nt I don't know.'

'Doesn't a strong man always get to the front?' the Duchess asked.

'Yes,' said Hiram, 'I guess that's so. Well, I happened to get to know
him, and we became a bit friendly, and we had many a pleasant chat
together. He was as frank as frank, told me all his plans. "I mean to
make this little old place move," he said to me.'

'Well, he has made it move,' said Helena. She was immensely interested,
and her eyes dilated with excitement.

'A little too fast, perhaps,' said Hiram meditatively. 'I don't know.
Anyhow, he had things all his own way for a goodish spell.'

'What did he do when he had things his own way?' Helena asked
impatiently.

'Well, he tried to introduce reforms----'

'Yes, I knew he would do that,' the girl said, with the proud air of a
sort of ownership.

'You seem to have known all about him,' Mrs. Selwyn said, smiling
loftily, sweetly, as at the romantic enthusiasm of youth.

'Well, so I do somehow,' Helena answered almost sharply; certainly with
impatience. She was not thinking of Mrs. Selwyn.

'Now, Mr. Borringer, go on--about his reforms.'

'He seemed to have gotten a kind of notion about making things English
or American. He abolished flogging of criminals and all sorts of
old-fashioned ways; and he tried to reduce taxation; and he put down a
sort of remnant of slavery that was still hanging round; and he wanted
to give free land to all the emancipated folks; and he wanted to have an
equal suffrage to all men, and to do away with corruption in the public
offices and the civil service; and to compel the judges not to take
bribes; and all sorts of things. I am afraid he wanted to do a good deal
too much reform for what you folks would call the governing classes out
there. I thought so at the time. He was right, you know,' Hiram said
meditatively, 'but, then, I am mightily afraid he was right in a wrong
sort of way.'

'He was right, anyhow,' Helena said, triumphantly.

'S'pose he was,' said Hiram; 'but things have to go slow, don't you
see?'

'Well, what happened?'

'I don't rightly know how it all came about exactly; but I guess all the
privileged classes, as you call them here, got their backs up, and all
the officials went dead against him----'

'My great deed was too great,' Helena said.

'What is that, Helena?' her father asked.

'It's from a poem by Mrs. Browning, about another dictator; but more
true of my Dictator than of hers,' Helena answered.

'Well,