wn the stairs, "but a
widower's house with grouchy hired help makes old age still more
lonely."

On their return they found the Duke, feet extended, head tipped back,
eyes on the ceiling. He was deep in thought, and told Harlan to place
his glass on the chair's arm.

"Varden," he said, "eighty isn't old, not for a man like you; and it
shouldn't be lonely, that age. I'm still older, and I propose to wear
out instead of rust out."

"I don't feel rusty, exactly," returned the General, smiling into his
glass. "But when I think of all the marches, Thelismer, of the
campaigns, the heartbreaking struggles of the war--of all the cases won
and cases lost, the nights of study and days of labor in the law--the
fuss and fury of politics--of all the years behind me, I feel as though
I'd like to be used as my father used his old boots: Before he took his
bed for the last time he went up into the garret of the old farm-house
and laid his boots there on their sides. 'Let 'em lie down, now, and
rest,' he said. And I've never allowed them to be disturbed."

The Duke still stared at the ceiling.

"Varden, you and I have known each other so long that you don't need as
much talk from me as you would from a stranger. When I've asked a thing
from you in the past I didn't have to sit down and talk to you an hour
about the reasons why I wanted it. You understood that I had a good
reason for asking. I'm going to ask just one more thing from you in this
life. I'm going to ask it straight from the shoulder. You and I don't
need to beat about the bush with each other. I want you to say 'yes,'
for if you don't you're abandoning our old State as though she were a
widow headed for the almshouse."

Thornton leaned forward, grasped his glass and drained it at a gulp, and
then looked the amazed General squarely in the eyes.

"You're going to be nominated as Governor of this State in the next
convention, and you've got to accept," he declared. "Now hold on! Just
as you understand that I've got good reasons for asking you to do this,
just so I understand all that you're going to say in objection. I
discount all your objections in advance. I know you haven't lost run of
affairs in this State--you know all the mix-up the party is in right
now. They're going to beat Dave Everett in convention, General, just as
sure as the devil can't freeze his own ice. It's going to be
'Seventy-two all over again. People gone crazy for a change and jumping
the wrong