have. This Board of Trust owns the majority of stock in the
National Bank, and has loaned money to nearly all the business houses in
town. You hold mortgages on nineteen thousand acres of land in this
county. You practically own the _Signal_. There is not a politician
anywhere who would not know he held this county in the hollow of his
hand if he had that much influence to back him. Influence, Susan, is not
mere influence ever. It's power! You've got that!"

"When did you become such an ardent suffragist, John?" Susan suddenly
demanded.

The Judge laughed.

"I've been a kind of mugwump of the cause for years. If I were younger,
I doubt if I should be ardently in favour of it now. I admit that I
prefer the dear woman to the abler ballot-bearing woman--every man
must--but before your sex can become entirely like my sex except in
gender, Susan, I shall be where Sarah Mosely is now. It will not matter
to me. I admit, however, that I was converted to active partisanship by
Mrs. Mosely. I have been more impressed by that dim little old woman
than by all the arguments you, for example, ever made for suffrage. She
was herself an unanswerable plea for the rights of women to _live_, for
she had never really lived at all. She looked as if every mortgage held
by her estate had been foreclosed at her expense."

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Walton with a sigh. "She was pathetic in her
submission. Most women submit, but still have enough to fuss about from
time to time to keep them alive."

"She was really the least submissive of you all. She put on her thimble,
threaded the needle of her robin-headed brain, and worked all your fuss
and agitations and futile parades down to a formula by which you can
actually obtain the ballot," he put in.

"Well, coming down to this formula, what shall we do with Briggs?" she
asked shrewdly. "He looks like a dangerous factor in it to me."

"Briggs will be of use. All he needs is an expert accountant to overhaul
his books occasionally. And we shall need him as we need a pair of tongs
to handle live coals. Besides, we cannot afford to dismiss him now and
incur his enmity. We are not working up antagonism. We have one man
against us already who counts for all we can overcome."

"Who is that?"

"Mike Prim. He owns nothing visible. So we have no mortgage to hold over
his head. But he practically controls this town, politically speaking."

"How?"

"Don't ask me! He is not a merchant, nor a lawyer,