And at that moment Ivus Niles was marching into the village from the Jo Quacca hills, torch for the tinder that had been prepared. It is said that a cow kicked over a lantern that started the conflagration of its generation. In times when political tinder is dry there have been great men who have underestimated reform torches. It was a bland June morning. The Hon. Thelismer Thornton was bland, too, in agreement with the weather. A good politician always agrees with what cannot be helped. He stood in the door of "The Barracks" and gazed out upon the rolling St. John hills--a lofty, ponderous hulk of a man, thatched with white hair, his big, round face cherubic still in spite of its wrinkles. He lighted a cigar, and gazed up into the cloudless sky with the mental endorsement that it was good caucus weather. Then he trudged out across the grass-plot and climbed into his favorite seat. It was an arm-chair set high in the tangle of the roots of an overturned spruce-tree. The politicians of the county called that seat "The Throne," and for a quarter of a century the Hon. Thelismer Thornton had been nicknamed "The Duke of Fort Canibas." Add that the nicknames were not ill bestowed. Such was the Hon. Thelismer Thornton. He had brought newspapers in his pockets. He set his eyeglasses on his bulging nose, and began to read. In the highway below him teams went jogging into the village. There were fuzzy Canadian horses pulling buckboards sagging under the weight of all the men who could cling on. There were top carriages and even a hayrack well loaded with men. Occasionally the old man lifted his gaze from his reading and eyed the dusty wayfarers benignantly. He liked to know that the boys were turning out to the caucus. His perch was a lofty one. He could see that the one long street of Fort Canibas was well gridironed with teams--horses munching at hitching-posts, wagons thrusting their tails into the roadway. It was quiet at Thornton's end of the village. There was merely twitter of birds in the silver poplar that shaded his seat, busy chatter of swallows, who were plastering up their mud nests under the eaves of the old blockhouse across the road from him. It was so quiet that he could hear a tumult at the other end of the village; it _was_ a tumult for calm Fort Canibas. A raucous voice bellowed oratory of some sort, and yells and laughter and cheers punctuated the speech. Thornton knew the voice, even at that distance, for the voice of "War Eagle" Niles. He grinned, reading his paper. The sound of that voice salted the article that he was skimming: