tch over the land, builded better than they knew. To the
simple and ardent idealist its white stateliness must always suggest
something symbolic, and, after all, it is the ardent and simple idealist
whose dreams and symbols paint to prosaic human minds the beautiful
impossibilities whose unattainable loveliness so allures as to force even
the unexalted world into the endeavour to create such reproductions of
their forms as crude living will allow.

Tom leaned against the side of the car window and watched the great dome
with an air of curious reflection. Sheba and Rupert leaned forward and
gazed at it with dreaming eyes.

"It looks as the capitol of a great republic ought to look," Rupert said.
"Spotless and majestic, and as if it dominated all it looks down upon
with pure laws and dignity and justice."

"Just so," said Tom.

In the various crises of political excitement in Hamlin County he had
taken the part of an unbiassed but humorous observer, and in that
character had gained much experience of a primitive kind. What he had
been led chiefly to remark in connection with the "great republic" was
that the majesty and spotlessness of its intentions were not invariably
realised by mere human units.

"Well," he said, as he took down his valise from the rack, "we're coming
in here pretty well fixed for leaving the place millionaires. If we had
only fifteen cents in our pockets, it would be a dead sure thing,
according to all the biographers _I_ ever read. The only thing against us
is that we have a little more--but it's not enough to spoil our luck,
that I'll swear."

He was not without reason in the statement. Few voyagers on the ocean of
chance could have dared the journey with less than they had in their
possession.

"What we've got to do," he had said to Rupert, "is to take care of Sheba.
We two can rough it."

They walked through the awakening city, finding it strange and bare with
its broad avenues and streets ill-paved, bearing traces everywhere of the
tragedy of war through which it had passed. The public buildings alone
had dignity; for the rest, it wore a singularly provincial and
uncompleted aspect; its plan was simple and splendid in its vistas and
noble spaces, but the houses were irregular and without beauty of form;
negro shanties huddled against some of the most respectable, and there
were few whose windows or doors did not announce that board and lodging
might be obtained within. There was no loo