last
appeal.

"There's a lot of logic in what you say," Morgan admitted; "it ought to
appeal to a man big enough, confident enough, to undertake and put the
job through."

He looked up suddenly, answering directly Rhetta Thayer's anxious,
expectant, appealing brown eyes. "For if he should fail, bungle it, and
have to throw down his hand before he'd won the game, it would be
Katy-bar-the-door for that man. He'd have to know how far the people of
this town wanted him to go before starting, and there's only one
boundary--the limit of the law. If they want anything less than that a
man had better keep hands off, for anything like a compromise between
black and white would be a fizzle."

Rhetta nodded, her bosom quivering with the pounding of her expectant
heart, her throat throbbing, her hands clenched as if she held on in
desperate hope of rescue. Judge Thayer said no more. He sat watching
Morgan's face, knowing well when a word too many might change the
verdict to his loss.

"The question is, how far do they want a man to go in the regeneration
of Ascalon? How many are willing to put purity above profit for a while?
Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a grasshopper after a
prairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped. It might be a
year or two before healthy legitimate trade could take the place of this
flashy life, and it might never rebound from the operation. A man would
want the people who are calling for law and order here to be satisfied
with the new conditions; he wouldn't want any whiners at the funeral."

"New people would come, new business would grow, as soon as the news got
abroad that a different condition prevailed in this town," Judge Thayer
said. "I can satisfy you in an hour that the business men want what
they're demanding, and will be satisfied to take the risk of the
result."

"I came out here to farm," Morgan said, unwilling to put down his plans
for a questionable and dangerous service to a doubtful community.

"There'll not be much sod broken between now and late fall, from the
present look of things," the judge said. "We've had the longest dry
spell I've ever seen in this country--going on four weeks now without a
drop of rain. It comes that way once every five or seven years, but that
also happens back in Ohio and other places men consider especially
favored," he hastened to conclude.

"I didn't intend to break sod," Morgan reflected, "a man couldn't sow
whea