When he had been informed by the judge of the latest chapter in the history of the canteen outrage, Mr. Allison laughed heartily. "What have you been voting for the last ten years, Judge," he asked. "Not for the canteen," the older man answered warmly. "I have, and for every other measure conducive to the best interests of the trade--and we have voted the same ticket to a dot." Finding the judge rather indisposed to talk just then the young man turned to his hostess. "I am on a quest," he said. "Tell me of some one possessed of enough knowledge of human nature to recommend a course that will square me with an unruly conscience and--a woman." "My father is a legal light, ask him. He needs diversion now, I think," and Jean smiled at sight of his perplexed face. "His specialty has not been 'man atoms of a great iniquity,'" said Allison with a smile that hardly concealed his anxiety. "Tell me, what would you do if you had been a 'man-atom,' had grown disgusted with the mother mass and wished to completely sever your connection with it before God and man?" "You mean if I were a man? Well, first I would ask the Lord to forgive me for ever having been a 'man-atom.'" "I have been duly penitent," assented the questioner. "Then I would buy some paper--a quantity of it--and I would write yards and yards of resolutions stating that 'it can never be legalized without sin.'" "And then?" "Then I should pray a whole lot--and pursue the even tenor of my way; and if my conscience should assert itself in the face of all this, I should think it too cranky a conscience to be humored." "What about the woman?" Jean smiled. "Woman? Women," she said, "have notions. To save their lives they cannot see the use in wasting paper and prayers. They would DO something. Women--some women--believe in standing right with God and conscience though the heavens fall." "So do some men," said Allison, gravely. Jean started slightly. The tone of his voice, the look of his eye, conveyed to her the knowledge that somewhere, somehow, since she had seen him last he had been awakened. Involuntarily she clasped her hands and in the passing glance she gave him Gilbert Allison caught a glimpse of the heaven that orthodox people say follows the resurrection of the just. Judge Thorn roused himself from the spell that had been cast over him by the news in the crumpled paper. A second time he took it in his hands and slowly, solemnly crushed it. "The rank and file, the men whose honesty and virtue have made the party great," he said, "have been defrauded, outraged. My support of the administration and of the party of my political life is forever ended unless it reclaim the right to a decent man's support." While her father talked, Jean, lest in the first moments of her delightful discovery she should clap her hands or cry or dance or in some other unconventional way outrage grave decorum, returned to her seat and her guitar.