specially good organizers. The fight won't be over to-morrow. Even
if we win this time, we must organize against Vetch and defeat him once
and for all in the next elections."

"Then you think he is really as dangerous as the papers are trying to
make him appear?"

"I think," Benham replied shortly, "that he is in it for what he can get
out of it."

"Well, call on me when I can help you," said Stephen, as they parted;
and a minute later when he reached the pavement, he found occasion to
repeat his impulsive offer to Judge Horatio Lancaster Page.

"I've promised Benham that I'll do all I can to help him defeat Vetch."

"You're right," returned the Judge, with his smile of discerning irony.
"I suppose we're obliged to fight him."

"If we don't what will happen?"

"That's what I'd like to see, my boy. I'd give ten years full measure
and running over to see exactly what would happen."

"Benham is afraid his crowd may send him to the Senate."

"Perhaps, but there is always a chance of their sending him to Jericho
instead."

Stephen nodded. "Yes, there's trouble already, I believe, over this
strike."

The Judge laughed with a note of cynical humour. "I can understand why
he should feel that the chief obstacle to loving humanity is human
nature."

"He's dead right, too. It is so easy to be a philosopher--or a
philanthropist--in a desert. I've felt like that ever since I came
home."

But the Judge had grown serious, and there was no merriment in his voice
when he answered: "I may be wrong, of course, and, thank God, my mind
hasn't yet got too stiff with age to change; but I've a reluctant belief
deep down in me that this fellow Vetch has got hold of something that is
going to count. I don't pretend to know what it is; an idea, a feeling,
merely an undeveloped instinct for truth, or expediency, if you like it
better. Of course it is all crude and raw. It needs cultivation and
direction; but it's there--the vital principle, even if we don't
recognize it when we see it. All the same," he concluded in a lighter
tone, "I'm glad you are going into the fight. We can't hurt a principle
by fighting it, you know."

Then he passed on his way; and the transient enthusiasm which had
illuminated Stephen's mind drifted away like clouds of blown smoke. How
could he fight with any heart when there seemed to him nothing on either
side that was worth fighting for--nothing except the unselfish
patriotism of John Benham? He rememb