re, came to Hendricks, and he
knew that it was no vain threat he was facing. So he turned up the
other facet of the puzzle. There was Adrian. For an hour he considered
Adrian Brownwell, a vain jealous old man with the temper of a beast.
To see Molly, tell her of their common peril, get her decision, and be
with it at the meeting before Adrian saw the note, all in the two
hours between the arrival of the train bearing the Brownwells and Mrs.
Barclay, and the time of the meeting in Barclay Hall, was part of
Hendricks' puzzle. He believed that by using the telephone to make an
appointment he could manage it. Then he turned the puzzle over and saw
that to save Molly Brownwell's good name and his father's, human lives
must be sacrificed by permitting the use of foul water in the town.
And in the end his mind set. He knew that unless she forbade it, the
contest must go on to a righteous finish, through whatever perils,
over any obstacles. Yet as he walked back to the bank, determined not
to take his hand from the plough, he saw that he must prepare to go
into the next day as though it were his last. For in his consciousness
on the other side of the puzzle--always there was the foolish Adrian,
impetuous at best, but stark mad in his jealousy and wrath.

And Elijah Westlake Bemis, keeping account of the man's movements,
chuckled as he felt the struggle in the man's breast. For he was a
wise old snake, that Lige Bemis, and he had seduced many another man
after the brave impulsive "no" had roared in his face. Just before
midnight when he saw the electric light flash on in the private office
of the president of the Exchange National Bank, Lige Bemis, libertine
with men, strolled home and counted the battle won. "He's writing his
speech," he said to Barclay over the telephone at midnight. And John
Barclay, who had fought the local contest in the election with Bemis
to be loyal to a friend, and to help one who was in danger of losing
the profit on half a million dollars' investment in the Sycamore Ridge
waterworks, laughed as he walked upstairs in his pajamas, and said to
himself, "Old Lige is a great one--there is a lot of fight in the old
viper yet." It was nothing to Barclay that the town got its water from
a polluted pond. That phase of the case did not enter his
consciousness, though it was placarded on the bill-boards and had been
printed in the _Banner_ a thousand times during the campaign. To him
it was a fight by the demago