c. second normal form
b. first normal form d. third normal form
14. Which of the following characterizes unnormalized data?
a. does not have a foreign key identified
b. does not have a primary key identified and/or contains repeating groups
c. has transitive dependencies
d. has partial dependencies
15. A dependency means that a field is dependent on another field within the table that is no
th
t e
primary key field.
a. indirect c. transitive
b. direct d. partial
16. In a relational database which of the following allows a user to interact with the database?
a. database applications c. database server process
b. dba d. database server
17. A does not perform any processing - it sends keyboard input and displays output from a central
computer.
a. workstation c. terminal
b. server d. laptop

7
18. What is the definition of a server?
a. an expensive computer
b. a computer with more than one processor
c. a computer that shares resources with other computers
d. a computer that is used by many people
19. How many users typically use a personal database?
a. 1 c. 20
b. 5 d. 4000
20. When a personal database is shared by more than one user, where do the database files typically reside?
a. on one user’s workstation c. on a file server
b. on the Internet d. on a cd
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 18-19
21. What is a disadvantage of using a personal database over a network?
a. slow c. hard to save data
b. creates a lot of network traffic d. not secure
22. What is meant by the term “transaction processing”?
a. processing over a network
b. processing by a bank or other financial institution
c. grouping database changes into one unit of work that must succeed or fail together
d. pre-processing data with a separate program before it is saved in the database
23. What is the term for reversing changes to a database?
a. undo c. delete
b. roll back d. backup
24. The name of the utility which handles all client and server communication in Oracle is .
a. Oracle Server c. Oracle Socket
b. Oracle Net d. Oracle Protocol
25. Which of the following is the utility used for creating and testing queries in Oracle 10g?
a. Forms Builder c. SQL*Plus
b. Reports Builder d. EnterpriseManager

8
26. A field is also called a(n) .
a. row c. table
b. column d. item
27. A(n) stores all organizational data in a central location.
a. database administrator c. database
b. record d. index
28. In database terminology, a(n) is an object about which you want to store data.
a. component c. file
b. record d. entity
29. A key is a field in a relational database table whose value must be unique for each row.
a. foreign c. secondary
b. primary d. link
30. A key is any column that could be used as the primary key.
a. surrogate c. possible
b. foreign d. candidate
31. To connect information about different entities, you must create , which are links that show how
different records are related.
a. relationships c. rows
b. records d. foreign keys
32. A key is a column that you create to be the record’s primary key identifier.
a. foreign c. surrogate
b. secondary d. composite
33. relationships are rare in a relational database; usually you work with relationships.
a. One-to-many, one-to-one c. One-to-one, many-to-one
b. One-to-one, one-to-many d. Many-to-one, many-to-many

9
34. A table is in 2NF if it fulfills these two conditions: it is in 1NF, and it has dependencies.
a. no partial c. all partial
b. no total d. all total
35. A is a computer that shares its resources with other computers.
a. client c. parallel
b. server d. user
36. The Microsoft Access personal database stores all data for a database in a single file with a(n)
extension.
a. .doc c. .mdb
b. .xls d. .odb
37. As a general rule, database developers should use a personal database only for applications.
a. business c. mission-critical
b. experimental d. non-mission-critical
38. A key is a unique key that you create by combining two or more columns.
a. composite c. foreign
b. primary d. secondary
39. data takes up extra storage space.
a. Inconsistent c. Overused
b. Redundant d. Foreign
40. In Oracle, you can use a(n) to automatically generate surrogate keys.
a. algorithm c. link
b. generating key d. sequence
COMPLETION
1. In a data file describing a student, each characteristic of the student such as first name, last name,
telephone number is known as a(n) .
ANS: field
PTS: 1 REF: 2

10
2. In a data file, a(n) is a collection of related fields that contain related
information.
ANS: record
PTS: 1 REF: 2
3. A(n) stores all organizational data in a central location.
ANS: database
PTS: 1 REF: 4
4. In a database, the performs all routine data handling operations.
ANS:
DBMS
database management system
PTS: 1 REF: 4
5. A(n) database stores data in tabular format.
ANS: relational
PTS: 1 REF: 5
6. In a database, a(n) is an object about which you want to store data.
ANS: entity
PTS: 1 REF: 5
7. In a relational database, relationships among entities are established through
fields.
ANS: key
PTS: 1 REF: 5
8. It is best to use values for primary keys rather than text values.
ANS:
number
numeric
PTS: 1 REF: 6

11
9. A(n) key has no real relationship to the row to which it is assigned, other than
to identify the row uniquely.
ANS: surrogate
PTS: 1 REF: 7
10. A(n) is a sequential list of numbers that the database automatically generates
and that guarantee that each primary key value will be unique.
ANS: sequence
PTS: 1 REF: 7
11. A(n) key is a column in a table that is a primary key in another table.
ANS: foreign
PTS: 1 REF: 8
12. In a relational database, relationships are created using keys.
ANS: foreign
PTS: 1 REF: 8
13. A(n) model is designed to help you identify which entities need to be included
in the database.
ANS:
ER
Entity-Relationship
PTS: 1 REF: 11
14. When depicting a one-to-many relationship,the ER model uses a straight line with a(n)
on the ‘many’ portion of the relationship.
ANS: crow’s foot
PTS: 1 REF: 12
15. The shorthand for a many-to-many relationship is .
ANS: N:M
PTS: 1 REF: 12

12
16. To convert a table to 1NF, _ groups must be removed.
ANS: repeating
PTS: 1 REF: 14
17. A table that is in 1NF and does not have a(n) key must be in 2NF.
ANS: composite
PTS: 1 REF: 15-16
18. The normal procedure to follow after converting all tables in the database to 3NF is to double-check
each table and make certain that all tables representing entities that have a relationship are linked
through the use of keys.
ANS: foreign
PTS: 1 REF: 16
19. A(n) key is a unique key that you create by combining two or more columns.
ANS: composite
PTS: 1 REF: 10
20. A(n) is a program that listens for requests for resources from clients and
responds to those requests.
ANS: server process
PTS: 1 REF: 17
21. When theDBMS and the database applications run on the same workstation and appear to the user as a
single integrated application this is known as a
(n) database.
ANS: personal
PTS: 1 REF: 18
22. is the dominant personal database on the market today.
ANS:
Microsoft Access
MS Access
Access
PTS: 1 REF: 18

13
23. In a(n) database, the DBMS server process runs on one workstation, and the
database applications run on separate client workstations across the network.
ANS: client/server
PTS: 1 REF: 20
24. Oracle 10g is a(n) database.
ANS:
client/server
relational
PTS: 1 REF: 21
25. The Oracle 10g is used for developing database applications.
ANS: Developer Suite
PTS: 1 REF: 22
ESSAY
1. What is normalization? Why is it performed?
ANS:
Normalization is a step-by-step process used by database designers to determine which data elements
should be stored in which tables. The purpose of normalization is to eliminate data redundancy.
Beginning with unnormalized data, the designer can complete a series of steps to convert the data to a
normalized form.Although there are several normalized forms, most designers are concerned only with
first, second, and third normal forms.
PTS: 1 REF: 12-13
2. As a general rule, database developers should use a personal database only for applications that are not
mission critical. What are some of the reasons for this?
ANS:
In a personal database system, when a client workstation requests a data file, data within the file is
locked and unavailable to other users. If a client workstation fails because of a software malfunction or
power failure during a database operation, the data file that is locked remains unavailable to other users,
and sometimes becomes damaged. The central database file might be repairable, but all users must quit
using the database during the repair process, which could take several hours. Updates, deletions, and
insertions taking place at the time of the failure often cannot be reconstructed.
PTS: 1 REF: 19

