ain Chunn as he walked up the steps.
The gray little man gave a whoop of joy.

"David!"

Their hands gripped.

Rawson fell on Farnum from behind and pounded him jubilantly. Instantly
the editor was the center of a group of eager, urgent wellwishers.

Alice explained to Captain Barclay what it was all about and stood back
smiling while questions and answers flew back and forth.

"What about our bill?" Jeff inquired as soon as the first hubbub had
quieted.

"Dead as a door nail. Your cousin has substituted H. B. I7. They will
pass it to-morrow or the next day."

A swift sickness ran through Farnum. "James gone back on us?"

"That's what. He's double-crossed us." Rawson snapped the words out
bitterly.

"Why--why--surely not James." Jeff's mind groped for some possible

explanation.

"Says our bill was lost anyhow and it was a question of getting through
Garman's bill or none."

"But Garman's bill was framed by Ned Merrill. It doesn't give us
anything."

Rawson nodded grimly. "That's the idea. We're to get nothing, but it's
to be wrapped up like a Christmas present so as to fool us."

"And isn't there any chance at all for our bill?"

"Just this one chance." Rawson leaned forward and spoke in a low voice,
driving his hand down on the deck railing. "That you've got a charge of
dynamite up your sleeve to throw into their camp. If you can't stampede
them we're down and out."

Jeff and his allies presently moved away together to hold a conference
of ways and means. The boat crew pulled back to the yacht. The engines
began to throb once more. The _Bellingham_ gathered momentum and was
soon plunging forward at full speed.

Part 3

With a queer little surge of pride in him Alice watched Jeff and his
friends move away. They depended on him. Unless he could save it their
fight was lost. To her he was a prophet of the better civilization that
would some day rise on the ruins of an Individualism grown topheavy.
But he was neither a dreamer nor a weakling. His idealism was sane and
practical, and he would fight to the last ditch when he must.

And this was another strange thing about him, that though his democracy
was a faith, vital and ardent, it was tempered with the liberal spirit.
He could make allowances; held no grudges, would laugh away insults at
which another man would have raged. Out of her very limited experience
Alice decided that he was a great man. That he was so warm and human
with it all was