in strengthening the Colonel’s contempt.

When Halstead had come to the town he had found the state of affairs there worse than even his books had pictured financial domination—the land all owned by one person, this person himself the great legislator of the district, the townspeople practically slaves to the one will.

This seemed a deep wrong, and he resented it by at once declaring war on the evil. Year in and out his quiet, determined speech in village meetings, in social groups, out at county fairs, flowed into inevitable impeachment of the Colonel. Finally the adverse power had grown to such proportions as to lead to the overthrow of the magnate.

Halstead thought the Colonel a cold, calculating man, bent on appropriation of whatever Fate threw in his way. TheColonel had in the intervals of his thought put down Halstead for one of the revolutionary agitators for whom any one of his temperament would have a natural horror.

Now had come the spring season of the Colonel’s return from New York, where his office lay. And the Colonel reflected to himself: “Once I dared go about there self respected —now all that is gone through the jealousy of a pestilential agitator.” And in Halstead’s soul had welled up the bitter reflection there that night at his doorway: “I wonder why he comes at all?”

Third Movement

The shoemaker worked at his bench. Jack Alton had just entered. He had been telling Halstead that the night before he and the Colonel had come to town on the same train, and Halstead’s