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A COMET so dim that it is almost invisible will cause agitated interest in the heavens where great fixed stars blaze nightly unnoticed. Harrison was a large Ohio river town, and in its firmament blazed many and considerable fixed stars—presenting pretty nearly all varieties of peculiarity in appearance and condition. But when George Helm appeared everybody concentrated upon him.

“Did you see that young fellow with the red whiskers stumping down Main Street this afternoon?”—“Did you see that jay in the funny frock coat and the stove pipe hat?”—“Who’s the big hulking chap that looks as if he’d just landed from nowhere?”—“I saw the queerest looking mud-dauber of a lawyer or doctor—or maybe preacher—sitting on the steps of Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house.”—“I saw him, too. He had nice eyes—gray and deep-set—and they twinkled as if he were saying, ‘Yes, I know I’m a joke of a greenhorn, but I’m human, and I like you, and I’d like you to like me.’”

In towns, even the busiest of them, there is not any too much to talk about. Also, there is always any number of girls and widows sharply on the lookout for bread-winners; and the women easily get the men into the habit of noting and sizing up newly arrived males. No such new arrival, whether promising as a provider or not, escapes searching attention. Certainly there was in young George Helm’s appearance no grace or beauty to detain the professional glance of a husband-seeker with a fancy for romantic ornamentation of the business of matrimony. Certainly also there was in that appearance no suggestion of latent possibilities of luxury-providing. A plain, serious-looking young man with darkish hair and a red beard, with a big loosely jointed body whose legs and arms seemed unduly long. A strong, rather homely face, stern to sadness in repose, flashing unexpectedly into keen appreciation of wit and fun when the chance offered. The big hands were rough from the toil of the fields—so rough that they would remain the hands of the manual laborer to the end. The cheap, smooth frock suit and the not too fresh top hat had the air of being their wearer’s only costume, of having long served in that capacity, of getting the most prudent care because they could not soon be relieved of duty.

“He lives in the room my boy Tom made out of the attic last summer,” said Mrs. Beaver, who supported her husband and children by taking in boarders. “And all he brung with him was in a paper shirt box. He wears a celluloid collar and cuffs, and he sponges off his coat and vest and pants every morning before he puts ’em on. So Tom says. He lies awake half the night reading or writing in bed—sometimes when he reads he laughs out loud, so you’d think he had company. And he sings hymns and recites poetry. And, my! how he does eat! Them long legs of his’n is hollow clear down.”

There is no doubt about the red beard. Since George Helm has become famous, the legend is that he always had a smooth face. But like most of the legends about him—like that about his astonishing success and astounding marriage—this legend of the smooth face is as falsely inaccurate as most of the stuff that passes for truth about the men of might who have come up from the deep obscurity of the masses. It was a hideous red beard—of the irritating shade of bright red with which brick walls used to be—perhaps in some parts of the world still are—painted in the spring. It grew patchily. In spots it was straight; in other spots, curly. It was so utterly out of harmony with his hair that opinion divided as to which was dyed, and the wonder grew that he did not dye both to some common and endurable shade.

“What does he wear those whiskers for?”—“How can a man with hair like that on his face expect to get clients or anything else?” Nevertheless, public opinion—which is usually wrong about everything, including its own exaggerated esteem for itself—was wrong in this case. As soon as a comet ceases to be a visitor and settles down into a fixed inhabitant with a regular orbit it ceases to attract attention, becomes obscure, acquires the dangerous habit of obscurity. George Helm, only twenty-four years old and without money, friends or influence, might have been driven back to the farm but for that beard.

Successful men feed their egotism with such shallow and silly old proverbial stuff as, “You can’t keep a good man down,” and “A husky hog will get its nose to the trough.” But they reckon ill who leave circumstance out of account in human affairs. And circumstance does not mean opportunity seen and seized, but opportunity that takes man by the nape of the neck and forcibly thrusts him into responsibility and painfully compels him to acquire the education that finally leads to success. Those who arrive forget that they were not always wise and able; they forget how hardly they got wisdom and capacity, how fiercely their native human inertia and stupidity fought against learning. If some catastrophe—which God forbid!—should wipe out at a stroke all our leaders—all the geniuses who give us employment, run our affairs, write our books and newspapers, make our laws, blow the whistles for us to begin and to stop work, tell us when to go forth and when to come in out of the rain—if some cataclysm should orphan us entirely of these our wondrous wise guardians, don’t you suspect that circumstance would almost overnight create a new set for us, quite as good, perhaps better? The human race is a vast reservoir of raw material for any and all human purposes. Let those who find cheer in feeling lonely in their unique, inborn, inevitable greatness enjoy themselves to their fill. It is their privilege. But it is also the privilege of plain men and twinkling stars to laugh at them.

