llowed in the wake of the boy as he carried the
paper from door to door. It began at the corner of Main and Cross
Streets, and as the boy proceeded, the merchants, the loafers, and the
customers came from the stores and gathered in knots that formed quickly
and dissolved again as the parts passed from one group to another,
questioning, arguing, and guessing. The attorney looked out of his
window. Across the street he could see the office of the TIMES, and T.
J. already besieged by questioners, to whom he was evidently giving a
kind but decided refusal of further information. The editor was waving
them away with his hands. Some of the editor's visitors handed T. J.
money, and carried away copies of the TIMES, but all went, gently
urged by the editor, and joined one or another of the groups below. The
attorney drew on his coat. He would postpone his interview with Eliph'
Hewlitt; Thomas Jefferson Jones was the man he wanted to see at that
moment.

It was difficult for the attorney to retain his enigmatical smiles as
he climbed the stairs to the TIMES office. He was angry, but he knew the
value of that irritating smile that hinted superiority and a knowledge
of hidden details. He needed it in his talk with the editor.

It is odd how common interests will bring men together. And sometimes
how common interests will not. The attorney and the editor had been as
one man in polite attentions to Susan Bell, Mrs. Smith's protegee, at
first, but as their acquaintance with her grew they seemed to like each
other less. They no longer consulted each other on the best methods of
bringing Republican rule back to Kilo. They did not consult together
at all. The attorney coldly ignored the editor, and his irritation,
beginning in this rivalry, was increased by the growing suspicion that
the editor dared look toward the leadership of the Republican party in
Kilo.

It all angered the attorney. What right had a country editor to compete
with a man of talent, with a member of the bar, with Attorney Toole? Was
this the thanks a rising lawyer should receive for leaving the superior
culture of Franklin and bringing his talents to add luster to the bleak
unimportance of Kilo? The very impertinence of it angered him. Toole,
a man whose name would one day ring in the hall of Congress and perhaps
stand at the head of the nation's officers as chief executive, to be
bothered by the interference of a Jones! By the interference of a man
who spent his