14
3. When creating a database and inserting data values, you must specify the data type for each column.
What are some data types that are commonly found in databases?
ANS:
Different database management systems have specific names for their data types, but in general, data
types include numbers, text strings, date/time values, time interval values, or binary data such as images
or sounds. In general, you should use only a number data type for columns that store numerical values
that are involved in calculations.
PTS: 1 REF: 23
4. What is a partial dependency and how do you remove it?
ANS:
The basic procedure for identifying a partial dependency is to look at each field that is not part of the
composite primary key and make certain you are required to have
both parts of the composite field to
determine the value of the data element and not just one part of the composite field.
To remove partial dependencies from a table, list each part of the composite key, as well as the entire
composite key, as separate entries. Then examine the remaining fields, and determine which attribute, or
characteristic, is determined by each portion of the composite primary key.
PTS: 1 REF: 14
5. When is a table considered to be in 3NF?
ANS:
A table is considered to be in 3NF if it is in 2NF and does not have any transitive dependencies. A
transitive dependency means that a field is dependent on another field within the table that i
n
sot the
primary key field.
PTS: 1 REF: 16

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let this town soak itself illegally.”
For the first time, Kite began to look worried. “Amos wouldn’t do that.
He told me—”
“Told you? He told me many things, too. But none of them were true.”
Kite, suddenly, burst into flame like an oily rag. He threw up a clenched
fist. “By God, Chase, he don’t dare try it!”
“Dare? He’ll dare anything.”
Kite stammered with the heat of his own anger. “He don’t dare!” he
insisted. “Why, Chase—if he tries that—I’ll—I’ll—” With no sense that his
words had been said before, he exclaimed: “I won’t live in the town, Chase.
I’ll get out! I’ll shoot him! Or myself.”
Chase leaned forward. “I tell you, he’s aiming to do it,” he said steadily.
“So sit down.”
Kite gripped his arm. “Chase, you got to drill some sense into that son of
yours. You got to tell him—”
“He’s not my son now; he’s Amos’s. Living with Amos, doing what
Amos says. Don’t forget that.”
There was a bitterness in Chase’s voice which silenced Kite for a
moment. Then the little man touched Chase on the arm. “See here,” he said
softly, “you don’t like Amos any better’n I do.”
Chase smiled mirthlessly. “I’m out for his hide,” he declared.
Kite nodded, chuckling grimly. “He thinks he’s a big man,” he said. “He
thinks he can run over us, play with us, use us and then give us the brad.
But I tell you right now, Chase....” He lifted his open hand as one who takes
an oath. “I tell you right now, Chase, if he tries that little trick—you and
me’ll get together, and we’ll hang his old hide in the sun to dry.”
“He’ll try it,” said Chase steadily.
Kite stuck out his hand. “Then we’ll skin him.”
“That’s a bargain,” Chase declared, and gripped the other’s dry and
skinny fingers.
It was in this fashion that these two enemies joined hands against the
common foe.

T
CHAPTER VI
THE WHISTLE BLOWS
HE festivities in Wint’s honor on the night before his inaugural were a
great success, from every point of view.
There was nothing formal about them. They occurred in an upper
room in one of the newer business blocks on Main Street. Only half a dozen
young fellows attended them; but these were all chosen spirits, and
congenial.
At half past nine, they were all pleasantly illuminated by their libations
and the general good cheer of the occasion. At eleven, two of them were
asleep quite peacefully in each other’s arms upon a couch at one side of the
room. These two snored as they slept. The others were playing cards, and
the refreshments which had been provided were in easy reach. Wint and
Jack Routt were among those playing cards. Routt never passed a certain
stage of intoxication, no matter how much he drank. He reached this stage
with the first swallow.
With Wint, it was otherwise. In such matters, he progressed steadily
toward a dismal end. As eleven o’clock struck, he had just passed the
quarrelsome stage and was beginning to pity himself. He opened a hand
with three queens, but when Routt raised his bet, Wint threw down his cards
and put his head on his arms and wept because he could not win. Then he
took another drink.
After a little, he cried himself to sleep.
Toward one o’clock, Routt and Hoover took Wint home to Amos
Caretall’s. The streets, at that hour of the night, were utterly deserted. There
was a moon, and the street lamps were unlighted as an economical
consequence of this heavenly illumination. Wint was between Routt and
Hoover. At times he took a sodden step or two; at other times he dragged to
his knees upon the ground, wagging his head from side to side and singing
huskily.
Hoover was almost as badly off as Wint; and now and then he joined in
this song. Jack Routt was cold sober, and coldly exultant. His eyes shone in
the moonlight; and he handled Wint with rough tenderness.

When they were about half a block from the Caretall home, Wint became
very sick; and Hoover sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and giggled at
him while Routt, leaning against a tree above the sprawling body of his
friend, waited until the paroxysms were past and then caught Wint’s
shoulders again and dragged him to his feet.
Wint had thrown off some of the poison; he was able now to help
himself a little more than before; and they got him to their destination.
There Routt propped him against a tree before the house and shook him and
tried to impress upon him the necessity of silence.
“Don’t you sing, now, Wint,” he warned. “Brace up. Have some sense.
Keep quiet.”
Wint pettishly protested that he liked to sing, and that he was a good
singer; and he tried to prove it on the spot, but Routt gagged him with the
flat of his hand until Wint surrendered.
“Cut it out, Wint,” he insisted. “You’ve got to be quiet while we get you
to bed.”
Then Routt felt a hand on his shoulder, and some one drawled: “You’ve
done your share, Routt. Go along. I’ll tuck him in.”
He turned and saw Amos Caretall. Amos was in a bath robe of rough
toweling over his nightshirt; and his feet were in carpet slippers. Routt was
tongue-tied for a moment; then he found his voice. “I’m mighty sorry about
this, sir,” he said. “I tried to keep him from drinking too much. But you
can’t stop him. He’s such a darned fool.”
Amos grinned at him in a way that somehow frightened Routt. “He sure
is the darndest fool I ever see,” he agreed. “But don’t you mind, Jack. Boys
will be boys. You and—who is it?—oh, Hoover. You and Hoover run along
home. I’ll tend to him.”
“Don’t you want me to help get him in the house?”
“I’ll get him in. I’ve handled ’em before.”
Routt hesitated: but there was nothing to do but obey, and he obeyed.
Congressman Amos Caretall, in carpet slippers, nightshirt, and faded bath
robe, watched them go; and then he turned to where Wint had slouched
down against the tree and said kindly:
“Well, Wint—come on in.”

Wint wagged his head and began to sing. The Congressman bent over
him and slapped him expertly upon the cheeks with his open hands, one
hand and then the other. The sting and smart of the blows seemed to dispel
some of the clouds that fuddled Wint, and he grinned sheepishly, and got to
his feet. Amos put his arm around him. “Come on, Wint,” he said again.
They went thus slowly up the walk and into the house. Amos shut the
front door behind them, and led Wint to the stairs and up them.
In the upper hall, one electric bulb was burning; and as they came into its
light, Agnes came out of her room. Her soft, fair hair was down her back;
her eyes were dewy with sleep; and a flaming, silken garment was drawn
close about her. “What is it, dad?” she asked: and then saw Wint lurching
along on her father’s arm with nodding head and dull and drunken eyes, and
she laughed softly and stepped toward him and shook her finger in his face.
“Oh, you Wint! Naughty boy!” she chided.
Her father said sharply: “Get into your room, Agnes!” The girl looked at
him, and at the anger in his eyes she turned a little pale and slipped silently
away.
Amos took Wint to his room, where Wint fell helplessly across his bed
and began instantly to snore. The Congressman looked down at him for an
instant with a grim sort of pity mingled with the anger in his eyes. Then he
bent and loosened Wint’s shoes and drew them off; and afterward he took
off the boy’s collar, and unbuttoned his garments at the throat, and
unbuckled his belt so that his sodden body should nowhere be constricted.
“I guess that’ll do, Wint,” he said slowly then. “You’re too heavy for me
to handle. Besides, Wint—you ain’t right clean.” He stood for a moment
longer, then turned toward the door. At the door he looked back once,
snapped out the light, and so was gone.
Wint’s snores were unbroken.
The Caretall home stood in that end of town where the largest of the
furnaces is located. A railroad siding passes this furnace, and a switching
engine is busy here twenty-four hours of the day. The engine occasionally
finds occasion to whistle; and the furnace itself has a whistle of enormous
proportions; a siren whose blast carries for miles across the hills. This siren
blows at every change of shift, it blows at casting time, and it blows at the
whim of the engineer who may wish to startle some casual visitor or friend.