So, George Helm’s beard may have had more to do with his destiny than his conventional biographers will ever concede. He ceased to be a comet. But he did not cease to attract attention. And his awkwardness, his homeliness and his solitary “statesman’s” suit would not have sufficed to keep him in the public eye. That preposterous beard was vitally necessary. It accomplished its mission. The months—the clientless months—the months of dwindling purse and hope passed. George Helm remained a figure in Harrison. Some men were noted for the toilets or the eccentricity or the beauty of their wives, some men for their fortunes or their fine houses, some men for dog or horse or high power automobile. George Helm was noted for his beard. It served as the gathering center for jokes and stories. The whole town knew all sorts of gossip about that “boy with the whiskers,” for, through the carmine mask, the boyishness had finally been descried. The local papers, hard put for matter to fill the space round patent medicine advertisements and paid news of dry goods, overshoes and canned vegetables at cut prices, often made paragraphs about the whiskers. And the heartiest laugh at these jests came from serious, studious George Helm himself.

“Why don’t you shave ’em, George?”—He was of those men whom everybody calls by the first name.

“You never happened to see me without ’em?” Helm would reply.

“I’d like to,” was usually the retort.

“Well, I’ve seen myself without ’em—and I guess I’m choosing the bluntest horn of the dilemma.”

It never occurred to any one in Harrison to wonder why, while George Helm’s whiskers were a butt, the young man himself was not. When Rostand made a tragic hero of a man with a comic nose, there was much outcry at the marvelous genius displayed in the feat. In fact, that particular matter required no genius at all. There is scarcely an individual of strongly marked personality who has not some characteristic, mental or physical, that is absurd, ridiculous. Go over the list of great men, past and present; note the fantastic, grotesque physical peculiarities alone. Those attention-arresting peculiarities helped, you will observe, not hindered, the man in coming into his own—the pot-belly of little Napoleon, the duck legs of giant Washington, the drooling and twitching of Sam Johnson.

Try how you will, you cannot make a man ridiculous, unless he is ridiculous. Lincoln could—and did—play the clown hours at a time. Yet only shallow fools of conventionality-worshipers for an instant confused the man and the clever story-actor. Harrison laughed at George Helm’s whiskers; but it did not, because it could not, laugh at George Helm.

But, being a shallow-pated town, Harrison fancied it was laughing at Helm himself. It is the habit of human beings to mistake clothes and whiskers and all manner of mere externals for men. Occasionally they discover their mistake. Harrison discovered its mistake.

It nominated George Helm for Circuit Judge. There were two parties in that district—as there are everywhere else—the Republican and the Democratic. There was also—as wherever else there is any public thing to steal—a third party that owned and controlled the other two. Sometimes this third party “fixes” the race so that Republican always wins and Democrat always loses; again, it “fixes” the race the other way; yet again—where there is what is known as an “intelligent and alert electorate”—this shrewd third party alternately puppets Republican and Democrat first under the wire—and then how the aforesaid intelligent and alert people do shout and applaud their own sagacity and independence!

They say that woman is lacking in the sense of humor. There must be something in the charge. Otherwise, would she not long ago have laughed herself to death at the political antics of man?

In Harrison and its surrounding country the sentiment was overwhelmingly Republican—which meant that the majority of the “independent” farmers and artisans who were working early and late to enrich the Railway Trust, the Harvester Trust, the Beef Trust, the Money Trust, and the rest of the members of the third and only real party, said, when they sat doddering about politics, “Wall, I reckon I’ll keep on voting as I shot.” If the community had been Democratic, the dodder would have been, “I think it’s about time to turn the rascals out.” Needless to say, the third party cares not a rap which side wins. The vote goes into the ballot box Republican or Democratic; it is counted for the third party. In Harrison the Republican candidates of the third party always won, and its Democratic candidates were put up simply to make things interesting for the populace and to give them the feeling that they were sovereign citizens. The Republican candidate for Circuit Judge, the candidate slated to win in a walk, was Judge Powers. He had served two terms, to the entire content of the third party—and, being full of pious talk and solemn flapdoodle about the “sacredness of the judicial trust in a community of freemen,” to the entire content of the people. In a hilarious mood the Democratic machine, casting about for its sacrifice candidate, nominated George Helm—or, rather, George Helm’s whiskers.

