After a week of quiet, Wint decided that Kite and his allies had put the lid on. “But they’re just waiting,” Amos warned him. “Waiting till they get a toe hold on you, somehow. Watch your step, Wint.” Wint said he was watching. “I wish they’d start something,” he said. “Hot weather’s dull, with no excitement.” “There’ll be enough excitement,” Amos assured him. Routt walked home with Wint one afternoon, talking over a proposition that he had brought up a day or two before. Since Wint was going to be a lawyer, he said, they ought to go in together. Wint was already so well advanced in his reading that Routt thought in another year or eighteen months he could take the examinations. “There’s a big practice waiting for the right people down here,” he told Wint enthusiastically. “Dick Hoover and I are going to get together when his father dies. The old man is pretty feeble. You come in with us. We’ll do things, Wint.” Wint was pleased and somewhat flattered by the suggestion, and thought well of Routt for it. But he only said, good-naturedly, that it was still a long way off, and that there would be times enough to talk about the matter when he was admitted to the bar. Nevertheless, Routt dwelt on it insistently, so insistently that instead of turning aside toward his own home at the usual place, he came on toward Wint’s father’s house, still talking. It did not occur to Wint that there was any purpose in Routt’s thus accompanying him. He had heard that Routt and Kite had been seen together, and asked Jack about it. Routt explained that he had to keep in touch with all sorts. A mixture of business and politics, he said, and Wint was satisfied. When they came in sight of the house, it was still an hour before supper time; and Hetty Morfee was sweeping down the front steps and the walk to the gate. They saw her while they were still half a block away, and Routt said casually: “Hetty still working for your mother, I see.” Wint nodded. “Yes; I guess she’s pretty good.” Routt agreed. “If she’d only keep straight. But....” “I don’t think she’s that kind,” said Wint. “I hope not,” Routt assented. “Hope she doesn’t--get into trouble. If she ever did, in this town....” Wint said nothing; and Routt added: “She’d need a friend, all right.” And again: “She’d need some one to take her part. But he’d be in Dutch, whoever he was.” He looked at Wint sidewise. They were near the gate now, and Wint said: “Come in and have supper.” Routt shook his head. “Not to-night.” Hetty looked up, at their approach, and Wint called: “Hello, Hetty.” She said: “Hello, Wint.” Routt repeated Wint’s greeting, and the girl looked at him with curiously steady eyes, and said: “Hello, Jack.”