ALBERT walked across the yard toward the larger of the new stable buildings. It was a dry, warm, luminous night, radiant overhead with the glory of a whole studded heaven of stars. The moon, the full, shining-faced moon of October, would rise in an hour or so, and then would come pale mists along the valley bottom-lands, and perhaps clouds in the eastern sky. But one could walk bareheaded in this soft starlight now, without a fear of cold.

The lawyer paid no sort of attention to the night, but strode across the grass, swung himself over the stile, and pulled back the great stable door, creaking shrilly on its rollers, with angry energy. He stopped upon the threshold of the darkness, through which the shapes of carriages covered with white sheets vaguely loomed, and called out:

“Milton!”

There was the answering sound of footsteps overhead. A door at the top of the stairs was opened, and a flood of light illumined the staircase.

“Oh, you’ve got back, ay?” said a voice from the top.

It had been Milton’s idea, when the new buildings were erected, to achieve complete domestic autonomy by arranging for himself a residential room above the carriage place. The chamber was high and commodious. It had been lathed and plastered, and, in lieu of wall-paper, the sides were decorated with coarsely-colored circus bills, or pictures from sporting weeklies, all depicting women in tights. There was a good corded bed in one corner. Two chairs, a stained pine table on which, beside the lamp, were some newspapers, a little wood stove, and a mantel-shelf covered with tin-types and cheap photographs, completed the scene. Milton enjoyed living here greatly. It comported with his budding ideas of his own personal dignity, and it freed him from the disagreeable supervision which the elder Miss Fairchild was so prone to exercise over all who lived in the house. Only the Lawton girl, Melissa, came across the yard each forenoon, to tidy up the room, and chuckle over the pictures and the tastes which these, and the few books Milton from time to time brought home from a sporting-library at Thessaly, indicated.

“It’s lucky you hadn’t gone to bed,” said the lawyer, curtly, pulling his hat over his eyes to shade them from the flaring light, and sitting down. “I was going to wake you up. What’s your news?”

“I’ve been over to Tyre twice to see Beekman, ’n’ no use. Once he wouldn’t talk at all—jis’ kep his ole lantern-jaws tight shet, ’n’ said ’Ef Albert Fairchild wants to see me, he knaows where I kin be faound.’ Th’ other time he was more talkative—tried his best to fine aout what I was drivin’ at, but I couldn’t git no satisfaction aout o’ him. He wouldn’t bine himself to nothin’. He jis’ stood off et arm’s lenth, ’n’ sized up what I was a sayin’ in that dum sly way o’ his. I couldn’t make head nor tail of him. He wouldn’t say he would take money, ’n’ he wouldn’t say he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t say yes or nao to th’ post office scheme, or anythin’ else. He jis’ kep’ his big eyes on me, as much as to say, ‘You ketch a weasel asleep!’ ’n’ listened. Naow yeh knaow th’ hull of it. If yeh want anythin’ more done, yeh better do it yerself.”

The lawyer looked attentively at his hired man, and drummed with his fingers on the-table. “So that’s all, is it? You are no further ahead with Beek-man than when the Convention adjourned? You’ve got no proposition from him—no statement as to how he takes my proposals?”

“That’s it, Albert—jest it!”

Something in Milton’s tone seemed to annoy Albert even more than his confession of failure had done. He rose to his feet abruptly. “Don’t ‘Albert’ me!” he said, raising his voice out of its accustomed calm; “I don’t like it! You take too much upon yourself. But—I am to blame for it myself. I’ve let you run things with too free a hand, and trusted affairs to you that I ought to have kept to myself. It is always my way,” he went on, in petulant selfcriticism. “I never did trust anybody who was worth the powder to blow him up. I ought to be used to it by this time. But to encounter two such fools in one evening—and this evening of all others, too—by George! it’s enough to make a man strike his mother!”

“I ain’t no fool, Mister Fairchild”—the hired man was standing up too, and his harsh tones gave the title an elaborate, almost ridiculous emphasis—“’n’ I’ll thank yeh to keep yer tongue civil, tew! Ef yeh don’t like my style, yeh kin git sum’un else to do yer dirty work for yeh. I’ve no hankerin’ fer it. I’m hired to manage this farm, I am. Nothin’ was said ’baout my hevin’ to run a Congresshn’l campaign into th’ bargain. I ain’t sayin’ but what I kin do it’s well’s some other folks. I ain’t sayin’ that it’s beyon’ me. P’raps I’ve got my pull ’n’ this caounty, ’s well ’s some other people. P’raps ’f I was amine to, I could knock somebuddy’s game skyhigh, jis’ by liftin’ my little finger tomorrer. I ain’t sayin’ I’m goin’ to dew it. I ain’t findin’ no fault with yeh. All I say is I ain’t goin’ to take one ioty o’ slack from you, or anybody else, about this thing. You hear me!”

The hired man had spoken aggressively and loudly, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest, and his shaggy head well up in the air. He knew his employer pretty well, and had estimated with some precision the amount of impudence he would bear. This full measure he was not disposed to abate one atom. He had failed to buy the Jay County boss, or even to satisfactorily gauge his intentions, it was true, but that was no reason why he should submit to being called a fool by Albert Fairchild, who couldn’t run his farm, let alone his Congressional campaign, without him. So the mean-figured, slouching countryman, with his cheap, ill-fitting clothes, frowzy beard, and rough, red hands truculently spread palm outward on his breast, stood his ground before the city lawyer and grinned defiance at him.

The lawyer did not immediately reply. He was not ordinarily at a loss for words or decisions in his dealings with men, but this rude, uncouth rustic, with his confident air and his fund of primordial cunning, puzzled him. There was some un............