It was a side-splitting joke. Everybody liked George. Everybody knew about his whiskers—knew him by his whiskers. It bade fair to inject that humor, so dearly beloved of the American people, into what was usually a dull campaign. The only trouble was that for the first time Helm failed to see a joke.

The night of his nomination the light in Mrs. Beaver’s tiny, stuffy attic room went out early. And if you could have looked in, you would have discovered, by the starlight that the big form was lying quite still in the little bed which sagged and bulged with it. But George Helm was not asleep. He slept not a wink that whole night. And as soon as he had finished breakfast he went down to the barber shop at the corner.

“Bob,” said he to the colored proprietor, “I want a clean shave.”

“What’s that, Mr. Helm?” exclaimed the amazed barber. And two loungers at the table where the sporting papers were spread out sat up and stared.

“A clean shave, Bob,” said Helm gravely, seating himself in the chair.

Bob started a broad grin that, with the least encouragement, would have become a guffaw—and would have echoed throughout the district. But he did not get the encouragement. Instead, he saw something in the kind, deep-set gray eyes, in the strong, sad mouth and chin, that set him soberly to work. The two loungers went outside to laugh and spread the news. But when they got outside they did not laugh. Why? It is impossible to explain the psychology of man the mass. They put the astounding news into currency—but not as a joke. Helm was shaving his beard. What did it mean?

“Our opponents,” said Judge Powers, “nominated a set of whiskers. The whiskers have disappeared—so there is no one running against us.”

The jest, being of the species which it is conventional to utter and to laugh at on stump and after-dinner occasions, got its momentary due of cackling and braying. But the mirth did not spread. For, before noon of that first day of the campaign, it had been discovered that the Democratic machine had not nominated whiskers, but a man.

We are in the habit of regarding a human being as a mere conglomerate of sundry familiar conventionalities—of dress, of manner, of thought. We have formed the habit because with an occasional rare exception a human being is simply that and nothing more. So an individuality is always a startling apparition—fascinating, perhaps, certainly terrifying. The coming of a man makes us suddenly aware how few real men there are—real live men—how most of us are simply patterns of men who once lived, or, rather, differently proportioned composites of all past men. The excitement in peaceful Harrison and its somnolent environs was almost hysterical. For, in all that region, there was not, there had not been for years—not since the stern, elemental pioneer days—a real living man. All the specimens of the genus homo were of the approved type of the past.

George Helm, man.

“George,” said Bill Desbrough, who had a law office across the hall in the same building—the Masonic Temple—“George, where’d you ever get the notion of those there whiskers you’ve just shed?”

“Oh, the girls,” replied George. “When I was a boy and a youngster the girls made fun of my face. So I hid it as soon as I could—as well as I could.”

“The fool women!” exclaimed Desbrough in disgust. “Why, George, you’ve got a face.”

“I’m afraid so,” said George with a rueful grin, passing his hand over the newly emerged visage.

“Afraid so!” cried Desbrough. “Let me tell you, old man, a face—a real face—is about the rarest thing in the world. Most so-called faces are nothing but front sides of heads.” Desbrough looked at the “face” narrowly, searchingly. “Helm, I believe you are a great man.”

George laughed delightedly and derisively—as a sensible man does at a compliment. “Oh, shucks!” said he.

“Anyhow,” said Desbrough, “if you’d have produced that face a day earlier, you’d never have got the nomination. A man with a face never gets anything from the powers-that-be, without a fight, until he has put himself squarely on record as being with them. Even then they’re always a little afraid of him.” Desbrough nodded thoughtfully. “And they may well be, damn ’em,” he added.

“Well—I’ve got the nomination,” said Helm.

“I wonder what you’ll do with it,” said his friend.

“I’m wondering what it’ll do with me,” replied Helm.

Desbrough glanced at him curiously.

George went on to explain. “Yesterday,” said he, “I was a boy of twenty-five”——

“Is that all you are!” cried Desbrough. “Why, even without the whiskers I’d have said thirty-five.”

“Oh, I’m one of those chaps who are born old,” laughed Helm. “I had lines and even wrinkles when I was eighteen. I’ll look younger at forty than I do now. Mother used to say I reminded her of her father—that he was homely enough to stop a clock when he was young and kept getting handsomer as he got older.”

