"I can see and hear and feel when the door is slammed in my face," was the qualifying rejoinder. "How can I go on preaching the gospel of cleanness and fair dealing, when I know that all this crooked work is going on behind my back? What will the people of this State say to me and about me when the crookedness comes to light?" "Ah!" she said; "that is just where you begin to grow one-sided. You must go on preaching the gospel, but that is only half of the battle. The other half is to be big enough and strong enough and insistent enough to make the thing itself agree with the gospel. I fully believe you lost your best helper when you refused to join hands with your father. You don't believe that, so we'll let it go. You have gone your own way, choosing what seemed to you to be the better opportunity. Evan, you can't turn back; you've simply _got_ to go on and wring success out of apparent failure!" Blount drew a deep breath and sat up in his chair. There was no mistaking the light in Patricia's eyes now; the pure flame of which it was the visible radiance is the torch which has kindled the beacon fires on all the heights since the world began. "If I had only my own people--the railroad people--to knock down and drag out," he was beginning, but she broke in warmly: "You think you have your father against you, too; I don't believe it, but you do. Very well; then you must compel him, as well as the others. Be a big man, Evan; be the biggest man in the State until you have proved that one man with a righteous cause is better than ten thousand without it." Blount got up and stood with his back to the dying embers of the tiny fire, and if he put his hands behind him it was because the passionate impulse to break down all the barriers was twitching in every fibre of him. "Patricia, girl, I wonder if you know what you have done to me? I drove out here this evening utterly discouraged and disheartened; bitter and angry, and ready to throw the whole thing up and go away. You've changed all that--you, you know; just you. Oh, girl, girl! if I could only have you beside me to give me my battle-word!" She had her slender fingers locked over one knee and her eyes were downcast. "Now you are tempting me," she said slowly; "and--and it isn't fair. You know my weakness and passion to help. You _mustn't_ tempt me, Evan." What he would have said, with what eager pleadings he would have pressed the advantage gained by his appeal for the larger help, is not to be here set down. For at that moment the bamboo door curtains parted to admit the small house-mistress. "You two!" she scolded with light-hearted austerity. And then to Evan: "Don't you know that we are keeping country hours here at Wartrace now? The professor will be up and calling for the car at six o'clock, and it's past midnight. Shame on you! Run away and get your beauty sleep--both of you!" XIII THE LIEGEMAN