"At the registration every qualified voter must be enrolled," he told her. "The camera squads have been formed to make rounds of the precincts and take certain pictures." "Why?" "Because we have fairly reliable information that the town will be overrun with flying squadrons of imported repeaters--and that the police who should lock them up mean to protect them." "What are repeaters?" she naively inquired, and he enlightened her out of the treasury of his newly acquired wisdom. "We believe that hundreds of floating and disreputable fellows have been brought in from other towns and will be registered here as voters. After registering they will disappear as unostentatiously as they came. But meanwhile they will not satisfy themselves with being enrolled once, as the decent citizens must do. They will go from precinct to precinct, using fake addresses and changing names." He smiled grimly, and then added with inelegant directness: "We aim to get pictures of some of those birds--for use in court later." "And the police will hamper you?" "We don't expect much help from them." Anne's eyes clouded with apprehension. She laid her hands on the boy's arms. "Boone," she exclaimed, "you know Uncle Tom. In spite of his gentleness, indignation makes him reckless. Will he be armed tomorrow?" Boone shook his head. His eyes narrowed a little, and his tone indicated personal disagreement with the decision which he repeated: "No. They've decided that since they're seeking reform they must keep inside both the letter and the spirit of the law. They've advised every one to go unarmed except for heavy walking sticks. Even that has brought a howl of 'attempted intimidation' from the city hall crowd--but I reckon their gangs won't be unheeled." "Are you going to be armed?" Boone hesitated, but finally he answered with a trace of the ironic: "I haven't quite made up my mind yet. You see, I learned my politics in the bloody hills--though I never carried a gun when I was campaigning there. Here, where it's civilized--I'm not so sure." "Will you be with Uncle Tom, all the time tomorrow? Will you go everywhere that he goes?" The question was put as an interrogation, but it was an earnest plea as well, and Boone took both her hands in his. They stood framed in the hall door, he holding her hands close pressed, and her eyes giving him back look for look. "I'll be with him every minute he'll let me," he declared. "Of course a soldier must obey orders, and he can't choose his station." It was standing like that with Boone holding Anne's hands, and their faces close together, that Morgan, whose footsteps were soundless on the carpeted stairway, saw them, and it was not a picture to reassure a rival or to assuage the disdainful anger of a man of Morgan's temperament for one whom he considered an ingrate and a presumptuous upstart. CHAPTER XXVI