office and told you I saw Bob Hendricks waiting for some one at
the Union Station, when the train got into the city that morning?"

"Yes," said Barclay, "you were so mysterious and funny about it, I
remember."

"Well," said Bemis, as he got up and poked a log that was annoying him
in the fireplace, "well, I have a little document in my desk at home,
that I got the night before in the Ridge, which will convince Bobbie,
if he has any sense, that this municipal ownership business isn't all
it's cracked up to be."

Barclay, who knew from Jane something of the truth, guessed the rest,
but he did not question Bemis further. "Oh, I don't know, Lige," he
began; "it seems to me I wouldn't drag that into it."

Bemis turned his old face, full of malicious passion, toward Barclay
and cried, "Maybe you wouldn't, John Barclay--you forget things; but
I never do; and you're a coward sometimes, and I am not."

The blaze of his wrath went out in a moment, and Barclay's mind went
back to that afternoon in the seventies when Hendricks picked Bemis up
and threw him bodily from the county convention and branded him as a
boodler. Barclay knew argument was useless. So he said nothing.

"He has the county officers--every man-jack of them from the
treasurer to Jake Dolan, the janitor--and I couldn't get hold of that
book by fair means without his knowing it. But I am going to have that
book, John--I'm going to have that book."

Barclay followed Bemis's mental processes, as if they were his own.
"Well--what if he does know it?" asked Barclay.

"Oh, if he knew I was after the book, he'd fix me,--have it destroyed
or something; he could do lots of things or beat me some way. I've got
to get that book--get it out of the court-house--and there's just
one way to get into the court-house, without using the doors and the
windows." When Bemis had finished speaking, he gazed steadily into
Barclay's eyes. And Bemis saw the fear that was in Barclay's face.
"Yes, I know a way into the court-house, John--it's mine by fifty
years' right of discovery. I'm going to have that book, and get an
expert opinion as to the similarity of the handwriting in the book and
the handwriting of my own little document. My own little document," he
mused, licking his chops like a hound at the prospect.

Now we will call that little document "Exhibit I" in the case of the
Larger Good _vs._ The People, and close thereby a long and tedious
chapter. But we will begin anoth