es with a proletariat."

For some time, now, Jim had ceased to hold Jennie's hand; and their
sweetheart days had never seemed farther away.

"Jim," said Jennie, "I may be elected to a position in which I shall be
obliged to pass on your acts as teacher--in an official way, I mean. I
hope they will be justifiable."

Jim smiled his slowest and saddest smile.

"If they're not, I'll not ask you to condone them," said he. "But first,
they must be justifiable to me, Jennie."

"Good night," said Jennie curtly, and left him.

Jennie, I am obliged to admit, gave scant attention to the new career upon
which her old sweetheart seemed to be entering. She was in politics, and
was playing the game as became the daughter of a local politician. The
reader must not by this term get the impression that Colonel Woodruff was
a man of the grafting tricky sort of which we are prone to think when the
term is used. The West has been ruled by just such men as he, and the West
has done rather well, all things considered. Colonel Albert Woodruff went
south with the army as a corporal in 1861, and came back a lieutenant. His
title of colonel was conferred by appointment as a member of the staff of
the governor, long years ago, when he was county auditor. He was not a
rich man, as I may have suggested, but a well-to-do farmer, whose wife did
her own work much of the time, not because the colonel could not afford to
hire "help," but for the reason that "hired girls" were hard to get.

The colonel, having seen the glory of the coming of the Lord in the
triumph of his side in the great war, was inclined to think that all
reform had ceased, and was a political stand-patter--a very honest and
sincere one. Moreover, he was influential enough so that when Mr. Cummins
or Mr. Dolliver came into the county on political errands, Colonel
Woodruff had always been called into conference. He was of the old New
England type, believed very much in heredity, very much in the theory that
whatever is is right, in so far as it has secured money or power.

He had hated General Weaver and his forces; and had sometimes wondered how
a man of Horace Boies' opinions had succeeded in being so good a governor.
He broke with Governor Larrabee when that excellent man had turned against
the great men who had developed Iowa by building the railroads. He was
always in the county convention, and preferred to serve on the committee
on credentials, and leave to others the more