ff, before you begin. You're defeated by sheer numbers."

"Then, for God's sake," said Jeff, "take your alien and make an American
of him."

"You can't. Could I take you to Italy and make an Italian of you, or to
Germany and make a German? You might do something with their children."

"They talk about the melting-pot," said Jeff rather helplessly.

"They do. It's a part of our rank sentimentalism. You can pour your
nationalities in but they'll no more combine than Tarquin's and
Lucretia's blood. No, Jeff. America's gone, the vision, as she was in
the beginning. They've throttled her among them."

Jeff stood looking at him, flushed, dogged, defiant. He had a vivid
beauty at the moment, and Alston woke to a startled sense of what the
young Jeff used to be. But this was better. There was something beaten
into this face finer far than youth.

Jeff seemed to be meeting him as if their minds were at grapples.

"The handful of us, old New England, the sprinkling of us that's left,
we've got to repel invasion. The aliens are upon us."

"They've even brought their insect pests," put in Alston.

"Folks," said Jeff, "that know no more about the passions and
faithfulnesses this government was founded on than a Hottentot going
into his neighbour's territory."

"Oh, come," said Alston, "give 'em a fair show. They've come for
liberty. You've got to take their word for it."

"Some of 'em have come to avoid being skinned alive, by Islam, some to
get money enough to go back with and be _rentiers_. The Germans have
come to show us the beatitude of their specially anointed way of life."

"Well," said Alston curtly, "we've got 'em. And they've got us. You
can't leaven the whole lump."

"I can't look much beyond Addington," said Jeff. "I believe I'm dotty
over the old girl. I don't want her to go back to being Victorian, but I
want her to be right--honest, you know, and standing for decent things.
That's why you're going to be mayor."

Alston made no answer, but when, in a few weeks' time, some citizens of
weight came to ask him again if he would accept the nomination, he said,
without parley, that he would. And it was not Jeff that had constrained
him; it was the look in his mother's eyes.

XXXIV

The late autumn had a profusion of exhilarating days. The crops kept
Jeff in the garden and brought his father out for his quota of pottering
care. When the land was cleared for ploughing and even the pile of
rubbish bur