“I know the kind,” said Bill Desbrough, “and it’s the best kind to be.”

“As I was saying,” proceeded George, “yesterday I was a boy. As soon as those fellows nominated me—they were laughing—they thought it was a fine old joke—but, Bill, a queer sort of a something happened inside me. A kind of shock, like a man jumping out of a sound sleep to find the house afire.”

Desbrough was interestedly watching the face of his friend. Its expression was indeed strange—the look of power—sad, stern, inexorable—the look of the men whose wills and passions hurl them on and on to the conquest of the world. Suddenly it changed, softened. The human lines round the mobile, handsome mouth appeared. The gray eyes twinkled and danced. “So you see, Bill,” said he, “the nomination didn’t lose any time in beginning to do things to me.”

“And the whiskers?”

“Oh, they had to go,” said George simply. “The fight was on, and a fellow naturally throws away all the foolishness before he jumps in.”

“So you’re going to make a fight?”

“Of course,” said George. “What else is there to do?”

“But you can’t win.”

“You mean I can’t lose. I’ve got nothing to lose.”

About the most dangerous character on this earth is a real man who has nothing to lose. When the powers-that-be discover such an one, and are convinced that he is indeed a real man and not a cunning bluff at it, they hasten to give him something to lose. They don’t feel safe until he has wife and children, or wealth, or position—something that will fill one arm and make the other cautious.

The three counties constituting that judicial district will not in many a year forget the first Helm campaign. In its second week Judge Powers canceled his speaking dates, giving out that he regarded it as undignified for a judge to descend in the ermine to the political arena and scramble and tussle for votes. The truth was that George Helm had driven him to cover because he dared not face the facts of his judicial record as the young candidate proclaimed it throughout those counties, on the highways, in the by-ways no less, in town, in village, in country.

The day he began campaigning George counted his cash, found that in all the world he had three hundred and forty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents. He had been calculating that this money would keep him housed and fed and officed for about a year longer, assuming that he continued to be absolutely without clients. Then—he would teach school and toss hay and stack sacks at the threshing machine until he had put by the money for another two years’ try. To go into the campaign meant to use up his resources in two months—for he could not hope to get any help from the Democratic machine. Its “contributions” from the various corporations would be used in paying the leaders and their henchmen for refraining from “doing anything disturbing.”

“Sorry, Mr. Helm,” said Pat Branagan, the local Democratic boss, “but we can’t spare you a cent for your campaign.”

“So I calculated,” said Helm.

Branagan had changed toward Helm the instant he saw him without a beard. Branagan had not risen to be boss without learning a thing or two about human nature and human faces. “There’s no hope for you,” proceeded he. “And anyhow I think a judicial candidate ought to be dignified.”

“Oh, I don’t see any objection to his showing himself to the people,” said George, “and letting them judge whether he’s honest and sensible, and letting them hear what his notion of justice is—whether he’s for rich man’s reading of the law or for honest man’s reading of it.”

Branagan puffed thoughtfully at his cigar. If he had been looking at Helm, he might have seen a covert twinkle in those expressive gray eyes. But he was not looking at Helm; he didn’t like to look at him. “Yes, I suppose so, Mr. Helm,” he said. He had called Helm George—George, with a humorous grin—until Bob Williams, the colored barber, performed that magic feat. “But there won’t be no money for meetings. Meetings means hall rent and posters and processions, and them little knickknacks costs.”

“I guess I can look after that,” said George, crossing and uncrossing his long legs and smoothing out a tail of his shiny black frock upon his knee.

“You allow to do some speaking?”

“I’m going to hire a horse and buggy and move about some.”

“That’s good. You may stir up a little law business.”

“Maybe so.”

“Done any orating?”

“Oh, I’ve heard a lot of speeches, and I’ve made a few.”

“Then you know the kind of stuff to hand out to the people.”

“I guess so,” said Helm.

Branagan was obviously relieved when Helm departed—the conference was held in Pat’s saloon which was the “hang-out” for the politicians and other disreputables of the town. The first class really included the last, for there was not a disreputable who was not actively engaged in “practical” politics. Helm negotiated with the livery-man round the corner from Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house, got a buggy and a sound horse for two months at two dollars and a half a day, he to feed the horse, keep the buggy in repair and do his own driving. The morning of the second day after he secured the nomination, he opened his campaign.

