es, it will come not on the wings of the peace dove but belched
from the mouths of guns--riding the gales of war."

CHAPTER XXXI

Boone Wellver walked into the office of the police chief one spring
morning when the trees along the streets were youthfully green.
Somewhere outside a band, parading with transparencies, was summoning
all horse-lovers and devotees of chance to the track and paddocks of
Churchill Downs.

Inside the office of the chief sat Morgan Wallifarro, point-device as
ever, and over his desk the chief bent, listening with an attitude of
deference to what he said. It was a new department head who occupied
that swivel chair. New officials occupied every office under that
clock-towered roof, and behind each placarded door the suggestions of
Morgan Wallifarro held some degree of authoritative force and sanction.

For almost two years the courts had laboured to the grind of the contest
cases. Again, shoulder to shoulder with the Nestors of the bar and their
younger assistants, Boone had played his minor but far from trivial
part. Almost a year before he had listened in the joint sessions room as
the decisive utterances of the two chancellors fell upon a taut and
expectant stillness. Those arbiters had read long and learned
disquisitions as befitted the final chapter to months of hearings. That
day had been a Waterloo for attempted Reform. With dignity of manner and
legalistic verbiage Boone had heard it adjudged that behind the physical
results of the elections the interference of the courts might not
penetrate, and he had turned away disheartened but not surprised.

Then had come a new beginning; the final issue in the Court of Appeals,
and finally out of that ultimate mill had been ground a reversal and a
decision that upon a government seated by such devious and fraudulent
methods the cloak of responsibility rested "like the mantle of a giant
upon the withered shoulders of a pigmy."

Now as Boone shook hands with the new chief, a patrolman entered the
place and stood silently on the threshold. In his eyes was the sullen
but unaggressive resentment of the whipped bully. This was the officer
who had brandished a club over Morgan Wallifarro's head and who had
dragged Boone out of the registration booth under arrest. Gone now was
his domineering truculence, gone all but the smouldering of his old,
self-confident ferocity. Morgan glanced up without comment, and the
chief recognized the new arrival