banished to the attic.

The maid came presently to tell him that Mr. Bernard had gone for a
walk to the golf links.

Shelby was relieved. He felt ill at ease in this queer drab dwelling,
and doubtful of the course he ought to pursue with its tenant. It
would be another matter altogether in the open air. Returning to his
law office, he bade William Irons to telephone the Tuscarora House
livery-stable to send around his horse and buggy.

At the farm-house on the outskirts which served the golf devotees for a
headquarters Shelby was told that Graves had gone yet farther, taking
the direction of the Hilliard quarries--geologizing bent, the speaker
thought. Unassociated with practical results, this had always
presented itself to Shelby as a trivial pursuit akin to botany,
embroidery, and other employments distinctly feminine. He forebore
comment, however, and presently struck down a road which wound into a
little suburb peopled by Polish quarry-workers. It was essentially an
alien community in whose straggling streets and lanes one heard English
but seldom. Tow-headed children, shy elves peeping from odd
hiding-places, swarmed a half-dozen and upward to a house. Work was
the key-note of Little Poland, as it was called. While the men toiled
in the sandstone quarries the women did a man's stint in the fields of
the outlying farms, and bore more children. Childbirth was a mere
detail in these thick-waisted women's lives; some hours, a day perhaps,
and they were stooping in the fields again. And the children early put
shoulder to the wheel; those too small for the fields begged food in
the streets of the town. Little Poland was virtually a fief of Joe
Hilliard's. Men, women, and elves looked up to him as to a benevolent
feudal lord, and the naturalized males voted Joe Hilliard's party
ticket with mechanical precision.

The politician approached the quarries with an interested eye. Among
his many irons in the fire he had acquired part ownership in another
quarry to the westward, like this bordering the towpath of the canal.
Bowers held the controlling interest, though neither his name nor
Shelby's figured prominently in its management. They called it the
Eureka Sandstone Company.

Shelby tied his horse near the office, and, putting his head among the
morning-glories curtaining an open window, stated his errand to
Hilliard, whose vast bulk was humped ludicrously upon a high stool.
The big fellow stopped thum