st have seen."

"I can only say that it ought to have been done before, Ruth,--not
during the exercises."

"It was his way of publicly admitting he was wrong in insisting that it
should remain."

"He had his way with that weak-kneed committee, as usual. The tactics
of that Copperhead Camp he talks so much about are hardly applicable to
conditions here. We are not law-defying ruffians, you know,--and these
are women of quite another order."

"No one,--not even you, Mr. Landover,--can say that he has been
anything but kind and considerate and sympathetic," she flashed. "He is
firm,--but isn't that what we want? And the people worship him,--they
will do anything for him. Even Manuel Crust respects him,--and obeys
him. And you, down in your heart, respect him. He is your kind of a man,
Mr. Landover. He does things. He is like Theodore Roosevelt. He does
things."

Landover smiled grimly. "Perhaps that is why I dislike him."

"Because he is like Roosevelt?"

"My dear, let's not start an argument about Roosevelt."

"Just the same, I've heard you say over and over again that you wish
Roosevelt were President now," she persisted. "Why do you say that if
you are so down on him?"

Landover shrugged his shoulders expressively.

"I can wish that, my dear, and still not be an admirer of Mr.
Roosevelt," he replied. "But to return to Percival, isn't it quite plain
to you that he was pouting like a school-boy because he had not been
asked to take part in today's exercises?"

"He was asked to take part in them. I asked him myself."

He glanced at her sharply. "You never told me you had asked him, Ruth."

"The night the crime was committed," she said briefly. "He was very nice
about it. He promised to sing in the choir and--and to help me with
the decorations. After our unpleasant experience the next day, he had
the--shall we say tact or kindness?--to reconsider his promise."

"Openly advertising the fact that he preferred to have no part in any
entertainment you were arranging," was Landover's comment. "I don't
believe it was because of any particular delicacy of feeling on his
part, my dear. In any case, the fact remains that he let you go ahead
with the affair, and then, bang! right in the middle of it he stages his
cheap, melodramatic, moving-picture act. Bosh!"

She turned on him with blazing eyes.

"You will not see anything good in him, will you? You can't be fair, can
you? Well, I can be,--and I am. He has been