s of its mountain walls, and the
steepness of the Eagle Rocks."

"I call that going some, 'noble rounded note'!" murmured Marsh, lifting
his eyebrows with a visible effort and letting his eyes fall half shut,
against the brilliance of the sunshine.

Marise laughed, and persisted. "Just because its called a
steam-whistle, we won't hear its beauty and grandeur, till something
else has been invented to take its place, and then we'll look back
sentimentally and regret it."

"Maybe _you_ will," conceded Marsh.

The two elder looked on, idly amused at this give-and-take.

"And I don't suppose," continued Marise, "to take another instance of
modern lack of imagination, that you have ever noticed, as an element of
picturesque power in modern life, the splendid puissance of the traffic
cop's presence in a city street."

They all had a protesting laugh at this, startled for an instant from
their dreaminess.

"Yes, and if I could think of more grandiloquent words to express him,
I'd use them," said Marise defiantly, launching out into yet more
outrageous flights of rhetoric. "I could stand for hours on a street
corner, admiring the completeness with which he is transfigured out of
the human limitations of his mere personality, how he feels, flaming
through his every vein and artery, the invincible power of THE LAW,
freely set over themselves by all those turbulent, unruly human beings,
surging around him in their fiery speed-genii. He raises his arm. It is
not a human arm, it is the decree of the entire race. And as far as it
can be seen, all those wilful fierce creatures bow themselves to it. The
current boils past him in one direction. He lets it go till he thinks
fit to stop it. He sounds his whistle, and raises his arm again in that
inimitable gesture of omnipotence. And again they bow themselves. Now
that the priest before the altar no longer sways humanity as he did, is
there anywhere else, any other such visible embodiment of might,
majesty, and power as . . ."

"Gracious me, Marise!" warned her old cousin. "I know you're only
running on with your foolishness, but I think you're going pretty far
when you mix a policeman up with priests and altars and things. I don't
believe Mr. Bayweather would like that very well."

"He wouldn't mind," demurred Marise. "He'd think it an interesting
historical parallel."

"Mrs. Bayweather would have a thing or two to say."

"Right you are. _Mrs._ Bayweather would certainly say