just now. Said you'd be needin' a
steerin' committee of just his bigness!"

Harlan got up and kicked his chair from under him. It went over with a
clatter. To his infinite relief he had suddenly recovered some of that
wrathful determination that Ivus Niles's sneers had given him earlier in
the evening.

Thelismer Thornton heard him coming.

"Pretty heavy on his heels, the boy is!" he observed to the State
chairman. "He's been licking his dander around in a circle till he's
got it rearing."

The young man halted, erect before his grandfather, but again the old
man got in the first word.

"I'm going to give you all the time to talk in you want, bub. I was a
little short with you to-day, when I was stirred up, but no more of
that! Say all you want to. And I'm going to give you a little advice
about starting in. Now--now--now! Hold on. I know just how you feel. I
don't blame you for feeling that way. But it had to be done just as I
did it--all of it! Now you ought to start in with me just the way Sol
Lurchin was advised to when he wanted to tackle Cola Jordan, who had
done him on a horse-trade. Sol went to old Squire Bain, and says he to
the Squire, 'I want to stay inside the law in this. I don't want him to
get no legal hold on me. But I want to talk to him. Now, what'll I say
so's to give him what's comin' and still be legal?' 'Well,' says old
Squire, rubbing his hands together, 'you've got to start easy, you know.
You want to start easy, so's to make the climax worth something. Now,
let's see! Well, suppose you walk up to him and say, "You spawn of the
pike-eyed sneak that Herod hired to kill babies, you low-down,
contemptible son of a body-snatcher, you was born a murderer, but lacked
the courage and became a horse-thief!" There, Sol, start in easy like
that and gradually work up to a climax, and you'll have him going--and
all inside the law. Two dollars, please!'"

The Duke leaned back in his chair and nested his head in his big hands.
He gazed up meekly at his chafing grandson.

"Start in easy, bub, like that, and work up to your climax. I know just
how you feel!"

But just at that moment the chairman of the State Committee was laughing
too loudly for any dignified protest to be heard.

"For some reason, grandfather, you seem all at once to have taken me as
a subject for a practical joke," said the young man, stiffly. The
interlude had taken the sharp edge off his indignation, but he was still
bitter. "It