er
man. Live and let live's my way of thinking and doing."

"Well, Billy," spoke up Jake Tuttle who had come out strongly for a dry
town, a dry state and a dry country, "you're fair and square and
a-doing all you honestly can. Maybe the time will come when you'll
feel that voting it out is the only thing."

"Why," grumbled another member of this caucus, "anybody'd think that
this whole town had ought to turn in and just die of thirst on account
of a man that ain't much bigger than a pint of cider and never did have
no proper stomach. Why, who ever heard of sech a thing as a whole town
being run for one man?"

"A town that ain't run fair and square for one man isn't run fair and
square for any man," insisted Jake. "And as for hearing strange
things, I've heerd tell of a man once, a poor kind of low-style Jew he
was, lived over in a little two by four town called Nazareth, who not
only believed in going dry and hungry for other people but actually
died so's to show them a finer way of living and a braver way of dying.
I've heerd tell that they called that man the Greatest Fool that ever
lived and that they killed Him fur His foolishness. So, if this whole
town should turn in an' help Jim Tumley there'd be nothing new in that."

The pause that followed would have been uncomfortable if Seth Curtis
hadn't opened the door just then and squeezed in.

Seth was mad. For the first time since their marriage he had
quarrelled with his wife. Docile, sweet-tempered Ruth Curtis was
aflame with mother wrath. She, like a great many Green Valley women,
thought of Jim Tumley not as a man but as a voice, the voice of a lark
on a summer morning. That other men's selfish strength should still
that voice made her sweet eyes flame and her soft voice shake with
anger. That Seth, who so hated waste of any kind, could stand calmly
by while a lovable human soul was being thrown away puzzled her at
first. She tried to argue with him. If Jim Tumley were trying to save
his burning barn or mend his fence Seth would have helped him gladly.
But Jim was trying to save his body and soul and Green Valley men, even
though they knew he was not equal to the struggle, could not see that
it was their business to help.

Seth resented this passionate fight for little Jim that the women were
making. In his anger Seth could not see that beyond the figure of the
gentle singing man stood the children of Green Valley. In this
harmless little man w