t an
approving finger to the sound. She realized that the figure round
which her arms hung trembled, for it was the "through" daily train for
Montreal.

"I'm going back at once, aunty," Junia said.

..........................

"Well, I'm jiggered!"

These were Tarboe's words when Carnac's candidature came first to him in
the press.

"He's 'broke' out in a new place," he added.

Tarboe loved the spectacular, and this was indeed spectacular. Yet he
had not the mental vision of Junia who saw how close, in one intimate
sense, was the relation between the artist life and the political life.
To him it was a gigantic break from a green pasture into a red field
of war. To her, it was a resolution which, in anyone else's life, would
have seemed abnormal; in Carnac's life it had naturalness.

Tarboe had been for a few months only the reputed owner of the great
business, and he had paid a big price for his headship in the weighty
responsibility, the strain of control; but it had got into his blood,
and he felt life would not be easy without it now.

Besides, there was Junia. To him she was the one being in the world
worth struggling for; the bird to be caught on the wing, or coaxed into
the nest, or snared into the net; and two of the three things he had
tried without avail. The third--the snaring? He would not stop at that,
if it would bring him what he wanted. How to snare her! He surveyed
himself in the mirror.

"A great hulking figure like that!" he said in disapproval. "All bone
and muscle and flesh and physical show! It wouldn't weigh with her.
She's too fine. It isn't the animal in a man she likes. It's what he can
do, and what he is, and where he's going."

Then he thought of Carnac's new outburst, and his veins ran cold.
"She'll like that--but yes, she'll like that: and if he succeeds she'll
think he's great. Well, she'd be right. He'll beat Barouche. He's young
and brave, careless and daring. Now where am I in this fight? I belong
to Barouche's party and my vote ought to go for him."

For some minutes he sat in profound thought. What part should he play?
He liked Carnac, he owed him a debt which he could never repay. Carnac
had saved him from killing Denzil. If that had happened, he himself
might have gone to the gallows.

He decided. Sitting down, he wrote Carnac the following letter:

DEAR CARNAC GRIER,

I see you're beginning a new work. You now belong to a party that I
am opposed to