be a shrewd lawyer--oh, yes! Our veteran here wanted me to get him
an increase of pension, because he had dyspepsia; Phelps wanted a new
county survey that would put the widow Wilson's little bottom farm
inside his south line; Elder wanted to lend money at 5 per cent a month
and get it collected; old Stark here wanted to wheedle old women up in
Vermont into investing their annuities in real estate mortgages that are
not worth the paper they are written on. Oh, you needed me hard enough,
and you'll go on needing me; and that's why I'm not afraid to plug the
truth home to you this once.

"Well, I came back here and became the damned shyster you wanted me
to be. You pretend to have some sort of respect for me; and yet you'll
stand up and throw mud at Harvey Merrick, whose soul you couldn't dirty
and whose hands you couldn't tie. Oh, you're a discriminating lot of
Christians! There have been times when the sight of Harvey's name in
some Eastern paper has made me hang my head like a whipped dog; and,
again, times when I liked to think of him off there in the world, away
from all this hog wallow, doing his great work and climbing the big,
clean upgrade he'd set for himself.

"And we? Now that we've fought and lied and sweated and stolen, and
hated as only the disappointed strugglers in a bitter, dead little
Western town know how to do, what have we got to show for it? Harvey
Merrick wouldn't have given one sunset over your marshes for all you've
got put together, and you know it. It's not for me to say why, in the
inscrutable wisdom of God, a genius should ever have been called from
this place of hatred and bitter waters; but I want this Boston man to
know that the drivel he's been hearing here tonight is the only
tribute any truly great man could ever have from such a lot of sick,
side-tracked, burnt-dog, land-poor sharks as the here-present financiers
of Sand City--upon which town may God have mercy!"

The lawyer thrust out his hand to Steavens as he passed him, caught up
his overcoat in the hall, and had left the house before the Grand Army
man had had time to lift his ducked head and crane his long neck about
at his fellows.

Next day Jim Laird was drunk and unable to attend the funeral services.
Steavens called twice at his office, but was compelled to start East
without seeing him. He had a presentiment that he would hear from him
again, and left his address on the lawyer's table; but if Laird found
it, he never a