Still with one hand on each fat knee, and sitting very upright, Jethro Peake, his round, red face, with a bristly, unshaven stubble about the chin, solemn with the sense of the dignity and importance of the occasion, demanded,— “Air you-uns cit’zen o’ Tennessee?” “Yes, sir.” “Twenty-one?” “Yes, sir.” “Reside in this county?” “Yes, sir.” “Resided hyar six months ’fore this day?” “Yes, sir.” As the vote, the first he had ever cast, was accepted, he looked curiously on, while the closely rolled scroll was dropped unread into the ballot-box. Somehow he seemed unaccountably disappointed by the mysterious silence in which his choice was enveloped. He walked slowly toward the door, looking back over his shoulder at the guarded ballot-box. Suddenly he remarked in a strange, offhand manner, “I ain’t keerin’ who knows how my vote be gin. I scratched one name off’n my ticket. _I_ know how ter write Eli Strobe.” There were the makings of a politician in Joshua Nevins; he answered instantly from out the crowd, “I kin spare yer vote, Jake Baintree. An’ ef I can’t I’d ruther be defeated than hold office by the favor o’ a scape-gallows.” There was a sensation in the crowd, and some “scratched tickets” were presently deposited that might have shown, if unrolled, another name written in, that was _not_ Strobe. A change ensued in the atmosphere of popular feeling. It was not definite, but Teck Jepson, with a thousand fine fibres of sensitiveness, which he had not known he possessed, became painfully aware of it, and fiercely complained to Eli Strobe. “I’m minded ter fling ye over the fence, Eli,” he said. “Ef ye hedn’t gin yerse’f ter upholdin’ that thar Jake Baintree, ye wouldn’t hev been lumped with a murderer like him.” Eli Strobe rested his slow, pompous gaze upon his friend. “He ain’t no murderer. An’ ef he war, his votin’ fur me don’t lump me with him.” He turned his heavy-lidded, full-lashed eyes ruminatively upon the landscape, and said no more. Despite his deliberate burly dignity, however, there was a sense of trouble and perplexity about him, indefinitely perceptible, and he evidently listened heedfully when his friend and backer rejoined,— “Waal, his votin’ fur you-uns, an’ tellin’ it out that-a-way, will make a heap o’ folks vote agin ye. I be powerful glad it never happened no sooner in the day, an’ ye hev got what ye hev got. What ailed the darned idjit?” “I reckon he ’lowed he war doin’ me a favior,” said Strobe, with unexpected moderation. “He wanted me an’ all the folks ter know ez he war fur my ’lection. He never voted afore. An’ he hev been cooped up in jail so long he don’t ’pear ter sense much ’bout some things. An’ yit, ’bout others he ’pears powerful sly. Pore feller!” “Poor fool!” ejaculated Jepson, irritably. “What ails him ter set his heart—dad-burn him!—on yer ’lection?” He grudged Jake Baintree any sentiment that he shared.