uor that twisted his brain, that led him astray, that
made him a thief---- Jefers-pelters! sounds jest like 'The Haouse That
Jack Built,' don't it? But poor Jack Besmith has sartainly built him a
purty poor haouse. And there's steel bars at the winders of it--poor
feller!"

However, it was Nelson Haley himself who used the story of Jack Besmith
most tellingly, and for the cause of temperance. As the young fellow
had owned to the crime when taxed with it, and had returned most of the
coins of the collection, he was recommended to the mercy of the court.
But all of Polktown knew of the lad's shame.

Therefore, Nelson Haley felt free to take the incident--and nobody had
been more vitally interested in it than himself--for the text of a
speech that he made in the big tent only a week or so before Town
Meeting Day.

Nelson stood up before the audience and told the story simply--told of
the robbery and of how he had felt when he was accused of it, sketching
his own agony and shame while for weeks and months he had not been
under suspicion. "I did not believe the bad influence of liquor
selling could touch _me_, because I had nothing to do with _it_," he
said. "But I have seen the folly of that opinion."

He pointed out, too, the present remorse and punishment of young Jack
Besmith. Then he told them frankly that the blame for all--for Jack's
misdeed, his own suffering, and the criminal's final situation--lay
upon the consciences of the men who had made liquor selling in Polktown
possible.

It was an arraignment that stung. Those deeply interested in the cause
of prohibition cheered Nelson to the echo. But one man who sat well
back in the audience, his hat pulled over his eyes, and apparently an
uninterested listener, slipped out after Nelson's talk and walked and
fought his conscience the greater part of that night.

Somehow the school teacher's talk--or was it Janice Day's scorn?--had
touched Mr. Cross Moore in a vulnerable part.

Had the Summer visitors to Polktown been voters, there would have been
little doubt of the Town Meeting voting the hamlet "dry." But there
seemed to be a large number of men determined not to have their
liberties, so-called, interfered with.

Lem Parraday's bar had become a noisy place. Some fights had occurred
in the horse sheds, too. And on the nights the railroad construction
gang came over to spend their pay, the village had to have extra police
protection.

Frank Bowman