Two days later—or rather, three nights later—so far into the third night that it was near the dawn of the third day—a stalled automobile shot the powerful beams from its acetylene lamps into the woods near Bixby Cross Roads, about twenty miles to the northeast of Harrison. The light fell upon a buggy, with the horse taken from the shafts and hitched to a nearby tree.

“Hi, there—I say!” came in a man’s voice from the darkness of the auto.

This was followed a moment later by, “Well, I’ll be jiggered!” in the same voice, accompanied by the subdued laughter of two women, on the rear seat of the auto. The cause of the exclamation was the apparition of a head above the side of the bed of the buggy, and behind the seat—the head of a man.

“Why, he’s curled up in his buggy to sleep,” said one of the women in a low voice.

But the night was still and the voice had the carrying quality; so George Helm heard distinctly. As he was as shy as any man is apt to be who feels that he is not attractive to women, the sound of a woman’s voice—a young woman’s voice—threw him into a panic. He was acutely conscious of the fact that the frock suit neatly folded was under the buggy seat, and that he had nothing on over his underclothes but the lap robe. In his alarm he cried out, “Don’t come any nearer. What do you want to know?”

“We’ve punctured a tire,” said the man. “And we’ve lost our way. Will you come and help me?”

“Turn those lights the other way,” said Helm.

There was a chuckle from the direction of the auto, a sound of suppressed female laughter. The sound rose, swelled until the two women and their man and presently George Helm were all four laughing uproariously. The lights turned in another direction. “Thanks,” said Helm. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

And it was scarcely more than that when he, clad in the frock suit and carrying the top hat in his hand, advanced toward the auto. “Now—what can I do for you?” inquired he.

“Do you know how to fit on a tire?” said the man—he was young, about George’s age—but a person of fashionable dress and manner.

“I don’t know a thing about automobiles,” replied Helm.

“But I do, Bart,” said one of the women—the one with the sweeter voice. “I can superintend.”

“Are we far from the main road?” said Bart to Helm.

“About a mile and a half.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m Barton Hollister.”

The young man spoke the name as if he were certain of its being recognized. “Oh, yes, I know you, Mr. Hollister. We come from the same town—Harrison. I’m George Helm.”

“I’ve heard of you,” said young Hollister graciously. “I suppose we’ve never happened to meet because I’m at home so little. You’ve lost your way, too?”

“No, I’m making a campaign through the district.”

“Oh—yes. You were nominated by the Democrats for—for——”

Mr. Hollister hesitated awkwardly. “For Circuit Judge,” Helm supplied.

“Against my cousin, Judge Powers. These ladies are my sister Clara and Miss Clearwater.”

Helm bowed to the ladies, who smiled graciously at him. He could see their faces now—lovely, delicate faces with the look of the upper class—the sort of women he had seen only at a distance and had met only in novels and memoirs.

“The chauffeur was sick and I was ass enough to risk coming without him,” said Hollister. “Nell, you’ll have to tell us what to do.”

There followed about the most interesting and exciting hour of George Helm’s life up to that time. Within five minutes Barton Hollister had shown that he was worse than useless for the work in hand, had been swept aside by Helm and Miss Clearwater. He smoked and fussed about and quarreled with his sister, who was in no very good humor with him—“casting us away in the wilderness at three o’clock in the morning.” Helm and the girl who knew toiled at removing the tire and replacing it. She did not know very much; so in the end Helm became boss and, with her assistance, worked out the problem from its foundations.

It isn’t easy for an intelligent human being to say so much as three sentences without betraying his intelligence. And in an emergency the evidences of superior mind stand out clearly and brilliantly. Thus it came to pass that in the hour’s work George Helm and Eleanor Clearwater got a respect each for the other’s intelligence. His respect for her was so great that he all but forgot her loveliness and her remote removal from the sphere of his humble, toilsome life. He was tempted to prolong the task, in spite of the irritation of Clara Hollister’s railing, peevish voice. But he resisted the temptation and got his visitors into condition for departure with all the speed he could command.

They thanked him effusively. There was handshaking all round. Hollister and his sister urged him to call “soon”—a diplomatic invitation; it sounded cordial, yet—was safely vague. The automobile departed, and the candidate for judge was free to resume his repose in the airy chamber he had selected, to save time and hotel bills.

