clasp on his throat. "Now--who's
a-sellin' their vote?"

"Ye said it yerself, I didn't," snarled Bob sullenly.

"Said what?"

"That yer dad would nail Danny O'Flannigan, sure."

"And is that sellin' his vote?"

"What else is it, then?" demanded Bob wrathfully. "He votes as Danny
says, an' Danny sends him trade, an'--oh, oh, q-quit it--q-quit it--I
say!" choked Bob, breath and speech almost cut off by the furious
clutch of Jim's lean little fingers.

"I won't quit it; I won't!" stormed Jim, shaking his victim with a
force that was as strong as it was sudden. "You know I never meant it
that way; an' dad won't sell his vote; he won't--he won't--he won't!"

The next instant a wrathful, palpitating Bob lay alone on the grass,
while a no less wrathful and palpitating Jim vaulted the fence at a
bound and disappeared into the next house.

Jim awoke the next morning with a haunting sense that something had
happened. In a moment he remembered; and with memory came rage and a
defiant up tilting of the chin.

As if dad--_dad_ could do this thing! Very possibly--even
probably--Handy Mike had long ago gone down before this creature in the
checkered trousers and tall hat; but dad--dad was not Handy Mike!

The ins and outs, the fine points, the ethics of it all were not quite
clear to Jim; but the derision in Bob's laugh was unmistakable; and on
that derision and on that laugh hung his unfaltering confidence that
dad would not, could not, do anything to merit either.

For three nights the boys shunned the fence and the back yard. On the
fourth night, as if by common impulse, each took his accustomed place,
wearing an elaborate air of absolute forgetfulness of the past. There
had been two fires and a parade that day, so any embarrassment that the
situation held was easily talked down. Not until Handy Mike on the
side porch of his dilapidated cottage had greeted a visitor did there
come a silence between the two boys. Even then it did not last long,
for Bob broke it with a hoarse whisper.

"It's Danny O'Flannigan, sure's a gun! It's gittin' mos'
'lection-time, an' he's drummin' 'em up. Now, jest watch pap. He
hain't no use fur Danny. Oh, of course," he added, in hurried
conciliation, "'t ain't as if it made any difference ter pap. Pap
works fur the women-folks, an' women don't cut much ice in pol'tics."

And Jim did watch--with his eyes wide open and his hands so tightly
clenched they fairly ached. He could