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trust in all legal proceedings whatsoever. Mr. Sandage continued pondering in an undertone, searching for some more feasible, if less candid, defence.

“I could say nobody was direckly responsible for ye—daddy dead these years; mammy went crazy and died in the poorhouse—nobody left to send you to school—you’re the last of the Teeftallers. . . ."

At this point Mr. Sandage’s whole attention became occupied by a dangerous descent in the trail. It fell away from the high bleak ridge down a steep stony hill into a blue undulating valley where lay the hamlet of Lanesburg, county seat of Lane County. Mr. Sandage clamped on both his brakes and shifted to low gear. He stared fixedly ahead as he ground and bounced down the breakneck descent. The ramshackle motor hooted through an outlying fringe of dilapidated Negro shacks, roared across three wooden culverts where a brook crossed and recrossed the trail; it honked desperately at one or two farm wagons which were rattling more leisurely into the village; cut out of the road, missed the wagons by a palm’s breadth, cut in again; and presently clashed into Court House Square, which was the centre of Lanesburg and the political heart of the county.

Mr. Sandage shook off his anxieties as he drove into the crowded square and began shouting at this and that man with tremendous gusto. He parked his machine along with scores of other ramshackle automobiles in the hot sunshine to the south of the courthouse yard. He climbed out and went about shaking hands with everybody with a politician’s ubiquity. He used both hands, extending right and left to anybody in his reach, as he had seen the greater political lights do—such as state representatives or an occasional candidate for Congress.

“Hey oh, Bill! Hey oh, Milo! How je leave yo folks, Sam?” Here Mr. Sandage became portentously serious. “Boys,” he would begin his set electioneering speech, “I’m sailin’ out ag’in on the sea of the people’s favour. On election day I want to come home a conqueror. I don’t want to