"Anyhow, Besmith got thoroughly desperate, went
down to the Inn after his interview with his former employer, and spent
all the money he had over Lem's bar. He didn't come home at all that
night----"

"Oh!" exclaimed Janice, remembering suddenly where Jack Besmith had
probably slept off his debauch, for she had seen him asleep in her
uncle's sheepfold on that particular Saturday morning.

"He's a pretty poor specimen, I suppose," said the engineer, eyeing
Janice rather curiously. "He's one of the weak ones. But there are
others!"

Janice was silent for a moment. Indeed, she was not following closely
Bowman's remarks. She was thinking of Jack Besmith. Mr. Massey had
evidently been much annoyed by his discharged clerk.

When she and Frank Bowman, with Hopewell Drugg, had gone to the
druggist's back door that eventful Saturday night, Massey had thought
it was Jack Besmith summoning him to the door. Massey had spoken
Besmith's name when he first opened the door and peered out into the
mist.

"Now, Janice," she suddenly heard Frank Bowman say, "what shall we do?"

She awoke to the subject under discussion with a start. "Goodness! do
you really expect me to tell you?"

"Why--why, you see, Janice, you've got ideas. You always do have,"
said the civil engineer, humbly. "I've talked to such of my men as
have come back to work this morning. Of course, they have been off
before, on pay day; but this is the worst. They had a big time down
there at the Inn Saturday night and Sunday morning."

"Poor Mrs. Parraday!" sighed Janice.

"You're right. I'm sorry for Marm Parraday. She's the salt of the
earth. But there are more than Marm Parraday suffering through Lem's
selling whiskey. But about my boys," added the engineer. "They tell
me if the stuff wasn't so handy they would finish the job without going
on these sprees. And I believe they would."

"Well! I'll think about it," Janice rejoined, preparing to start her
car. "I suppose if I don't go ahead in the matter, the railroad will
never get its branch road built into Polktown?" and she laughed.

"That's about the size of it!" cried Bowman, as the wheels began to
roll.

But it was of Jack Besmith, the ex-drug clerk, that Janice Day thought
as she sped on toward the seminary and not of the opening of the
campaign against the liquor traffic in Polktown, which she felt had
really been organized on this morning.

In some way the ne'er-do-well was conne