wake those poison-peddlers up. Now that we are cleaning
up the typhoid, the Consolidated is simply riding on our backs--refusing
to see the real truth. If they give Marion pure water it will be only
at more exorbitant rates, because the nearest lake is twenty miles away.
I'm not an anarchist--I want to see capital get its just reward. But
when a syndicate takes a franchise from citizens and makes them pay over
and over for what was their own the citizens have a right to rise in
self-defense. When we force the Consolidated to give us what we're
paying for--pure water--they evidently propose to make us pay for what
they call our cheek in asking." He paused for a moment, and his smile
succeeded his earnestness. "I beg your pardon for saying 'we.' I must
remember that I'm still a stranger in this city."

"I'll have to dispute you there," interposed a man. "You're one of us.
And we're going to prove it to you a little later."

"My friends," went on Farr, "until the cities and towns of this state
own their own water-plants and take their own profits they will be
paying double tribute to a merciless crowd."

"But we can't own our plants till the millennium, sir. There's that
five-percent-debt-limit clause in the constitution."

Farr smiled--this time wistfully. "I've--I've had a sort of vision in
regard to that," he said. "I don't dare to explain myself just now,
friends. It may be only a vision--but I think not. I'll not say any more
at present. I did not intend to say as much. What was on my mind when
I got up was this: I will not accept that money in the treasury--on no
account will I take it. Because I believe that strange days are coming
upon us soon in this state--days when we shall need money. Keep that
nest-egg and guard it." He picked up his hat and started for the door.
"The meeting is adjourned," he informed them. He smiled at them over his
shoulder in such a manner that they wondered whether he joked or was
in earnest. "Guard well that money--for the only way my vision can be
realized, I fear, is by turning this state's politics upside down, and
that will be quite a job for a rank outsider fighting Colonel Symonds
Dodd--and fighting without money. Good night!"

Men whom Walker Farr met as he strolled ducked amiable greetings. They
grinned admiringly after him as he passed on.

If a woman asked in regard to him or a stranger in the ward questioned
a native they were informed with gusto that he was "the boy who