lled over the sheriff?" demanded Presson. But
the old man merely stared at the door.

High Sheriff Niles entered at that moment. He stood on the threshold and
scowled. He was a stocky man, who had been a butcher. His face was
blotched by ruddiness resembling that of raw meat. Behind his cockaded
silk hat pressed the faces of his aids. The little yard was filled with
men who peered in at the windows. A big truck wagon was creaking as its
horses backed it to the door.

"What are you after here, Niles?" demanded Thornton. "After this stock
of rum."

The Duke took another swing across the room, licked his lips, and set
his extinguished cigar hard between his teeth. He was striving to
control the wrath that came boiling up into his purple face and blazing
eyes.

"There's the warrant!" The sheriff clapped the paper across his palm.
"Take the stuff, boys!" He waved his hand at the cupboard.

"But the most of it's in the cellar," shrilled the voice of a tattler in
the hallway. "There's where she keeps it!"

"I don't need any advice," growled the sheriff. His men trudged into the
room and made for the cupboard.

Now at last Aunt Charette understood that her stores were threatened.
She did not leave her chair. She fumbled frantically at her big bag that
hung at her waist.

"Non, non!" she cried. "Yo' may not to'ch! I have pay! I have pay for
nex' sax month."

She flapped a paper at the sheriff. He took it perfunctorily. "That's
all right, old woman, but it hasn't got anything to do with my business
here. I'm after your stuff on a warrant." He gave back the paper and
started for the stairs leading to the cellar.

"But I have pay," she vociferated. "You tell them I have pay, M'sieu'
Thornton! You' told me if I have pay twice in ye'r I have de
privilege--de privilege!"

The sheriff turned and grinned over his shoulder into the convulsed face
of the Honorable Thelismer.

"There's a lot of bargains in politics, marm," he stated, dryly, "that
takes more'n two to put 'em through when the pinch comes." He enjoyed
the discomfiture that her artless confession brought to the Duke. The
old man looked him up and down. That this Niles whom he himself had
helped into office, who had been taking private toll from the liquor
interests of the county as his predecessors had before him, a procedure
condoned by the party leaders of whom the Honorable Thelismer was
one--that this person should whirl on him in such fashion was a
perfor