gel peeking in at every committee-room keyhole! Jeemsrollickins! Jim
Blaine, himself, couldn't play the game these days."

If Thornton listened, he gave no sign. He had his elbows on the
window-sill and was glowering on his constituents. They seemed
determined to keep up the hateful serenade. It was hard for the old man
to understand. But he did understand human nature--how dependence breeds
resentment, how favors bestowed hatch sullen ingratitude, how jealousy
turns and rends as soon as Democracy hisses, "At him!"

There was a dingy wall map beside him between the windows. A red line
surrounded a section of it: two towns, a dozen plantations, and a score
of unorganized townships--a thousand square miles of territory that
composed his political barony. And on that section double red lines
marked off half a million acres of timber-land, mountain, plain, and
lake that Thelismer Thornton owned.

Chairman Presson, walking off his indignation, came and stood in front
of the map.

"Between you and me, Thelismer, they've got quite a lot to grumble
about, the farmers have. You wild-land fellows have grabbed a good deal,
and you don't pay much taxes on it. You ought to have loosened a little
earlier."

"You feel the cold water on your feet and you lay it to me rocking the
boat, hey?" returned the Duke. "This is no time to begin to call names,
Luke. But I want to tell you that where there's one man in this State
grumbling about wild-land taxes, there are a hundred up and howling
against you and the rest of the gilt-edged hotel-keepers that are
selling rum and running bars just as though there wasn't any prohibitory
law in our constitution." He had turned from the window. "You're looking
at that map, eh? You think I've stolen land, do you? Look here! I came
down that river out there on a raft--just married--my wife and a few
poor little housekeeping traps on it. We never had a comfort till we got
to the age where most folks die. I've had to live to be eighty-five to
get a little something out of life. And she worked herself to death in
spite of all I could say to stop her. Why, when the bill of sale fell
due on the first pair of oxen I owned, she gave me the three hundred
old-fashioned cents that she--don't get me to talking, Presson! But, by
the Jehovah, I've earned that land up there! Dollars don't pay up a man
and a woman for being pioneers. I'm not twitting you nor some of the
rest of the men in this State in regard to ho