derator, "Entwistle Harvey, and as--"

"I shall have to decline the honor," interrupted Mr. Entwistle Harvey,
rising promptly. The voters grinned. They thoroughly understood the
reason for Mr. Harvey's reluctance.

"It ain't that I'm any less a reformer than the others that has to-day
redeemed this town from ring rule and bossism," declared Mr. Harvey,
amid applause; "it ain't that I don't admire the able man that has
been selected to lead us up out of the vale of political sorrow--and
I should be proud to stand before him and offer this distinguished
honor from the voters of this town, but I decline because I--I--well,
there ain't any need of goin' into personal reasons. I ain't the man
for the place, that's all." He sat down.

"I don't blame him none for duckin'," murmured Old Man Jordan to his
seat companion. "Any man that was in the crowd that coaxed Cap'n
Sproul into takin' the foremanship of Heckly Fire Comp'ny has got
a good excuse. I b'lieve the law says that ye can't put a man twice
in peril of his life."

Cap'n Sproul's stormy relinquishment of the hateful honor that had
been foisted upon him by the Smyrna fire-fighters was history recent
enough to give piquant relish to the present situation. He had not
withheld nor modified his threats as to what would happen to any other
committee that came to him proffering public office.

The more prudent among Smyrna's voters had hesitated about making
the irascible ex-mariner a candidate for selectman's berth.

But Smyrna, in its placid New England eddy, had felt its own little
thrill from the great tidal wave of municipal reform sweeping the
country. It immediately gazed askance at Colonel Gideon Ward, for
twenty years first selectman of Smyrna, and growled under its breath
about "bossism." But when the search was made for a candidate to run
against him, Smyrna men were wary. Colonel Ward held too many
mortgages and had advanced too many call loans not to be well
fortified against rivals.

"The only one who has ever dared to twist his tail is his
brother-in-law, the Cap'n," said Odbar Broadway, oracularly, to the
leaders who had met in his store to canvass the political situation.
"The Cap'n won't be as supple as some in town office, but he ain't
no more hell 'n' repeat than what we've been used to for the last
twenty years. He's wuth thutty thousand dollars, and Gid Ward can't
foreclose no mo'gidge on him nor club him with no bill o' sale. He's
the only promi