of smoke shot up, bearing knobs like hideous mushrooms.
The knobs were black with cinders and spangled with sparks. The menace
they bore could be descried even at that distance. A breeze wrenched off
one of those knobs, and carried it out from the main conflagration. The
roof of a barn half-way down the hillside began to smoke. Sparks had
dropped there. After a time the two men could see trickles of fire
running up the shingles.

"There goes one stand of buildings," announced Thornton.

"I swear, you take this thing cool enough!"

"Well, I'm not a rain-storm or a pipe-line, Luke. There's nothing more I
can do. When Sylvester gets there with his crowd I'll have a hundred men
or so of my own fighting it. And if a man sets fire on his land the law
makes him pay the neighbors if the fire gets away and damages them. I'm
prepared to settle without beating down prices. Let's go over to The
Barracks."

Presson went along grumbling.

"You ought to have stayed in this fight this year for yourself,
Thelismer. There was no need of all this uproar in ticklish times. A
proposition like this makes the general campaign all the harder." He
kept casting apprehensive glances behind at the swelling smoke-clouds.

"I'm paying the freight, Luke."

"There'd have been no fight to it if you'd stayed in yourself. Even your
old whooping cyclone of a Niles, there, said that much. You've gone to
work and got your grandson nominated, but between him and the bunch and
that fire up there it looks to me as though your troubles were just
beginning. Say, look here, Thelismer, honest to gad, you're using our
politics just to grind your own axes with!"

"And you never heard of anybody except patriots in politics, eh?"

"When you prejudice a State campaign in order to break up a
spooning-match and to give your grandson a course of sprouts outside a
lumbering operation, you're making it a little too personal--and a
little too expensive for all concerned."

The State chairman had his eyes on the fire again.

"As far as my business goes--that's _my_ business," said the Duke,
placidly. "As for the expense--well, I never got a great deal of fun out
of anything except politics, and politics is always more or less
expensive. When the bills get in for what has happened to-day I reckon
I'll find the job was worth the price. You needn't worry about me,
Luke--not about my failing to get my money's worth. For when I walk
across the lobby of the State Hous