y little room was perfectly primitive. He had practically no
tools to make the cleverest counterfeits in years. A deft hand and a
wonderful thumb had the Swami."

"What are they going to do with the big ruby in his turban?" asked Lena.

"Oh, that is one of the chief things that I came to tell you about. You,
my dear Mrs. Percival, have especial reason to be interested in this."
He turned, brimming with information, to Lena, "The captain of police
took it to Brand's--the jeweler, you know--to be appraised. Now isn't
this the crown of the whole story? Brand tells him that it is paste!"

Dick sat back in his chair and laughed with abandon, and laughed again.

"And what about my rubies'?" screamed Lena, springing to her feet.

"I have not the slightest doubt that they are paste, too. Everything he
touched was fraud."

"I'm glad of it! I'm glad of it!" cried Dick, with a new access of
mirth. "The old rascal! Giving my wife jewels! Why, Lena, you couldn't
wear his stuff anyway, after all this fracas. It will do to trim a
Christmas tree."

But Lena, with angry face, tapped the floor nervously with her gaudy
small slipper, and made no reply to her husband's hilarity.

Even to her slow-working mind it was evident that she had paid a high
price for some worthless bits of glass. This conferring of a favor was
indeed a bond.

She wondered what Mr. Early thought of her; what Dick would say if he
ever discovered.

CHAPTER XXI

A LIGHT IN THE WEST GOES DOWN

The strenuousness of the fall campaign almost wiped these events from
Dick's mind. Day after day he spent in bringing home his points to the
man on the street and in the workshop. Much of it was dreary and
monotonous work, but he kept doggedly at it. It seemed his whole life,
now. And night after night Mr. Preston, Dick and Ellery tried to put
fire into some dingy little hall-full of men. To Percival's surprise,
Norris developed a plain common-sense variety of eloquence that appealed
to his audiences quite as much as did Dick's more fervid eloquence.
Ellery invariably spoke straight to some well-known condition. But they
hammered and pounded and reasoned and explained; they tried emotion, and
logic and everything except bribes to win their ground, until their
speeches began to sound automatic to themselves, their voices grew
hoarse, and they moved like men in a dream.

"If there were one day more of this," Dick said to Norris, as they
tramped home late on t