"These here silk-stocking guys buttin' in gives me a pain," announced that heated critic. "They spill out an earful of this Sunday-school guff before election day, but when the strong-arm boys get busy they fade away--believe me, the poor boobs fade out!" "They ain't practical," agreed the patrolman judicially, and Boone made a mental note of his badge number. "They think one and one make two--but we know that if you fix a couple of ones right it's just as easy to make an eleven with 'em." Boone and Anne had gone horseback riding one afternoon that September, and it was a different sort of excursion from those that they had taken together in the mountains. The boy was mounted on Colonel Wallifarro's saddle mare, and the girl on a high-headed four-year-old from the same stable. They were not picking their way now through tangled trails that led upward, but were cantering along the level speedway toward the park set on a hill five miles south of the city. There, at the fringe of a line of knobs, was the only approach to be found in this table-flat land to the heights which they both loved. These hills were only little brothers to the loftier peaks of the Cumberlands--but the air was full of Indian summer softness, and the horses under them were full of mettle--and they themselves were in love. "Boone," demanded the girl, drawing down to a sedate pace, after a brisk gallop that had lathered the flanks and withers of their mounts, "what is it that interests you so in this campaign? You can't even vote here, can you?" The young man shook his head, and now the smile of humour which had once been rare upon his face flashed there--because he had reached a point where his development was beginning to take some account of perspectives and balances. "No, I can't vote here--but I can get as bitter over their fights as if they were my own. I couldn't explain why I'm interested any more than a hound could tell why he wants to run with the pack. It's just that the game calls a man." "Morgan calls politics the sport of the great unwashed," observed Anne. "He says it gives the lower class a substitute for mental activity and demagogues a chance to exploit them." "Does he?" inquired Boone drily. "Boone"--Anne's eyes filled suddenly with a grave anxiety--"aren't you really working so hard about all this business--because Uncle Tom is so deeply involved in it and because you think he's in some danger?" Boone leaned forward to right a twisted martingale, and when he straightened up he answered slowly: "I suppose any prominent man in a hard fight may be in--some danger, but he doesn't seem to take it very seriously." "Why," she demanded, "can't men oppose each other in politics without getting rabid about it?" "They can--when it's just politics. This is more than that, according to the way we feel about it." "Why?"