Persons who have lived long in this part of Hardiston grow accustomed
to this great whistle. They sleep undisturbed when it rouses the night
echoes; and they talk undisturbed when it shatters the peace of the day. It is
even told of some of them that when the furnace went out of blast and its
whistle was stilled, they used to be awakened in the middle of the night by
the failure of the siren to sound at the accustomed time.
Wint’s own home was in the other end of town. He had not lived long
enough near the furnace to accustom himself to its noises; and they
disturbed him. They penetrated his stupefied sleep on the night of this
debauch. The steady roar of the great fires, which could be heard three or
four miles on a still night, played on his worn nerves and tortured them; the
sharp toots of the switching engine made him jump and quiver in his sleep
like a dreaming child; and when he woke in the morning to find Amos
shaking him by the shoulder, he was miserable and sick and his head
throbbed with the beat of a thousand drums, and seemed like to split with
agony. He wished, weakly, that it would split and be done.
When he opened his bloodshot eyes, Amos laughed and jerked him
upright and shook some of the slumber out of him. “Come, Wint,” he
commanded heartily. “I’ve got a cold tub all ready. Jump in it. Got to get in
shape, y’know. Inaugurated t’day.”
Wint groaned and held his head in both hands. “Hell with it,” he
scowled. “Inaugural. Whole damn business. I’m not goin’ to do it. Goin’
sleep. Hell with it, I say.”
He tried to drop back on the bed, but Amos laughed and caught him and
dragged him to his feet. “Come out of it,” he enjoined. “You’ll be all right.”
Wint shook his head stubbornly; then cried out with pain at the shaking.
The fumes of the liquor were gone out of him; he was only dreadfully
sleepy and dreadfully sick. He felt as though he were pulled and tortured by
pricking wires that tore his flesh, and his eyelids were as heavy as lead and
as hot as coals upon his bloodshot eyes. But he opened them, and said
heavily: “No, Congressman Caretall. It’s off. I won’t do it. I’m through.”
It was as Amos groped for a next word that the siren began to blow. This
was the signal for the morning’s casting. The engineer must have been in
good spirits that morning, for he gave more than full measure on the blast.
The whistle shrieked and roared till the very windows rattled and shivered
in their places; and Wint, at the first sound, whipped up his hands to shield

his agonized ears, and dropped on the bed and held his head and groaned
until his groan became almost a shriek with the pain. Then, when the siren
died into silence, he got dully to his feet, and glared at Amos, who said
huskily: “I’d like t’ kill man that did that. Like to dynamite that whistle.
Anything—make it keep quiet.”
Amos suddenly smiled; then he chuckled. “Well, Wint,” he said quickly,
“there’s ways to make it keep quiet.”
Wint looked at him with torpid interest. “I’ll bite,” he said. “Tell me
one.”
Amos waved his hands. “Why, f’r instance, the Mayor has power to
enforce the abatement of a nuisance. Make them shut off that whistle, if it’s
a nuisance. Anything like that.”
Wint swayed on his feet, and steadied himself with a hand on the foot of
the bed. “Can the Mayor do a thing like that—on the square?”
“Why, sure,” said Amos.
Wint grinned; a cracked and painful grin, but mirthful too; and he took a
step forward. “Then say,” he exclaimed. “Then say! There’s something in
this Mayor job, after all....”
“Sure there is!”
Wint gripped Amos’ arm. “Lead me to that cold, cold tub,” he enjoined.
END OF BOOK II

T
BOOK III
INTO HARNESS
CHAPTER I
ON HIS OWN FEET
HE inauguration of a small-town Mayor is no great matter for
excitement. But Hardiston was interested in Wint, and wanted to have a
look at him, so everybody came to see him step into his new
responsibilities.
The Hardiston council chamber was on the second floor of the fire
house. This was a three-story building of red brick, and a place of awe and
wonder for the small boys of the town. The fire engine and the hose cart
were kept on the ground floor, in front. Behind them were the stalls for the
four sleek horses; behind the stalls again, a number of iron-barred stalls for
human beings. Here were housed the minor criminals, arrested by Marshal
Jim Radabaugh for petty peculations or disorders, and waiting for their
hearings before the Mayor. These little cells were not designed to house
prisoners for any length of time, and for the most part they were furnished
simply with heaps of straw pilfered from the supply that was kept for the
fire horses. The town drunkard, when the marshal got him, was treated as
well as the fire horses; and this is more than may be said in larger towns
than Hardiston.
At the left-hand side of the building there was an entrance hall, through
which one passed to reach the stairs that led up to the council chamber. In
the middle of this square hallway hung a rope, with a knot on the end. This
rope disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. If you pulled it in the proper
fashion, the bell in the steeple began a chattering, staccato beat like the

clanging of a gong. This was the fire bell; and when it rang the fire chief
came from his feed store across the street, and the firemen came from the
bakery, and the hardware store, and the blacksmith shop where they
worked; and the fat fire horses—they doubled in the street-cleaning
department—came on the gallop from their abandoned wagons in the
streets. Then everybody got into harness of one kind or another and went to
the fire.
Everybody in town wanted to ring that fire bell. Any one who discovered
a fire and reached the fire house with the news was privileged to do it.
There was a tradition that a boy once tried to ring the bell and was jerked
clear off the floor by the rebound after his first tug at the rope. This added
to the wonder and the mystery of it. The boys used to hang around the
doorway, watching this rope, and occasionally fingering it in a gingerly
way, and wishing a fire would start somewhere so that they might see the
bell rung.
It was through this hall where the rope hung that the people of Hardiston
crowded to see Wint inaugurated. They went up the worn, wooden stairs
into the council chamber, and they packed themselves in on the benches in
the rear of the room. This was not only the council chamber; it was the seat
of the Mayor’s court. There was an enclosure, surrounded by a railing.
When some of the bigger, or perhaps it was only the braver, men of the
town came in, they sat inside this railing, tilting their chairs back against it,
with a spittoon drawn within easy range. The crowd came early; and they
talked in cheerfully loud tones while they waited. One by one the aldermen
drifted in, the new ones and the old. And Marshal Jim Radabaugh was
there; and the clerk and the other officials arrived and took their places
within the enclosure. They were carelessly matter of fact, as though the
inauguration of a new Mayor was an everyday matter. The boys, perched on
the window sills, whistled, and giggled, and then subsided into frightened
silence to watch with staring eyes.
Amos Caretall had let Wint sleep as late as possible this morning. Wint
needed the sleep, and Congressman Caretall made it his business to study
the needs of his fellow men. His Congressional creed, which he
summarized upon occasion, was as simple as that. “If a bill’s aimed to make
you folks at home here more comfo’table, I’m for it,” he would say. “If it
ain’t, I’m against it; and that’s all the way of it with me.” So he let Wint
sleep this morning until the last minute, then shook him into wakefulness.

