nd Bailey doing what they could to help, Captain
Cy's campaign soon became worthy of respectful consideration. For a
while Tad Simpson scoffed at the opposition; then he began to work
openly for Mr. Snow. Later he marshaled his trusted officers around the
pool table in the back room of the barber shop and confided to them that
it was anybody's fight and that he was worried.

"It's past bein' a joke," he said. "It's mighty serious. We've got to
hustle, we have. Heman trusted me in this job, and if I fall down it 'll
be bad for me and for you fellers, too. I wish he was home to run things
himself, but he's got business down South there--some property he owns
or somethin'--and says he can't leave. But we must win! By mighty! we've
GOT to. So get every vote you can. Never mind how; just get 'em, that's
all."

Captain Cy was thoroughly enjoying himself. The struggle suited him to
perfection. He was young, in spite of his fifty-five years, and this
tussle against odds, reminding him of other tussles during his first
seasons in business, aroused his energies and, as he expressed it,
"stirred up his vitals and made him hop round like a dose of 'pain
killer.'"

He did not, however, forget Bos'n. He and she had their walks and their
pleasant evenings together in spite of politics. He took the child into
his confidence and told her of the daily gain, or loss, in votes, as
if she were his own age. She understood a little of all this, and tried
hard to understand the rest, preaching between times to Georgianna how
"the bad men were trying to beat Uncle Cyrus because he was gooder than
they, but they couldn't, 'cause everybody loved him so." Georgianna had
some doubts, but she kept them to herself.

Among the things in Bos'n's "box" was a long envelope, sealed with wax
and with a lawyer's name printed in one corner. The captain opened it,
at Emily's suggestion, and was astonished to find that the inclosure was
a will, dated some years back, in which Mrs. Mary Thomas, the child's
mother, left to her daughter all her personal property and also the land
in Orham, Massachusetts, which had been willed to her by her own mother.
There was a note with the will in which Mrs. Thomas stated that no one
save herself had known of this land, not even her husband. She had not
told him because she feared that, like everything else, it would be
sold and the money wasted in dissipation. "He suspected something of the
sort," she added, "but he did