ps. He
was a teller of stories and a maker of puns.

They were both honest men and ardent Democrats, but they were in the
leading strings of sharper politicians. Perhaps, after all, the fools
were more to be feared than the villains.

Somewhere in the city a clock rang the hour, and, as his pipe died out,
he rose and went to his desk.

The next morning Vaden and Diggs dropped in to breakfast, and before it
was over he had ascertained that they were seeking to sound him upon his
attitude towards the recent National Party Platform. As he dodged their
laboured cross-examination he laughed at the overdone assumption of
indifference. Before they had risen from the table, Rann joined them,
and the conversation branched at once into impersonal topics. Diggs told
a story or two, at which Rann roared appreciatively, while Vaden
fingered his coffee spoon in pensive abstraction.

As they left the dining-room, which was in the basement, and ascended to
the hall, Diggs glanced into the reception-rooms and nodded respectfully
at the brocaded chairs.

"I like the looks of that, governor," he said, "but it's a pity you
can't find a wife. A woman gives an air to things, you know." Then he
cocked an eye at the ceiling. "This old house ain't much more than a
fire trap, anyway," he added. "The trouble is it's gotten old-fashioned
just like the Capitol building over there. My constituents are all in
favour of doing the proud thing by Virginia and giving her a real
up-to-date State House. Bless my life, the old Commonwealth deserves a
brownstone front--now don't she?"

He appealed to Rann, who dissented in his broad, if blunt, intelligence.

"I wouldn't trade that old building for all the brownstone between here
and New York harbour," he declared.

The governor laughed abstractedly, but a week later he recalled the
proposition as he sat in Juliet Galt's drawing-room, and repeated it for
the sake of her frank disgust.

"I shall tell Eugie," she exclaimed. "Eugie finds everything so new that
she suffers a perpetual homesickness for Kingsborough."

"There's nobody left down there except the judge and Mrs. Webb," broke
in Carrie; "and you know she gets on dreadfully with Mrs. Webb--now
doesn't she, Aunt Sally?"

"She never told me so," laughed Sally, "but I strongly suspect it. I
don't disguise the fact that I consider Mrs. Webb to be a terror, and
Eugie's a long way off from saintship."

"I hardly think that Mrs. Webb would conse