Even then, Wint might have thrown the whole thing over but for that
whistle. He was sick and sore, his head hurt, and his eyes could not bear
even the dim light of his bedroom. He told Amos he would not go through
with it, that he would not be inaugurated. Then the whistle blew, and when
Amos said it would be a part of his powers as Mayor to stop that plagued
whistle if he wanted to, the idea struck Wint’s sense of humor. He grinned,
and decided there was something in being Mayor, after all, and climbed
unsteadily out of bed.
After the tub of cold water which Amos had waiting for him, he felt
better. After old Maria Hale’s breakfast—fried eggs, and country-cured
ham, and three cups of strong coffee—he felt better still. But he was not yet
himself. Physically, he was acutely comfortable, blissfully comfortable. His
legs and his arms felt warm; they tingled. His head did not hurt; it was
merely numb. It was true that his tongue was furry and thick, so that he had
to talk very carefully when he talked at all; but save for this precision of
speech, there was no mark on him of the night before. He was young
enough to recover quickly, his cheeks were red, his eyes were lazily clear.
But it was not to be denied that his head was numb. He was in something
like a daze when he went out with Amos and started toward the fire-engine
house. The day was bright and warm for the season, and the sun was
cheerful. Wint enjoyed the walk. But he had to keep his eyes shut much of
the time. The light hurt them. When he heard Amos speak to some one they
passed, he also spoke. When Amos talked to him, he answered. But his
answers were idle and unconsidered; he was too comfortable to think.
They went up some stairs after a while, and Wint understood that they
had arrived. He heard people talking all together, and then one at a time.
Men said things, and Amos nudged him, and he made replies. He could hear
what others said to him. They mumbled hurriedly, as though over some too-
familiar formula. There was nothing particularly impressive, or dignified, in
the proceedings. The light from the windows at the back of the room hurt
Wint’s eyes, so he still kept them half shut. The people before him were
merely black shadows, silhouetted against this glare. He could not see who
any of them were.
After a time, some one—it sounded like a small boy—yelled: “Speech!”
And others took up the cry, and Amos nudged Wint. So Wint stood up again

and said with that careful precision which the condition of his tongue
demanded: “I’ve nothing to say. I’ll let what I do, do the talking for me.”
That seemed to be satisfactory. Every one cheered, so that the noise hurt
his ears. Then he sat down. A moment later, every one got up, and he got
up, and they all began to crowd around him, and to crowd toward the door.
Somebody came up and shook hands with Wint, and he recognized the
voice of V. R. Kite. He had never liked Kite; the man was like a foul bird. A
buzzard. The idea pleased Wint. He said cheerfully:
“To hell with you, you old buzzard.”
He heard Amos chuckle, somewhere near him. Every one else stood very
still. So Wint strode past Kite to the stairs, and Amos followed him, and
Peter Gergue followed Amos. They went back home to Amos’s house.
Once, on the way, Wint asked:
“That all there is to it?”
Amos said: “Land, no, that’s just the beginning.”
Wint chuckled. He was beginning to enjoy himself. But he was very
sleepy. When they got home, he went to bed and slept till dinner was ready,
and he slept all the afternoon, and he went to bed for the night as soon as
supper was done.
Amos had been thinking he ought to get back to Washington. He was
glad Wint went off to bed, because there were two or three matters he
wanted to attend to. One of these matters had to do with Jack Routt. Amos
was not sure of his ground in that direction, but he had his suspicions. He
sent for Peter Gergue after supper, and Gergue came quickly at the
summons. They sat down before the coal fire, and Peter filled his pipe in
careful imitation of Amos, and the two men smoked together in silence for a
space, while Amos considered what to say.
Peter was one of those unfortunate men who do not like silences. This
put him at a disadvantage before Amos, who could be silent indefinitely. It
was Amos’s chief superiority over Peter, and it gave the Congressman his
mastery over the man. This night as always, it was Peter who spoke first.
He puffed at his pipe, and he said:
“Well, Amos, you’ll be gittin’ back to Washin’ton.”

Amos turned his head, tilted it on one side, and squinted at Peter. “I
guess so,” he agreed.
“Thought you’d be going,” said Peter. “Wint’ll miss you.”
“Do you think he’ll know he misses me?” Amos asked.
“If he did,” said Peter, “he wouldn’t admit it.”
The Congressman nodded. “Wint’s a cur’ous cuss. Peter.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a nice boy—give him a chance.”
“We-ell, he’s got his chance.”
“What’s he going to do with it, Peter?”
Gergue rummaged through his black hair thoughtfully. “Guess that
depends on what he’s let do with it. Somebody come along and tell him he
ought to make a good Mayor, and he’ll make a bad one, just to show he
can’t be bossed.”
“That’s right.” Amos agreed. He considered, grinned to himself. “You
know, Pete, if we could get Kite to sign on as Wint’s guide, philosopher,
and friend. Wint’d do all right.”
Gergue considered, and he chuckled. “Sure. If he went contrary to what
Kite said. And he would. Wint’s always on the contrary-minded side of a
thing.”
“Now why is that?” Caretall asked.
“That’s because he’s who he is, I sh’d say.”
Amos puffed deep at his black pipe. “Trouble is,” he commented, “Kite
wouldn’t take the job. Not after what Wint handed him to-day. You heard
that?”
Gergue grinned widely. “Yeah. The old buzzard. Say, that surely does hit
Kite. The way he holds his head. I’d always thought of a turkey, but I guess
a buzzard does it too. Like he was always looking over a wall.”
“What I’d like to see,” said Amos, “is some one that would guarantee to
give Wint bad advice.”
“We-ell,” Peter told him, “I can do some of that.”
“Trouble is, there’s others will tell him to do the right thing.”
“You talk like James T. Hollow,” said Gergue. “Always trying to do
what’s right.”

“I wonder,” said Amos casually, “whether them that tell him to keep
straight figure he’ll do what they say?”
Peter understood that there was something back of the question; he
studied Amos’s impassive face. Then he thought for a minute, and nodded
his head.
“You mean Jack Routt,” he said.
“Yes,” the Congressman agreed.
Peter considered. “I don’t quite know about Jack,” he said. “He lets on to
be Wint’s friend. But he don’t help Wint any. Jack’s got a way of telling
Wint to do a thing that works the opposite every darned time.”
“I’ve a notion,” said Caretall, “that if Routt was to tell Wint to take care
of his health, say, Wint’d go shoot himself, just to be different.”
“That’s right,” Gergue agreed; and the two men sat for a time without
speaking, their pipes bubbling, the smoke drifting upward lazily.
“Question is,” said Caretall at last, “what are we going to do about it?”
Gergue made no comment, and Amos asked: “What do you think, Peter?”
“I don’t see through Routt,” said Gergue. “I don’t see what he’s got on
his mind.”
“Looks to me that he’s plain ornery,” Amos suggested.
“I guess that’s right.”
“But that don’t get us anywheres. I’d like to have him let Wint alone.”
“He’d ought to.”
“How can we make him let Wint alone?” Amos asked.
Peter considered that, fingers rummaging about the back of his head.
“Routt’s looking for something,” he said. “Maybe he wants to be
prosecuting attorney. Or something. I don’t know.”
“He never will be,” said Amos.
“I guess that’s right.”
“Not as long as I can swing any votes here.”
“Question is,” said Peter, “whether he knows you feel that way.”
“No,” Amos told him. “He don’t know.”
Peter looked sidewise at Amos. “He might be bought,” he suggested. “Or
he might be scared. I don’t know. He may be yellow. If he is, you could
scare him.”

