|PORT ARGENT had not reached such a stage of civic life that its wealthy citizens went out into the neighbouring country by reason of warm weather. Besides, the neighbouring country is flat, and the summer heats seem to lie on it level and undisturbed. There straight roads meet at right angles, one cornfield is like another, and one stumpy pasture differs little from the next. It is fertile, and looks democratic, not to say socialistic, in its monotonous similarity, but it does not look like a landscape apt to draw out to it the civilian, as the hill country draws out its civilians, with the thirst of the hill people for their falling brooks and stormy mountains, the wood thrushes and the columbine. An “observer of decades” might have remarked that Herbert Avenue was the pleasantest spot he had seen within a hundred miles of Port Argent, and that the civic life seemed to be peculiarly victorious at that point. There was a village air about the Avenue, only on a statelier scale, but with the same space and greenness and quiet. One of the largest houses was T. M. Secor's. Secor sat on his broad verandah in the early twilight. He stirred heavily in his chair, and stretched out a great hand thick and hard, as Hennion came up the steps. “Glad to see you, sonny,” Secor said. “Stick up your feet and have a drink.” “Just come from Nevada?” “One hour and one-half ago, during the which time Billy Macclesfield's been here, greasy with some new virtues. I take it you had something to do with greasing him. Next came Ted, who said he's going to get married. Next came Aidee with a melodious melodrama of his own, and said he was going to quit town. Why, things are humming here! How you feeling, sonny?” A huge, hairy, iron-grey, talkative man, with a voice like an amiable bison, was T. M. Secor. He continued: “Hold on! Why, Aidee said you knew about that screed of his. I gathered you got it by a sort of fortuitous congregation of atoms? I gathered that there brother of Aidee's was, by the nature of him, a sort of fortuitous atom.” “About that.” “Just so! Well--you ain't got a melodious melodrama too?” “No,” said Hennion. “I want to take up the conversation you had with Macclesfield.” “Oh, you do!” “I'm not feeling greasy with virtue myself, you know.” “Oh, you ain't!”--Secor was silent for some moments. “I guess I'm on to you, sonny,” he said at last. “I'll tell you my mind about it. I think you handled Macclesfield all right, and that's a very good job, and you may be solid now with the gang, for aught I know, but my idea is, it'll be only a question of time before you get bucked off. I'd give you a year, maybe two.” “I think so.” “You figure on two years?”