him go."

For a moment Anthy stood silent, and just a little rigid, I thought. But
it was only for a moment.

"We were going to have Uncle's editorial, weren't we? Mr. Carr can see
it later."

She was now in complete command. She got the Captain down into his chair
and put the manuscript in his hand. He cleared his throat, threw back
his head, pleased in spite of himself.

"It was a hard duty, but here it is," he said, and began reading in a
resonant voice:

"We have hesitated long and considered deeply before expressing the
views of the _Star_ upon the recent sad apostasy of Theodore Roosevelt.
We loved him like a son. We gloried in him as in an older brother. We
followed that bright figure (in a manner of speaking) when he fought on
the bloody slopes of San Juan, we were with him when he marched homeward
in his hour of triumph to the plaudits of a grateful nation----"

The Captain narrated vividly how the _Star_ had stood staunchly with
that peerless leader through every campaign. And then his voice changed
suddenly, he drew a deep breath.

"But we are with him no longer. We know him now no more----"

He mourned him as a son gone astray, as a follower after vain gods. I
remember just how Nort looked when he read this part of the editorial
some time afterward, glancing up quickly. "Isn't it great! Doesn't it
make you think of old King David: 'Oh, my son Absalom, my son, my son
Absalom!'"

But the editorial was not all mournful. It closed with a triumphant
note. There was no present call to be discouraged about the nation or
the Grand Old Party. Leaders might come and go, but the party of
Lincoln, the party of Grant, the party of Garfield, with undiminished
lustre, would march ever onward to victory.

"The _Star_," he writes, "will remain faithful to its allegiance. The
_Star_ is old-line Republican, Cooper Union Republican--the unchanging
Republicanism of the great-souled McKinley and of Theodore
Roosevelt--before his apostasy."

It was wonderful! No editorial ever published in the Hempfield _Star_
or, so far as I could learn, in any paper in the county, was ever as
widely copied throughout the country as this one--copied, indeed, by
some editors who did not know or love the old Captain as we did.

After such a stormy morning it was wonderful to see how quickly the
troubled atmosphere of the _Star_ began to clear. Four rather
sheepish-looking men began to work with a complete show of absorption,
while A