Amos’s pipe went out, and he rapped it into his palm and treasured the
charred crumbs to prime his next smoke. “Peter,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d
like to see Jack. To-night.”
Gergue was a good servant. He got up at once. “All right, Amos,” he
said.
Caretall went with him to the door. “I’m taking the noon train, to-
morrow,” he told Gergue.
“I’ll be there,” said Peter.
Amos shut the door behind him and went back to the fire. He sat there
for a while, considering. Then he went out into the hall and called Agnes.
She was in her room; and she came running down, very gay and pretty in a
blue-flowered kimono, her hair down her back in a golden braid. Amos
looked at her thoughtfully. There was always a wistful question in his eyes
when he looked at Agnes. He met her at the foot of the stairs, and he asked:
“Agnes, how’d you like to go to Washington?”
Now the girl had gone to Washington one winter with Amos. And she
had not liked it. Amos was just a small-town Congressman, one of scores.
And his daughter was just a pretty girl, and nothing more. Amos was a
small toad in that big puddle; Agnes had found herself not even a tadpole.
And—that did not please Agnes. Here in Hardiston, she was the daughter of
the biggest man in town; and she was the prettiest girl in town, some said.
At least, they told her so. Jack Routt, and some of the other boys.
“I wouldn’t like it at all, dad,” she told Amos laughingly. “Washington is
a dead old place beside Hardiston.”
“I’m thinking of taking you,” Amos said, watching her with something
like sorrow in his eyes.
“I haven’t any clothes,” she protested. “I’m not ready, at all. I’d rather
not go, dad.”
“I’d rather you would,” he repeated gently.
She pouted. “Why? You’re always away. I’d never see you. I’d have
nothing to do at all. I—”
“I’d rather not leave you and Wint alone here. Wouldn’t be just the
thing,” her father insisted gently.
She laughed. “You funny old daddy. We’d have Maria for chaperon.”
“Wouldn’t be just the thing,” Amos said again.

“I’m not going to eat Wint,” she protested, half angry. “We get along
beautifully.”
“Guess you’d better go along with me,” Amos told her.
She stamped her foot. “Dad, I don’t want to.”
Amos jerked a forefinger up the stair, head on one side, eyes steady.
“Run along and pack, Agnes,” he said. “Won’t be much time in the
morning.”
Agnes began to cry. Amos watched her for a moment, watched her
bowed head, and a load seemed to settle on the man’s big shoulders. He
turned back to the sitting room without a word. After a while, he heard her
run up the stairs, every pound of her little feet scolding him, as a bird
scolds.
Amos filled his pipe and began to smoke again.
Jack Routt came late. While he waited, Amos had smoked two pipes to
the last bubble. When Jack knocked, he got up lumberingly and went to the
door to let the young man in. “Come in,” he said curtly. “Hang up your
things.”
He went back and sat down before the fire, and Jack Routt joined him
there. Amos looked up at him sidewise. “Sit down, Routt,” he said. “Take a
chair. Any chair.”
Routt sat down. “Gergue said you wanted to see me,” he reminded
Amos.
“Yes,” Amos agreed. “I told him to tell you.”
“Came as soon as I could,” said Routt.
“That’s all right,” said Amos. “I wasn’t in a hurry. I’m hardly ever in any
hurry. Things come, give them time.” The colloquialisms had fallen from
his speech. Amos talked as well as any one when he chose; when he was
with Hardiston folks, he talked as they talked. Routt was a college man.
Routt fidgeted in his chair. He had always been somewhat afraid of
Amos. He wondered what the Congressman wanted now, but Amos did not
tell him. He just sat, staring at the fire, smoking. Like Gergue, Routt was
driven to break the silence.
“What did you want with me, Amos?” he asked.

Amos spat into the fire. “Wanted to talk things over, Jack,” he said. “I’m
going to Washington to-morrow.”
“I’ve been expecting you’d go back.”
“Well, I’m going.”
Another silence, while Routt moved uneasily. At last he said: “You put
Wint over, all right.”
“Yes,” Amos agreed. “I put him over.” He looked at Routt then, with
eyes unexpectedly keen. “Think he’ll make a good Mayor, do you?”
“Well,” said Routt slowly, “he’ll be all right if he lets the booze alone.”
Amos caught Routt’s eyes and held them commandingly. “Jack,” he said,
“I want you to let Wint alone.”
Routt asked angrily: “Me? What do you mean?”
“I don’t want you giving him any advice, and I don’t want you getting
him drunk. I want you to let him alone. Is that clear?”
Routt protested: “I’m the best friend Wint’s got.”
“You’re the worst enemy he’s got,” said Amos. “And you know it.”
“You can’t say that,” Routt pleaded.
Amos did not let go the other man’s eyes. “You got Wint drunk, day
before election,” he said. “You got him drunk last night. Routt, don’t you do
that again.”
“I got him drunk? Good Lord, Congressman, Wint’s a grown man. I’m
not his keeper.”
“I made you his keeper, before election,” said Amos. “I told you to keep
him straight. You didn’t do it. You got him drunk. Now I tell you, let him
alone.”
“I tried to keep him from drinking,” Routt urged.
“You said to him, ‘Don’t you drink, Wint. It ain’t good for you. You
can’t stand it.’ So he drank, to show you he could stand it. Just as you knew
he would.” Amos got up with a swiftness surprising in that slow-moving
man. He said harshly: “Routt, get your hat and get out. And mind what I
say. You let Wint alone.”
Some men would have sworn at Amos, some would have defied him.
Routt was the sort to promise anything. He said, with an assumption of
straightforward frankness:

T
“Why, of course, if you say so, I’ll keep away from him.”
“See that you do,” said Amos. “Now—good night.”
When the door closed behind Routt, Amos stood for a minute in the hall,
thinking. “Now I wonder,” he asked himself. “Will he do it? Was he scared
enough to keep hands off? I wonder, now.”
Routt, half a block away, was grinning without mirth. “Damn him,” he
said to himself. “Him and Wint too. I’ll....”
He wondered just what he had best do; and before he reached home, he
had decided to go and see V. R. Kite.
Congressman Caretall and Agnes took the noon train, next day. Wint
went with them to the station, and Amos had a last word for him.
“Don’t you get the idea I’ve left you on your own, Wint,” he said.
“You’ll need help. Things’ll come up. When they do, don’t you try to stand
on your own feet. Just write me—or telegraph. And I’ll come, or tell you
what to do.
“You’ll run into trouble. Don’t you try to fight it alone. Just you call on
me.”
Then the train pulled out. Wint watched it go; and when it rounded the
curve and disappeared beyond the electric-light plant, he grinned.
“Run to you when I need help, will I, Amos?” he asked good-naturedly,
under his breath. “I guess not. You’ve left me alone. And I’m going to stand
on my own hind legs. On my own two feet, by God!”
He turned and went swiftly back uptown.
CHAPTER II
JOAN TO WINT
HE months of that winter passed quietly in Hardiston. The excitement
of the election was not forgotten; the drama of Wint’s choice as Mayor
became one of the stories to be told about the stoves on cold home-
keeping days. But Wint himself was no longer an object of curious interest;
he was just the Mayor. An inconsiderable figure in the town. There had
been Mayors in the past, and there would be again. Never amounted to

much, one way or another. Hardiston went along just the same; the winters
were just as cold, the summers just as hot, the rains just as wet, the sun just
as warm.
Hardiston is infamous for its winters and for its summers. In the spring
or in the fall there is no lovelier spot. In the spring, apple blossoms clothe
the hills; in the fall the woods are great splashes of flame against the dull
green of the fields. But in winter the mercury drops far below zero, and
climbs forty degrees in half a day. The snow comes tempestuously, eight,
ten, twelve inches of it; and it melts as quickly as it comes. The roads turn
into mud at the first snow; they remain mud till the increasing heat of the
northing sun bakes them to dust. On Monday, every water pipe in town
freezes tight; on Tuesday, violets bloom in sheltered corners about the
houses. On a cold morning, adventurous boys skate on the film of ice that
forms on streams and ponds; but by noon the ice is unsafe, and some one
has broken through, and by mid-afternoon, it is freezing hard again.
This winter in Hardiston was like all others. The new Mayor stuck
strictly to business. Jack Routt let him alone. When boys were arrested for
misdemeanor, or children of a larger growth for more pretentious wrongs,
they were brought before Wint and he passed sentence upon them,
marveling that he, Wint Chase, should be passing judgment on his fellow
man. At first, this feature of his work shamed him; later it awed him, and
made him look into his own heart and ask whether he were fit for such a
rôle. He tried to make himself fit.
To act as judge of the Mayor’s court and to preside at council meetings
comprised the bulk of Wint’s official duties. They took only a fraction of his
time. When the electric-light plant went out of commission with a broken
cylinder head, Wint had to do the explaining; when a sewer became stopped
up, he had to see that it was opened; when the old project for a sewage-
disposal plant came up on its annual burst of life, he had to consider it.
When Ned Howell filed his regular yearly suit for damages done to his
pasture by overflow from the sewage-filled creek, Wint had to attend court
and testify. But—there was time on his hands and to spare. He did not know
what to do with himself.
He did not undertake any crusades. A certain diffidence, in these first
months, restrained him. He was not sure of his ground; he was not sure of
himself. V.R. Kite’s underlings continued to peddle their wares, and the