Two hours later he made a thorough toilet with the assistance of a convenient spring, hitched up his horse and drove out of the woods and into the by-road to search for a farm-house and breakfast. After about a mile, and just before he reached the main road, he saw ahead of him an auto—the auto. In his shyness he reined in his horse and looked round for some way to escape. He, the homely, the obscure, the wretchedly poor, the badly dressed, the grotesque straggler for a foothold in life—“as ridiculous as a turtle on its back and trying to get right side up”—what had he to do with those rich, grand, elegant people? When they saw him in the full light of day, needing a shave and none too tidy after his interrupted night out, they would humiliate him with their polite but not to be concealed disdain of him. Bart Hollister suddenly sprang from the auto and shouted and waved. There was nothing to do but go on.

Another tire had exploded, and Bart had not dared leave the two girls alone; besides, he would have been lost the instant he got beyond the range of the lights. “We’ve been dozing in the car and hoping you’d come along,” he ended. “I’ll bet you’re cursing the day you ever saw us. But—couldn’t you help put on another tire?”

A few minutes, and Helm and Eleanor Clearwater were at work again. But his fingers were much clumsier now, and he was wretchedly self-conscious. By daylight he saw her to be the loveliest woman—so he decided—that he had ever seen. About twenty years old, with thick hair of the darkish neutral shade that borrows each moment new colors and tints from the light; with very dark gray eyes, so dark that an observer less keen than Helm might have thought them brown. She was neither tall nor short, had one of those figures that make you forget inches, and think only of line and proportion. A good straight nose, a sweet yet rather haughty mouth. Her hands—he noted them especially as he and she worked—were delicate, had a singular softness that somehow contrived to combine with firmness. They were cool to the touch—and her voice was cool, even when talking intimately with Clara Hollister and her brother. Not the haughty reserve of caste, but the attractive human reserve of those to whom friendship and love are not mere words but deep and lasting emotions.

When he took off his coat to go to work Helm was so thoroughly flustered that he did not think of his linen—or rather, of his cotton and celluloid—or of the torn back of his waistcoat, or of the discolored lining of his coat. But when he was ready to resume the coat he suddenly saw and felt all these horrors of his now squalid poverty. She was apparently unaware; but he knew that she too had seen, had felt. Unconsciously he looked at her with a humble yet proud appeal—the effort the soul sometimes makes to face directly another soul, with no misleading veil of flesh and other externals between. Their eyes met; she colored faintly and glanced away.

Clara and Barton were for dashing straight on home to breakfast—a run of about three-quarters of an hour. But Miss Clearwater was not for the risk. “I’m starved,” said she. “I’ve worked hard, with these two tires. Mr. Helm will find us breakfast in this neighborhood.”

“I was going to ask them to give me something at Jake Hibbard’s, about half a mile further on,” said Helm. “It’ll be plain food, but pretty good.”

And it was pretty good—coffee, fresh milk, corn bread, fried chicken and potatoes, corn cakes and maple syrup. Barton and Clara ate sparingly. It made George Helm feel closer to the goddess to see that she ate as enthusiastically as did he. “I never saw you eat like this, Nell,” said Clara, not altogether admiring.

“You never saw me when I had things I really liked,” replied she.

“The way to get your food to be really tasty,” observed Mrs. Hibbard, “is to earn it.”

Miss Clearwater deigned to be interested in Mr. Helm’s campaign. “I know something about politics,” said she. “My father was United States Senator a few years ago.”

“Oh—you’re George Clearwater’s daughter?” said Helm. He knew all about Clearwater, the lumber “king” who had bought a seat in the Senate because his wife thought she’d like Washington socially.

“Yes,” said the girl. “I’m the only child. And you—are you going to be elected?”

“Judge Powers’s plurality was more than his opponent’s whole vote last time,” said Helm.

“Then you haven’t much hope?”

“I don’t hope—I work,” said Helm.

As they talked on, he saying nothing beyond what was necessary to answer the questions put to him, it was curious to see how he, the homely and the shabby, became the center of interest. His personality compelled them to think and to talk about him, to revolve round him—this, though he was shrinking in his shyness and could scarcely find words or utterance for them.

“What a queer man,” said Clara, when the auto was under way again. “He’s very dowdy and ugly, but somehow you sort of like him.”

“He’s not so ugly,” said Miss Clearwater.

“Perhaps not—for a man of his class,” said Clara. “I like to meet the lower-class people once in awhile. They’re very interesting.”

