ntains and fought shoulder
to shoulder, and year after year they carried back the lion's share of
the spoils between them. The great South, as a whole, was powerless to
resist them, for there could be no lasting alliance between Harwich and
Brampton and Newcastle and Gosport. Now their king had come back, and the
North Country men were rallying again to his standard. No wonder that
Levi Dodd's head, poor thing that it was, was safe for a while.

"Organize what you have left, and be quick about it," said Mr. Flint,
when the news had come, and they sat in the library planning a new
campaign in the face of this evident defection. There was no time to cry
over spilt milk or reinstated school-teachers. The messages flew far and
wide to the manufacturing towns to range their guilds into line for the
railroads. The seneschal wrote the messages, and sent the summons to the
sleek men of the cities, and let it be known that the coffers were full
and not too tightly sealed, that the faithful should not lack for the
sinews of war. Mr. Flint found time, too, to write some carefully worded
but nevertheless convincing articles for the Newcastle Guardian, very
damaging to certain commanders who had proved unfaithful.

"Flint," said Mr. Worthington, when they had worked far into the night,
"if Bass beats us, I'm a crippled man."

"And if you postpone the fight now that you have begun it? What then?"

The answer, Mr. Worthington knew, was the same either way. He did not
repeat it. He went to his bed, but not to sleep for many hours, and when
he came down to his breakfast in the morning, he was in no mood to read
the letter from Cambridge which Mrs. Holden had put on his plate. But he
did read it, with what anger and bitterness may be imagined. There was
the ultimatum,--respectful, even affectionate, but firm. "I know that you
will, in all probability, disinherit me as you say, and I tell you
honestly that I regret the necessity of quarrelling with you more than I
do the money. I do not pretend to say that I despise money, and I like
the things that it buys, but the woman I love is more to me than all that
you have."

Mr. Worthington laid the letter down, and there came irresistibly to his
mind something that his wife had said to him before she died, shortly
after they had moved into the mansion. "Dudley, how happy we used to be
together before we were rich!" Money had not been everything to Sarah
Worthington, either. But now no tende