ike this, were enough to make any man lonely.

Therefore it was with honor indeed that, instead of dreaming off into
the radiant past through the well thumbed book of magic, he was digging
between dull sheepskin covers after the key to the bar of the State, on
which his will was fixed.

Now, a man who, being a member of the Pennsylvania State Police,[69-1]
aspires to qualify for admission to the bar, has his work cut out for
him. The calls of his regular duty, endless in number and kind, leave
him no certain leisure, and few and broken are the hours that he gets
for books.

"Confound the Latin!" grumbled the Sergeant, grabbing his head in his
two hands. "Well--anyway, here's my night for it. Even the crooks will
lie snug in weather like this." And he took a fresh hold on the poser.

Suddenly "buzz" went the bell beside him. Before its voice ceased he
stood at salute in the door of the Captain's office.

"Sergeant," said Captain Adams, with a half-turn of his desk-chair,
"how soon can you take the field?"

"Five minutes, sir."

"There's trouble over in the foundry town. The local authorities have
jailed some I. W. W.[69-2] plotters. They state that a jail delivery is
threatened, that the Sheriff can't control it, and that they believe
the mob will run amuck generally and shoot up the town. Take a few men;
go over and attend to it."

"Very well, sir."

In the time that goes to saddling a horse, the detail rode into the
storm, First Sergeant Price on John G., leading.

John G. had belonged to the Force exactly as long as had the First
Sergeant himself, which was from the dawn of the Force's existence.
And John G. is a gentleman and a soldier, every inch of him. Horse-show
judges have affixed their seal to the self-evident fact by the sign of
the blue ribbon,[70-1] but the best proof lies in the personal
knowledge of "A" Troop, soundly built on twelve years' brotherhood.
John G., on that diluvian night, was twenty-two years old, and still
every whit as clean-limbed, alert, and plucky as his salad days had
seen him.

Men and horses dived into the gale as swimmers dive into a breaker. It
beat their eyes shut with wind and driven water, and, as they slid down
the harp-pitched city streets, the flood banked up against each planted
hoof till it split in folds above the fetlock.

Down in the country beyond, mud, slush, and water clogged with chunks
of frost-stricken clay made worse and still worse going. And so the