Mayor’s court had to deal, now and then, with one of Kite’s bibulous
customers. Wint dealt with them, but he did not dig for the root of the evil,
to tear it out. Matters in Hardiston went on much as they had in the past.
Men rose, did their day’s work, ate, and went to bed again. Women
likewise. The annual Chautauqua lecture course began and was finished;
Number Four theatrical companies came to town with Broadway
attractions, played one-night stands, and departed as they had come. The
moving-picture houses had new films every day, and the same audiences
day after day. The dramatic teacher in the high school organized a pageant,
and it was presented to the eyes of admiring parents in the Rink. The high
school played basket ball, the women played bridge, the men played poker
of a night. Now and then the Masons or the Knights of Pythias gave a
dance. The preachers preached sermons in which they tried to prove there
was nothing the matter with the churches. The schools developed their
annual scandal over the discharge of a school-teacher. There were the
regular rumors of a new factory that was to come to town; and the rumors
fell through in the regular way. Now and then a baby was born, now and
then there was a wedding, now and then there was a funeral.
Wint stuck to his guns, and the world rolled majestically and
interminably on.
When Wint took hold of his job, he wondered what there was for him to
do. Dick Hoover told him. Dick was a lawyer, in with his father, who had
the biggest practice in town. He showed Wint where to look, in the statute
books, for the duties of a Mayor. Wint was surprised to discover that laws
were simple, everyday things, having to do with life as it was lived. One
day when he went to Dick’s office to look up a statute, the book he sought
was in use. To kill time, he took down a volume of Blackstone and peered
into it curiously. He discovered that Blackstone said water was a “movable,
wandering thing,” and the description fascinated him. He read on....
The more law he read, the more interested he became. In January, he
asked Dick Hoover if it were possible to study law in leisure hours. Hoover
told him it was not only possible, it was easy. The end of January saw Wint
putting in his spare time on calfskin-bound volumes of which each page
was one-third reading matter and two-thirds footnotes. The first day he
picked up a book of cases was marked with a red letter on his mental
calendar. He found these cases as interesting as fiction.

He began to read law systematically. Dick Hoover’s father was
interested, helped him. The elder Hoover told Wint’s father one day:
“Chase, your boy is going to make a lawyer before he’s through.”
The senior Chase looked at Hoover, half minded to resent the fact that
his son had been mentioned in his presence. But—the old wound was
healing. Men no longer took occasion to remind him of last fall’s election
with a jeer in their eyes. His conditional alliance with Kite had languished,
because Wint had made no move to make the town dry. Chase hated Amos
Caretall as ardently as ever; but he could not hate his son. That is not the
way with fathers. He loved Wint; he had been, for some time, secretly
proud of him.
He said to Hoover: “He’s smart enough, if he sticks to it.”
“He’s sticking,” Hoover told Wint’s father.
Winthrop Chase, Senior, nodded indifferently, hiding the light in his
eyes. “He never stuck to anything before,” he said, and turned away.
He thought of telling Wint’s mother, that night, but did not do so. When
he spoke of Wint to her, it precipitated one of her endless remarks. They
wearied him. But he had to tell some one, so he told Hetty Morfee, when he
went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Hetty was washing dishes at the
time, and she stopped with a plate in one hand and a dish-rag in the other,
and listened, and said with a cheerful wistfulness in her voice:
“Wint’s smart, sir. You’ll be proud of him.”
Chase was proud of him, but he would not admit it to himself, much less
to Hetty.
“He’s smart enough,” he told her. “But he’s ... He’s....”
He turned abruptly and went out of the kitchen without saying what Wint
was, and Hetty looked after him with understanding in her smile. Then her
face became still and somber again. There was growing in Hetty’s eyes a
certain unhappy light. A desperate fashion of unhappiness, which no one
was sufficiently interested to notice. She was not so cheerful as she used to
be. And there was a helplessness about her.
Word of Wint’s new industry spread slowly through Hardiston. It was
Dick Hoover himself who told Joan of it. Dick was a Mason, and he took
Joan to a Masonic dance one night. She spoke of Wint. “I have heard that he
is studying law,” she said. “Is it true?”

So Dick told her. “True as Gospel,” he said. “And he’s darned quick to
pick it up, too. The principles.... Of course, it will take time. But I’d just as
soon have him try a case for me now, as some of these....”
He went on enthusiastically. Hoover was always enthusiastic about
things. He was an extremist. His friends were the finest chaps in the world,
his enemies were the least of created things. But he had few enemies.
People liked him, and he liked people. Joan liked him; liked him
particularly this evening because he talked to her of Wint.
Joan Arnold was, in a way of speaking, a girl to tie to. There was a
peculiar steadfastness in her. She was a little taller than Wint, and she was
habitually grave and quiet, especially when she was with him. In his
presence she had always been faintly abashed and reticent as a girl is apt to
be in the presence of a man she cares for. Joan had always cared for Wint.
In spite of the fact that she was a year or two his junior, they had played
together as children: and they had grown up together. When they were little
children, they fought as only good friends can fight. When they were a little
older, Wint scorned her because she was a girl. A year or so later, she
scorned Wint because she was at the age when girls resolve to have a career
and never marry at all. But in their late teens, they were devoted to each
other, so that the mothers of the town smiled when they passed by, and
nodded to each other, and whispered, with the delight women take in such
matters, that they were a nice-looking couple together. Wint’s short, sturdy
strength matched well the girl’s slightly larger stature and her quiet poise.
The first passage of affection between them had come when she was
eighteen, when he went away to college. Before that they had been much
together, but none save the most casual words had passed between them.
The night before Wint went away, he went to see her. He was feeling
adventurous and heroic and important as a boy does feel when he leaves
home for the first time. He talked vastly, of big things he meant to do, of his
dreams. She thrilled to his dreams with the half of her that was still child;
she smiled at his enthusiasm with the half that was already woman. They
were sitting on the porch of her home. There were locust trees about the
veranda. They sat in a two-seated swing, facing each other, Wint leaning
toward her earnestly.
He became melancholy, and she comforted him softly. He did not want
to go away, he said. She told him he would be happy. The movement of the

swing made him lean toward her. There was a moon, and the September
evening was warm, and the very air seemed trembling in a rhythm that beat
upon them both.
When he got up to go, she got up at the same time, and the swing
lurched and threw them together. Ineptly, he kissed her, fumblingly, on the
cheek. She did not move, she trembled where she stood. He took her
awkwardly in his arms, as though afraid she would break, and kissed her
cheek again. He rubbed his cheek against hers. She looked at him with wide
eyes, lips a little parted, and he kissed her lips. They were cool, unused to
kisses.
The months thereafter, till Wint was expelled from college, passed
smoothly with them. Too smoothly, too placidly. They wrote short, broken
letters; they saw each other when Wint came home. They thought they were
very happy; yet each was conscious of a lack in their happiness. There was
no fire in it, none of the exquisite anguish of love. They missed this,
without knowing what they missed. All went too well with them.
Joan wept on her pillow when he was expelled, but she did not let him
see her weep. She reassured him. There was an unsuspected strength in her.
Women are full of these surprises. They are indescribably dainty creatures,
habitually clad in fabrics like gossamer, seeming light as air and fit to
vanish at a breath, who reveal—in a bathing suit, for instance—a surprising
physical solidity. It was so, spiritually, with Joan. She was so quiet and so
still that Wint, if he had thought at all, would have supposed she was a
simple girl and nothing more; but in the revelations of his disaster, she
showed a poise and a power which heartened him immensely, and made
him a little afraid of her. She was a tower of strength for him to lean upon, a
miracle of understanding and of sympathy.
He had expected her to be shocked and revolted at the shame of his
expulsion; she was simply sorry for him, and loved him none the less. Wint
knew, then, how much he loved her. There is nothing that so inspires love in
a man as to find himself beloved. This is the conceit of the creature!
Joan had told Wint that she was done with him, when the story of his
drunken sleep in the Weaver House went abroad through Hardiston. But—
she had done it for his sake. She thought there was good in him. How could
she love him else? She thought it might come out if he had to fight; she
thought his very stubbornness might save him. Joan had no illusions about

