a day or two. How are Nan and Rose?"

"Fine."

"Nan staying with you?"

"No; I've moved over there for a few days."

"That's all right. Give them my compliments."

The door closed on him as Barker came back from the composing-room,
where he had carried the Sycamore article and ordered it double-leaded.
Phil, gathering up her belongings, lingered for a word. Barker ripped
the wrapper from an exchange absently.

"Phil, you've never suspected your father of being a little touched in
his upper story, have you?"

"That short-circuited; say it some other way," observed Phil, buttoning
her glove.

"That dad of yours, Phil, if he ain't plumb crazy, is the whitest white
man that ever trod the footstool. I always suspected him of being
tolerably highminded, but I guess if ever a man climbed on top of his
soul and knew that he was the boss of it with the help of Almighty God,
that man is Tom Kirkwood. It's got me fuddled, Phil. It's addled me like
the report of a tariff commission or an argument for government
ownership of laying hens; but I respect it, and I admire it. Be good to
your daddy. So far as I know he hasn't any competition in his class."

Phil pondered this as she walked toward Buckeye Lane. It was not
necessary for her to understand the intricacies of the traction
company's troubles to realize that her father had interceded for the
Holtons. Barker's praise of him warmed her heart. She knew that her
father was by no means tame and bloodless. In many long talks, tramping
and camping, they had discussed nearly every subject under the sun; and
she knew that his wrath blazed sometimes at the evils and wrongs of the
world. Once she had gone unbidden to the court-house to hear him speak
in a criminal case, where he had volunteered to defend an Italian
railroad laborer who had been attacked by a gang of local toughs and in
the ensuing fight had stabbed one of his assailants. Kirkwood was not an
orator by the accepted local standard,--a standard established by "Dan"
Voorhees and General "Tom" Nelson of an earlier generation,--but that
afternoon, after pitilessly analyzing the state's case, he had yielded
himself to a passionate appeal for the ignorant alien that had thrilled
through her as great music did. She had never forgotten that; it had
given her a new idea of her father. There had been something awful and
terrifying in his arraignment of the witnesses who sought to swear away
the cowed prisoner's liberty. He