Congressman Caretall and Agnes took the noon train, next day. Wint went with them to the station, and Amos had a last word for him. “Don’t you get the idea I’ve left you on your own, Wint,” he said. “You’ll need help. Things’ll come up. When they do, don’t you try to stand on your own feet. Just write me--or telegraph. And I’ll come, or tell you what to do. “You’ll run into trouble. Don’t you try to fight it alone. Just you call on me.” Then the train pulled out. Wint watched it go; and when it rounded the curve and disappeared beyond the electric-light plant, he grinned. “Run to you when I need help, will I, Amos?” he asked good-naturedly, under his breath. “I guess not. You’ve left me alone. And I’m going to stand on my own hind legs. On my own two feet, by God!” He turned and went swiftly back uptown. CHAPTER II JOAN TO WINT The months of that winter passed quietly in Hardiston. The excitement of the election was not forgotten; the drama of Wint’s choice as Mayor became one of the stories to be told about the stoves on cold home-keeping days. But Wint himself was no longer an object of curious interest; he was just the Mayor. An inconsiderable figure in the town. There had been Mayors in the past, and there would be again. Never amounted to much, one way or another. Hardiston went along just the same; the winters were just as cold, the summers just as hot, the rains just as wet, the sun just as warm. Hardiston is infamous for its winters and for its summers. In the spring or in the fall there is no lovelier spot. In the spring, apple blossoms clothe the hills; in the fall the woods are great splashes of flame against the dull green of the fields. But in winter the mercury drops far below zero, and climbs forty degrees in half a day. The snow comes tempestuously, eight, ten, twelve inches of it; and it melts as quickly as it comes. The roads turn into mud at the first snow; they remain mud till the increasing heat of the northing sun bakes them to dust. On Monday, every water pipe in town freezes tight; on Tuesday, violets bloom in sheltered corners about the houses. On a cold morning, adventurous boys skate on the film of ice that forms on streams and ponds; but by noon the ice is unsafe, and some one has broken through, and by mid-afternoon, it is freezing hard again. This winter in Hardiston was like all others. The new Mayor stuck strictly to business. Jack Routt let him alone. When boys were arrested for misdemeanor, or children of a larger growth for more pretentious wrongs, they were brought before Wint and he passed sentence upon them, marveling that he, Wint Chase, should be passing judgment on his fellow man. At first, this feature of his work shamed him; later it awed him, and made him look into his own heart and ask whether he were fit for such a rôle. He tried to make himself fit.