plot of barren ground on the edge of the village and buried beneath the jack pines. Usually that rocker stood in its corner undisturbed weeks at a time, but occasionally there came a night, as this one, when his step on the stairs was slow, when he sighed wearily as he pulled off the Congress shoes, and at such times he would draw the chair out to a place by the stove in winter, to this place by the window in summer, and sit beside it and rock, and touch it now and then and talk to it—a great deal.
"She seems more like our own, Maggie," he said after a time. "I sat looking at her today in the office and she seemed like our own girl, not like some other man's—I s'pose that's 'cause she's young and sweet and the sort we'd like to have had for a daughter—if we'd ever had any—and she's in trouble too—though she don't know the worst yet—and needs a family—"
Silence, with the frogs and night insects far off.
"No, Maggie," shaking his head, "it won't do to hope too much. Sim Burns has talked a lot and stirred folks up and maybe if he was inclined to back down now he couldn't—and save his face—
"Looked up the assessed valuation of Chief Pontiac Power today—dams, buildings, key positions was all I knew—they've got it at two hundred thousand—they've got six millions in the county or I've got six legs."
He rocked a little more violently, the chair rumbling on the thin carpet.
"It's Harris I'm afraid of—he's intelligent and without scruple—which makes a worthy foe. He's shrewd—I've prodded around a little, but they're
