will be glad that his side won. He
has not seen her for months, nor talked with her for years, and yet as
he sits there winding his watch after his great strategic victory in
national politics, he hopes fondly that perhaps Molly will know that
he played a clean hand and won a fair game.

Now let us crawl out from under this rubbish of the coming years, back
into Sycamore Ridge. And while the street is deserted, let us turn the
film of events forward, letting them flit by unnoticed past the
wedding of Molly Culpepper and Adrian Brownwell until we come to the
August day when the railroad came to Sycamore Ridge.

Jacob Dolan, sheriff in and for Garrison County for four years,
beginning with 1873, remembered the summer of 1875 to his dying day,
as the year when he tore his blue soldier coat, and for twenty-five
years, after the fight in which the coat was torn, Dolan never put it
on for a funeral or a state occasion, that he did not smooth out the
seam that Nellie Logan McHurdie made in mending the rent place, and
recall the exigencies of the public service which made it necessary to
tear one's clothes to keep the peace.

"You may state to the court in your own way," said the judge at the
trial of the sheriff for assault, "just how the difficulty began."

"Well, sir," answered Dolan, "there was a bit of a celebration in
town, on August 30, it being the day the railroad came in, and in
honour of the occasion I put on my regimentals, and along about--say
eleven o'clock--as the crowd began to thicken up around the bank
corner, and in front of the hardware store, I was walking along, kind
of shoving the way clear for the ladies to pass, when some one behind
me says, 'General Hendricks was an old thief, and his son is no
better,' and I turned around and clapt my eye on this gentleman here.
I'd never seen him before in my whole life, but I knew by the bold
free gay way he had with his tongue that he was from Minneola and bent
on trouble. 'Keep still,' says I, calm and dignified like, bent on
preserving the peace, as was my duty. 'I'll not,' says he. 'You will,'
says I. 'Tis a free country,' says he, coming toward me with one
shoulder wiggling. 'But not for cowards who malign the dead,' says I.
'Well, they were thieves,' says he, shaking his fist and getting more
and more into contempt of court every minute. 'You're a liar,' says I,
maintaining the dignity of my office. 'And you're a thief too,' says
he. 'A what?' says I. 'A t