all, it was as a
stenographer that she remembered herself in the grandeur and the glory
of her past. So Henry Fenn and Laura Van Dorn carried on the work that
Violet began, and for them souls and flowers and happiness bloomed over
the Valley in the dark, unwholesome places which death had all but taken
for his own.

It was that spring when Dr. Nesbit went to the capital and took his last
fling at State politics. For two months he had deadlocked his party
caucus in the election of a United States Senator with hardly more than
a dozen legislative votes. And he was going out of his dictatorship in a
golden glow of glory.

And this was the beginning of the golden age for Captain Morton. The
Morton-Perry Axle Works were thriving. Three eight-hour shifts kept the
little plant booming, and by agreement with the directors of the
Independent mine, Nathan Perry spent five hours a day in the works. He
and the Captain, and the youngest Miss Morton, who was keeping books,
believed that it would go over the line from loss to profit before grass
came. The Captain hovered about the plant like an earth-bound spirit day
and night, interrupting the work of the men, disorganizing the system
that Nathan had installed, and persuading himself that but for him the
furnaces would go dead and the works shut down.

It was one beautiful day in late March, after the November election
wherein the Doctor's law had won and the Doctor himself had lost, that
Grant Adams was in Harvey figuring with Mr. Brotherton on supplies for
his office. Captain Morton came tramping down the clouds before him as
he swept into the Serenity and jabbed a spike through the wheels of
commerce with the remark: "Well, George--what do you think of my
regalia--eh?"

Mr. Brotherton and Grant looked up from their work. They beheld the
Captain arrayed in a dazzling light gray spring suit--an exceedingly
light gray suit, with a hat of the same color and gloves and shoe spats
to match, with a red tie so red that it all but crackled. "First profits
of the business. We got over the line yesterday noon, and I had a
thousand to go on, and this morning I just went on this spree--what
say?"

"Well, Cap, when Morty Sands sees you he will die of envy. You're
certainly the lily of the Valley and the bright and morning star--the
fairest of ten thousand to my soul! Grant," said Brotherton as he turned
to his customer, "behold the plute!"

The Captain stood grinning in pride as the men