and folded his paper and rolled
it into a wand with which he conjured up his spirit of philosophy.
"Heigh-ho," he sighed. "We don't know much, do we?"

McHurdie made no reply. He bent closely over his work, and the general
went on: "I was mighty mad when Hendricks defeated me for the state
senate in '72, just to get that law passed cheating Minneola out of a
fair vote on the court-house question. But it's come out all right."

The harness maker sewed on, and the general reflected. Finally the
little man at the bench turned his big dimmed eyes on his visitor, and
asked, "Did you think, General, that you knew more than the Lord about
making things come out right?" There was no reply and McHurdie
continued, "Well, you don't--I've got that settled in my mind."

There was silence for a time, and Ward kept beating his leg with the
paper wand in his hand. "Watts," said the general, finally, "I know
what it was--it was youth. John Barclay had to go through that
period. He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did.
Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox
team and their band of killers to take the county records--" and
there was more of it--the old story of the town's wild days that need
not be recorded, and in the end, in answer to some query from the
general on John's courage, Watts replied, "John was always a bold
little fice--he never lacked brass."

"Was he going with Jane Mason then, Watts,--I forget?" queried the
general.

"Yes--yes," replied McHurdie. "Don't you remember that very next
night she sang in the choir--well, John had brought her over from
Minneola two days before, and that Sunday when the little devil went
in the culvert across Main Street and blew up the Minneola wagons,
Jane was in town that day--I remember that; and man--man--I heard
her voice say things to him in the duet that night that she would have
been ashamed to put in words."

The two old men were silent. "That was youth, too, Watts,--fighting
and loving, and loving and fighting,--that's youth," sighed the
general.

"Well, Johnnie got his belly full of it in his day, as old Shakespeare
says, Phil--and in your day you had yours, too. Every dog,
General--every dog--you know." The two voices were silent, as two
old men looked back through the years.

McHurdie put the strap he was working upon in the water, and turned
with his spectacles in his hands to his comrade. "Maybe it's this way:
with a man