"Well, thank God there's somebody I can talk and laugh with! I'm glad to be able to tell you that Marian will be home to-morrow. You may have the satisfaction of knowing that if you _would_ let her go to the Willings' with Allen Thatcher I can at least bring her back after you failed to do it." "So you did hear from her, did you! Of course you couldn't have told me: I suppose you confide in Miss Garrison now," she ended drearily. His wife's fatigue, betrayed in her tired voice, did not mitigate the stab with which he wished to punish her references to Sylvia. And he delivered it with careful calculation. "You are quite right, Hallie. I did speak to Miss Garrison about Marian. Miss Garrison has gone to bring Marian home. That's all; go to bed." CHAPTER XXVIII A CHEERFUL BRINGER OF BAD TIDINGS The announcement that Harwood was preparing to attack the reorganization of the White River Canneries corporation renewed the hopes of many victims of that experiment in high finance, and most of the claims reached Dan's office that summer. The legal points involved were sufficiently difficult to evoke his best energies, and he dug diligently in the State Library preparing his case. He was enjoying the cool, calm heights of a new freedom. Many older men were eking out a bare living at the law, and the ranks were sadly overcrowded, but he faced the future confidently. He meant to practice law after ideals established by men whose names were still potent in the community; he would not race with the ambulance to pick up damage suits, and he refused divorce cases and small collection business. He meant to be a lawyer, not a scandal-hunting detective or pursuer of small debtors with a constable's process. He tried to forget politics, and yet, in spite of his indifference, hardly a day passed that did not bring visitors to his office bent upon discussing the outlook. Many of these were from the country; men who, like Ramsay, were hopeful of at last getting rid of Bassett. Some of his visitors were young lawyers like himself, most of them graduates of the state colleges, who were disposed to take their politics seriously. Nor were these all of his own party. He found that many young Republicans, affected by the prevailing unrest, held practically his own views on national questions. Several times he gathered up half a dozen of these acquaintances for frugal dinners in the University Club rathskeller, or they met in the saloon affected by Allen's friends of Lueders's carpenter shop. He wanted them to see all sides of the picture, and he encouraged them to crystallize their fears and hopes; more patriotism and less partisanship, they all agreed, was the thing most needed in America.