dge?"

"Stirrin'--how're you, Jim?"

"Ain't stirrin' at all."

"Shucks, you'll be up an' aroun' in no time."

"I ain't goin' to git up again."

"Don't you git stubborn now, Jim."

A nurse brought in some medicine and the Pope took it with a wry face.
The judge reached for his saddle-pockets and pulled out a bottle of white
liquor with a stopper of corn-shucks.

"This'll take the bad taste out o' yo' mouth."

"The docs won't let me--but lemme smell it." The judge had whipped out
a twist of long green and again the Pope shook his head:

"Can't drink--can't chaw!"

"Oh, Lord!" The judge bit off a mouthful and a moment later walked to the
window and, with his first and second fingers forked over his lips, ejected
an amber stream.

"Good Lord, judge--don't do that. You'll splatter a million people."
He called for a spittoon and the judge grunted disgustedly.

"I'd hate to live in a place whar a feller can't spit out o' his
own window."

"Don't you like it?"

"Hit looks like circus day--I got the headache already."

A telegram was brought in.

"Been seein' a lot about you in the papers," said the judge, and the
Pope waved wearily to a pile of dailies. There were columns about him
in those papers--about his meteoric rise: how he started a poor boy in
the mountains, studied by candle-light, taught school in the hills: how
a vision of their future came to him even that early and how he clung
to that vision all his life, turning, twisting for option money on coal
lands, making a little sale now and then, but always options and more
options and sales and more sales, until now the poor mountain boy was
a king among the coal barons of the land.

"Judge," said the Pope, "the votin's started down home."

"How's it goin'?"

"Easy."

"Been spendin' any money?"

"Not a cent."

"Ole Bill Maddox is."

"Why, judge, I'm the daddy an' grandaddy o' that town. I built streets
and sidewalks for it out o' my own pocket. I put up two churches for 'em.
I built the water-works, the bank, an' God knows what all. Ole Bill Maddox
can't turn a wheel against _me_." The little judge was marvelling: here
was a man who had refused all his life to run for office, who could have
been congressman, senator, governor; and who had succumbed at last.

"Jim, what in blue hell do you want that office fer?"

"To make folks realize their duties as citizens," said the Pope patiently;
"to maintain streets and sidewalks and water-works a