re nankeen trousers, a linen coat, and a
dignified panama hat. Moreover, it is stencilled into her memory
indelibly that the colonel was the first man in this wide world to
raise his hat to her.

Now it should not be strange that this world was a sad jumble of
fiction and of facts to a child's eyes; for to many an older pair of
eyes it has all seemed a puzzle. Even the shrewd, kind brown eyes of
Jacob Dolan often failed to see things as they were, and what his eyes
did see sometimes bewildered him. By day Dolan saw Robert Hendricks,
president of the Exchange National Bank, president and manager of the
Sycamore Ridge Light, Heat, and Power Company, proprietor of the
Hendricks Mercantile Company, treasurer and first vice-president of
the new Western Wholesale Grocery, and chairman of his party's
congressional central committee, and Dolan's eyes saw a hard, busy
man--a young man, it is true; a tall, straight, rather lean,
rope-haired young man in his thirties, with frank blue eyes, that
turned rather suddenly upon one as if to frighten out a secret. The
man seemed real enough to Dolan, from the wide crown of his slightly
bald, V-shaped head, to his feet with the hard click in the heels; and
yet that man paid no particular attention to Dolan. It was "Hello,
Jake," with a nod, as they passed, maybe only an abstracted stare and
a grunt. But at night, as they walked together over the town under the
stars or moon, a lonely soul rose out of the tall body and spread over
the face.

Dolan kept to his pipe and Hendricks to his cigar. But these were the
only marks of caste between them. One night Hendricks led the way
across the bridge down the river road and into the fields. They walked
far up the stream and their conversation had consisted largely of
"Watch out," "All right," "I see," "This is the best way." They
loitered down a dark lane shaded by hedgerows until they came to a
little wooden bridge and sat down. Dolan looked at the stars, while a
pipe and a cigar had burned out before Hendricks spoke, "Well,
chatterbox?"

"I was bothered with a question of mistaken identity," replied Dolan.
To the silence he answered: "Me myself. I'm the man. Do you happen to
know who I am?" Hendricks broke a splinter from the wood under him,
and Dolan continued: "Of course you don't, and neither do I. For
example, I go down into Union township before election and visit with
the boys. I bring a box of cigars and maybe a nip under the buggy
s