n never
missed a Sunday in church, gave his tithe, and revered the law. He
adjusted his halo and sang feelingly in prayer meeting about his cross
and hoped ultimately for his crown as full and complete payment and
return, the same being the legal and just equivalent for said
hereinbefore named cross as aforesaid, and Mr. Calvin was counted among
the fit, and the Doctor smiled as he put him in the list. And Mr. Van
Dorn had confessed that he was among the fit and his fitness consisted
in getting everything that he could without being caught.

But these reflections were vain and unprofitable to Dr. Nesbit, and so
he turned himself to the consideration of the business in hand: namely,
to make his calling and reelection sure to the State Senate that
November. So he went over Greeley County behind his motherly sorrel
mare, visiting the people, telling them stories, prescribing for their
ailments, eating their fried chicken, cream gravy and mashed potatoes,
and putting to rout the forces of the loathed opposition who maintained
that the Doctor beat his wife, by sometimes showing said wife as exhibit
"A" without comment in those remote parts of the county where her proud
figure was unknown.

In November he was reelected, and there was a torchlight procession up
the aisle of elms and all the neighbors stood on the front porch,
including the Van Dorns and the Mortons and John Kollander in his blue
soldier clothes, carrying the flag into another county office, and the
Henry Fenns, while the Doctor addressed the multitude! And there was
cheering, whereupon Mr. Van Dorn, Judge pro tem and Judge-elect, made a
speech with eloquence and fire in it; John Kollander made his well-known
flag speech, and Captain Morton got some comfort out of the election of
Comrade Nesbit, who had stood where bullets were thickest and as a boy
had bared his breast to the foe to save his country, and drawing the
Doctor into the corner, filed early application to be made
sergeant-at-arms of the State Senate and was promised that or Something
Equally Good. The hungry friends of the new Senator so loaded him with
obligations that blessed night that he again sold his soul to the devil,
went in with the organization, got all the places for all his people,
and being something of an organizer himself, distributed the patronage
for half the State.

Ten days later--or perhaps it may have been two weeks later, at half
past five in the evening--the Judge-elect was