else?"

"Yes, it's a pity about her father," admitted Margaret placidly. "If
what Mr. Benham thinks is true, I suppose the Governor has agreed not to
interfere in this dreadful strike."

Again Mrs. Culpeper sniffed. "Every one knows he is merely a tool in the
hands of those people," she said.

In the weeks that followed Stephen heard his mother's opinion repeated
wherever he went. Everywhere the strike was discussed, and everywhere,
in the Culpeper's circle, Gideon Vetch and his policies were repudiated.
It was generally believed that the strike would be called, and that the
Governor had been, as old General Plummer neatly put it, "bought off by
the riff-raff." There were those, and the General was among them, who
thought that Vetch had been definitely threatened by the labour leaders.
There were open charges of "shady dealings" in the newspapers; hints
that he had got the office of Governor "by striking a bargain" with the
faction whose tool he had become. "Don't tell me, sir, that they didn't
put him there because they knew they could count on him!" roared old
Powhatan, with the accumulated truculence of eighty quarrelsome years.
Of course the General was intemperate; but, as the Judge observed
facetiously, "it was refreshing, in these days when there was nothing
for decent people to drink, to find that intemperance was still
possible. With the General fuming over corruption and Benham preaching
morality, there is no need," he added, "for us to despair of virtue."

For the people who condemned Vetch were quite as emphatic in praise of
John Benham; and in these weeks of unrest and anxiety, Corinna's face
was glowing with pride and pleasure. That Benham, in his unselfish
service, was leading the way, no one doubted. Tireless, unrewarded,--for
it was admitted by those who esteemed him most that he was never really
in touch with the crowd, that his zeal awakened no human response,--he
had sacrificed his private practice in order to devote himself day and
night to averting the strike. Stephen, inspired to hero worship, asked
himself again what the difference was, beyond simple personal rectitude,
between Vetch and Benham? Vetch, lacking, so far as the young man knew,
every public virtue except the human touch which enkindles either the
souls or the imaginations of men, could overturn Benham's argument with
a dramatic gesture, an emotional phrase. Why was it that Benham,
possessing both the character of the patriot and t