e would be no more of them than there
are now, and they could be regulated and kept to confined limits of
cities. Don't blame the police for graft: blame all who believe that
human nature can be abolished by law. But," and this time his whole face
smiled, "I shall never be dictator. The thing to do is to start a new
country, and make no mistakes."

And he proceeded, sometimes seriously but for the most part whimsically,
to outline his model republic, while Barbara worked and listened,
sometimes with amusement, sometimes with a sense of being uplifted and
thrilled by the man's plausible originality. Since she had but the
vaguest recollection of history, and none whatever of economics, it was
easy for the man to play the constructive statesman. Nor were his
schemes always foolish and illogical, since the book of human nature had
been always in his library, and of all its volumes had been most
often read.

"Ah!" said the legless man at last, "if I were younger, and whole!"

Whenever he referred to his maimed condition Barbara, to whom it was no
longer physically shocking, was uncomfortable and distressed, changing
the subject as swiftly as might be. But now, stopping her work short
off, her hands hanging at her sides, she began to speak of the matter.

"I suppose," she said, "it's almost life and death to you--sometimes,
that you'd give almost anything, take any chance to be--the way you were
meant to be. My father believes that some day people can have anything
that they've lost restored--a hand or an arm. He's made experiments
along those lines ever since he made his mistake with you, and it all
works out beautifully with monkeys and dogs and guinea-pigs and
rabbits. Just now he is in Colorado to try it on a man. There's a man
out there in jail for life, who has a brother that lost his right hand
in some machinery. The well brother has offered to let father cut off
his hand, and graft it on the maimed brother's wrist. I've just had a
letter--it's been done. He thinks it's all right, but he can't be sure
yet. Please don't say anything about it because--well, because people
are still queer about these things. In the old days people burned the
best doctors, and now they want to lynch vivisectors and almost anybody
who's really trying to make health more or less contagious."

"Do you believe I could be made whole?" exclaimed Blizzard, his eyes
glittering as with a sudden hope. "My God! Even if they weren't much use
to m