Wint. She knew he was prideful and stubborn. But—she loved him. And so
had told him she would have no more of him. With a reservation in her
heart....
Thus what Dick Hoover told her made Joan happy; happier than Hoover
could possibly guess. Another girl would have cried herself to sleep with
happiness that night, but Joan was not given to tears. She lay awake for a
long time, thinking....
Three or four days later, she met Wint on the street. They had met thus,
often, for Hardiston is a small place. But heretofore they passed with a
word, unsmiling. This time, Wint would have passed her in that fashion; but
Joan stopped and spoke to him.
“Wint,” she said.
He had been sick with hunger for a word from her for weeks. He stopped
as though she had struck him, and his cheeks burned red as fire. He could
not have spoken, for his life. He stood, hat in hand, face crimson, staring at
her.
Joan knew what she wished to say. “I want you to know that I am proud
of you, Wint,” she said.
His impulse was to laugh, to reject her friendliness. The old Wint, stiff
with pride, would have done this. But the old Wint was gone; or at least, he
was going. This Wint who stood before Joan tried to find something to say,
but all he found to say to her was:
“Oh!”
Joan smiled at him. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have dared say
this, Wint,” she said. “But I do dare now. Stick to the fight, Wint. This is
what I want to say.”
He said, sullen in his embarrassment: “I’m going to.”
“There was a time when you were not going to—just because I—your
friends—told you to stick.”
Wint looked away from her. “Well, that’s all right,” he told her
uncomfortably.
“There’s never any harm in having friends, Wint, and taking their
advice,” she said.
The old impatience burst out for a moment. “Don’t preach,” he said
harshly.

W
“I’m not going to preach.” She was afraid she had spoiled it all. But he
reassured her, hot with shame at his own decency.
“It’s all right, Joan,” he said. “I know you mean to help. I’ll try.”
“Do try,” she echoed softly.
He nodded, and she watched him, and at last added:
“I’d like to have you come to see me some time.”
He hesitated, then he said swiftly: “All right. Some time. Good-by!”
He jerked his head in farewell and hurried away as though he were afraid
of her. Joan watched him go, and she pressed her hand to her lips as though
to still them.
CHAPTER III
ROUTT TO KITE
HEN Wint left Joan, after their encounter on the street, he was
walking in a daze. He stumbled, his head was down, his eyes were
blank. He was stunned and humbled; and after he had left her, he
began to feel defiant. He thought of words with which he could have
crushed her and silenced her. Presuming to forgive him, to praise him. What
right had she to do that anyway? He ought to have laughed at her.
Not that Wint did not love Joan. He did; but he was still, at this time, a
boy and nothing more. And he had rather more than a boy’s usual measure
of stubborn contrariness in him. When his father, and his mother, and Joan,
and every one else he cared for had bade him mend his ways, he had
refused to mend them, and the thing had been a scandal on every tongue in
Hardiston. When, in like fashion, father and mother and Joan bade him go
to the dogs, whither he seemed surely bound, he had braced himself, fought
a good fight, begun to make good. Now Joan was telling him he had made
good, that he was all right. He had a reckless desire to go to the devil,
forthwith, to prove her wrong.
He had met Joan at the corner by the Star Company’s furniture store, an
institution that was always holding fire sales and closing-out sales without
either fires before or actual closings after. Their talk there together had not
gone unremarked. Every one in town would know of it within the day.

When they separated, Joan went away from town toward her home, and
Wint went up Broadway toward the Court House. Not that he knew where
he was going. But he had to go somewhere.
There were only one or two places in Hardiston to go to when you did
not know where to go. You might go to the Smoke House, and shake dice
for a cigar, or drop a nickel in the slot machine and see how your luck was
running. Or you might drop in at the Post Office in the idle hope that a
special train had come along with a letter for you since the last regular mail
was sorted into the boxes. Or you might stop at one of the newspaper
offices. The editors were always willing to talk, and there were usually two
or three others there before you.
Wint headed, somewhat aimlessly, for the Post Office. But when he
passed down Main Street, B. B. Beecham, editor of the Journal, called Wint
in to look at proofs of some city printing. Wint always got on well with B.
B. The editor never preached, he never seemed to have any particular
interest in the wrong-doings of other people, he attended to his own
business and let you attend to yours. A square-built man, with a big barrel
of a chest and stocky shoulders, and a strong, amiable countenance. Wint
went in at his hail; and B. B. got the proofs for him, and Wint began to look
them over. B. B. chunked up the fire in the little round iron stove that had
seen so many years of service it was disintegrating. It was bound together
with wire to hold it together; and there were holes in the front of it through
which the fire could be seen. The stovepipe went up at an angle like that of
the leaning tower of Pisa, then made a back-handed elbow turn and ran
along in a hammock of wire braces to disappear into the wall. B. B. thrust a
bit of wood in through the door, down into the fire, twisted it upward,
breaking up the clotted coals and ashes. Then he put on more coal, and shut
the door, and the fire roared up the chimney. Wint was going over the
proofs, figure by figure. They had to do with bids on a sewer contract. B. B.
sat down at his desk with his back to Wint and busied himself with
something.
B. B.’s desk was a roll top, its pigeonholes frazzly with letters and
papers jammed into them to the bursting point. The desk itself was littered
with newspapers and notes and notebooks and scratch pads made out of old
order blanks. There was an old iron inkwell, a tin box full of pins, a pencil
or two. In a little hexagonal glass bottle at one side, a newly hatched
humming bird which had fallen from the nest and been killed was preserved

in alcohol. Not so large as a bumblebee, and not nearly so impressive. For
paper weight, B. B. used a witch ball, taken from the stomach of a steer that
Ned Howell had butchered. A round, smooth, yellowish thing, with a hole
picked in to show the hair inside. It was as big as a small orange, and
looked not unlike one, save that the yellow was dull and muddy. On top of
the desk were books, a big hornet’s nest, an ear of corn. There was a
curiously marked squash on the open iron safe in the corner; and in the rear
of the office a stand-up desk and a smaller one at which a person might sit
were littered with the miscellany of B. B.’s business.
While Wint was looking over the proofs, an old darky came in from the
street. A ragged old man.... Wint knew him. He lived down the creek in a
log cabin, and caught catfish, and farmed a plot of ground. His hat was
battered, his coat was too big for him, his trousers slumped about his
slumping shoes. His name was John Marshum. He took off his hat and
looked around the ceiling of the office uneasily, as though he expected it to
fall, and Wint and B. B. said hello to him, and he said:
“Howdy.”
B. B. asked: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
The old negro gulped, and said: “I’d like tuh borry a paper and a pencil,
ef you please.”
B. B. gave him what he asked for, and the old man sat down at the desk
in the back of the room, and bit his tongue, and gnawed the pencil, and
began to write with infinite pains, slowly, the sweat bursting out of him
with the effort. Wint and B. B. went on with their affairs.
After a while, the old fellow got up and crossed to B. B. and held out the
product of his effort. “Heah’s a paper for you, suh,” he said. When B. B.
took it, the old man hurried awkwardly out of the door and disappeared.
B. B. read the paper and chuckled, and Wint asked: “What is it?” The
editor handed it to him, and he read the scrawl aloud:

“ ‘John Marshum was a very plesint vister at this office Thursdy.’ ”
Wint laughed good-naturedly. “The poor old clown. Wants his name in
the paper. You ought to put it in, just to make him feel good.”
“I’m going to,” said B. B. “Old John’s one of my best friends in the
county. He’s been a subscriber twelve years, and always paid up. You’d be
surprised to know how many don’t pay up. And you’d be surprised how
many people come in, just as he did, to get their names in the paper. I don’t
suppose you ever thought of that.”
Wint passed the corrected proofs over to B. B. “One or two mistakes,”
he said, and the editor sent the proofs up for correction. “What do you do
with the darned fools?” Wint asked. “Tell them advertising space costs
money?”
B. B. looked surprised. “No, I print their names. That’s what the paper’s
for—to print people’s names. It makes them feel proud of themselves, and
that’s good for them. It’s one way of helping them along, doing them good.”
Wint grinned. “Never did me any particular good to see my name in
print,” he said. “Usually made me mad.”
“It wasn’t the fact that they printed your name that made you mad. It was
what they printed about you.”
“Maybe so,” Wint admitted. “I didn’t see that it was any of their
business.”
“That’s the way the city dailies are run,” B. B. agreed. “But a country
weekly is a different proposition. I never print anything that will make any
one mad. Not if I can help it. Not even a joke. A joke on a man’s no good
unless he can appreciate it himself.”
Wint eyed B. B. and remarked thoughtfully: “I remember, when they
stuck me in as Mayor, you didn’t print the fact that my father was a
candidate.”
“No,” B. B. agreed.
“I supposed that was because you and my father are—allies in politics
and such things.”
“No,” said B. B. “I try not to print things that will hurt people. Mr. Chase
felt badly about that.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Wint slowly. “You know I had nothing to do
with it.” He had never talked so freely to any one as he was accustomed to
talk to B. B. There was some strain in the editor that invited confidences.
He knew as many secrets as a doctor.
“Yes, I know,” he said.
“You know,” Wint went on, abruptly, “people are funny, B. B.”
“Yes.”
“I’m funny, myself.”
B. B. laughed in a friendly way. “Like the old Quaker who said to his
wife: ‘All the world is a little queer save thee and me, my dear; and even
thee are at times a little queer.’ ”
“No,” said Wint, smiling. “I include myself. I’m queer.”
B. B. said nothing. Wint started to go on, but the words were not in him.
He had a curious, sudden impulse to ask B. B. about his father; this impulse
was like homesickness. But he fought it back. His jaw set stubbornly. His
father had thrown him out. That was enough; he didn’t ask to be kicked
twice.
When B. B. saw that Wint was not going on, he spoke of something else.
Then Ed Howe, one of Caretall’s men, dropped in and cut a slice from a
plug and filled his pipe in the Caretall fashion: and Wint listened to Ed and
B. B. talk for a while before he got up and took himself away. He had found
some measure of reassurance in his talk with B. B., not because of anything
that had been said, but simply because B. B. was a reassuring man. A strong
man. A strong man, and a wise man, with open eyes—and an optimist. Not
all men who seem to see clearly are optimists.
In front of the Post Office, Wint ran into Jack Routt. Routt had been out
of town for a month or so on a business trip, and Wint had seen little of him
since Amos went away. He was glad to see Jack, and said so. They shook
hands, and Wint bought Routt a cigar. Routt studied Wint curiously. He
wondered if it were true that Wint was keeping straight and doing well. And
to find out, he asked laughingly:
“Been over to see Mrs. Moody lately, old man?”
Mrs. Moody was that virago who managed the Weaver House, that
woman of the hideously beautiful false teeth. Wint flushed uncomfortably at
mention of her. “No-o,” he said hesitantly.

“That’s the boy,” said Routt. “You keep away from her. You let the stuff
alone. You can’t monkey with it, the way some fellows can, old man.”
And he watched Wint. There had been a time when this word would
have acted as a challenge, when Wint would have snapped at the bait. But—
Wint hesitated, he considered, he shook himself a little and said quietly:
“I guess you’re right, Jack.”
“You bet I’m right,” said Routt.
Wint nodded. “Yes,” he agreed.
When they separated, Routt went to his office and sat down with his feet
on his desk to consider. And—he scowled. Matters were not going well
with him. It did not suit him for Wint to keep straight. It did not suit him to
lie supine under Amos Caretall’s injunction to let Wint alone. The
Congressman’s command had irked him more than once, and more than
once he had thought of V. R. Kite in that connection, and thought of going
to Kite. He had a fairly definite idea that Amos would never help him along
politically, and Kite might be able to. And—he remembered the word Wint
had fastened on Kite on the day of his inauguration. He had called Kite a
buzzard, and others had taken it up. The name seemed to fit; it tickled the
sense of humor of Hardiston folks. But it did not tickle V. R. Kite. Kite
ought to be ready to take means to crush Wint. And—that would please
Routt. He had held off thus long in the belief that Wint would be his own
ruin. He began to doubt this, now. It might be necessary to do something.
Routt was of mean stuff, small and tawdry. He had been what Hardiston
called a mean boy, a trouble-maker. He had an infinite capacity for hate, a
curious shrewdness that enabled him to fasten on another’s weakest point.
As boys, he and Wint had fought once. They fought over Joan, because
Routt teased her till she cried. Wint had whipped him, though Routt was the
taller and the heavier of the two. Routt had never forgotten that; but Wint
forgot it as soon as the incident was over. Wint forgot, and Routt
remembered. Circumstances threw them much together; they grew up as
friends; Routt behaved himself; people decided that he had outgrown his
meanness. Wint liked him, did not distrust him, accepted him for what he
seemed—a friend.
But Jack Routt was nobody’s friend. Sometimes, when he was alone,
you might have seen this in his face. It was so now, as he thought of Wint;
his countenance was twisted and distorted and malignant. In later years, it

was to bear the marks of these secret and rancorous moments for any eye to
see. Indelible and unmistakable. But just now Routt knew how to smile,
how to be a good fellow....
He brought his feet down from the desk with a bang. He got up and
reached for his hat. He had made up his mind; he would go and see Kite.
Kite was in town. Routt knew he would find the man in the Bazaar, the
town’s five and ten cent store. He went that way, but as he reached the
place, Peter Gergue came along the street and Routt went past without
entering. Just as well Gergue should not know that he was seeing Kite.
Gergue would tell Amos. When Gergue had disappeared, Routt went back
and turned into the Bazaar. Kite’s desk was in the back of the store, but Kite
was not in sight. The little man might be hidden behind the desk. One of the
girls who clerked in the store—her name was Mary Dale, and she was a
pretty, simple little thing—asked Routt what he wanted, and he stopped to
talk to her for a moment. Routt liked pretty girls. He asked her if Kite was
in, and she said he was at his desk, so Routt went back that way. He drew
up a chair to face the little man, and Kite cocked his head on his thin neck,
and tugged at his side whiskers. “Howdo, Routt,” he said.
“Morning,” Routt rejoined. “How’s tricks, Kite?”
“All right.” Kite looked suspicious. Routt offered him a cigar, which
Kite declined. Jack lighted it himself, then said idly:
“Well, I just got back.”
“Been away?”
“Yes. Columbus.”
“Oh!”
“I see Wint hasn’t closed down on you yet,” Routt drawled.
Kite flushed angrily. “Of course not. Why should he? He’s no fool.”
“I said he hadn’t shut down on you—yet,” Routt repeated, and he
emphasized the last word.
“He likes his drop now and then, same as another man.”
“Hasn’t been taking many drops lately, has he?”
“I’m not his guardian. How do I know? Long as he lets me alone.”
Routt grinned. “I heard he didn’t let you alone, day he was inaugurated.
Called you a buzzard, didn’t he?”

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