“I guess,” said Miss Clearwater, absently, “that father was a good deal that sort of a man when he was young.”

Clara laughed. “Oh, nonsense,” she cried. “Your father amounted to something.”

“He started as a pack peddler.”

Clara would not be outdone in generous candor. “Well—papa was a farm hand. Don’t all that sort of thing seem terribly far away, Nell? Just look at us. Think of us marrying a man like this Helm.”

Miss Clearwater shivered. “He was pretty dreadful—wasn’t he?”

“I don’t suppose the poor fellow ever had a decent suit in his life—or ever before met ladies.”

“Yet,” said Miss Clearwater, absent and reflective, “there’s no telling what he’ll be, before he gets through.”

“Talking about your conquest, Nell?” called Bart from the front seat.

Miss Clearwater colored haughtily. Clara cried, “Don’t be rude, Bart.”

“Rude?” retorted Hollister. “Anyone could see with half an eye that he was overhead in love with Nell. Wait till he comes to call.”

“Call?” Clara laughed. “He’d never venture to appear at our front door.”

“We’ll go to hear him when he strikes Harrison,” said Bart.

“Indeed we’ll not,” replied his sister. “He’d misunderstand and presume. Don’t you think so, Nell?”

“Yes,” replied Miss Clearwater promptly—too promptly.

But long before Helm and his campaign reached Harrison there were other reasons why the Hollisters, indeed all the “best people,” could not show themselves at a Helm meeting.

The ignorance of the mass of mankind has made government an arrangement whereunder the many labor for the prosperity of the few. The pretexts for this scheme and the devices for carrying it out have varied; but the scheme itself has not varied—and will not vary until the night of ignorance and the fog of prejudice shall have been rolled away. All things considered, it is most creditable to human nature and most significant of the moral power of enlightenment, that the intelligent few have dealt so moderately with their benighted fellows and have worked so industriously to end their own domination by teaching their servitors the way of emancipation; for let it not be forgotten that the light comes only from above, that the man who has emancipated himself could always, if he chose, be oppressor. Our modern American version of this ancient scheme of the few exploiting the many consists of two essential parts—laws cunningly designed to enable the few to establish their toll gates upon every road of labor; courts shrewdly officered so that the judges can, if they will, issue the licenses for the aforesaid toll gates, which are not as a rule established, but simply permitted, by the law. The treacherous legislator enacts the slyly worded authorization; the subservient judge—no, rather, the judge chosen from, and in sympathy with, the dominant class—reads the permissive statute as mandatory.

This primer lesson in politics, known to all men who have opportunity to learn and who see fit to seize the opportunity, was of course known to George Helm. But he did not content himself with a dry, tiresome, “courteous” statement of the fact. He brought it home to the people of those three counties by showing precisely what Judge Powers had done in his seven years as the people’s high officer of justice—by relating in detail the favors he had granted to the railways, both steam and trolley, to the monopolies in every necessity of life. He also gave an account of Judge Powers’s material prosperity, his rapid rise to riches in those seven years, and the flourishing condition of his relatives and intimate friends, the men owning stock in the railway and other monopolies. In a word, the young candidate made what is known as a “blatherskite” campaign. In his youth and simplicity he imagined that, as a candidate, it was his duty to tell the truth to the people. He did not know the difference between the two kinds of truth—decent and indecent—decent truth that gives everybody a comfortable sense of general depravity, and indecent truth that points out specific instances of depravity, giving names, dates and places.

“Let those who will benefit by Judge Powers’s notion of justice and law vote for him,” said Helm. “I ask those who will benefit by my notion of law and justice to vote for me.”

The Democratic machine hastened to disavow Helm’s plainness of speech. The newspapers, Democratic no less than Republican, ignored him. But the scandal would not down. The news of Helm’s charges—of his unparliamentary statements of fact—spread from village to village, from farm to farm. Within a week it was no longer necessary for him to distribute handbills and call at farm-houses to announce his meetings. Wherever he went he found a crowd waiting to hear his simple conversational appeal to common-sense—and, after hearing, bursting into cheers. In private, in handshaking and talking with the farmers and villagers, he was all humor, full of homely, witty stories and jests. But the moment he stood up as the candidate addressing the people, the face lost its humor lines, the eyes their twinkle, and he uttered one plain, serious sentence after another, each making a point against Judge Powers.

The strong homely face grew rapidly thinner. The deep-set gray eyes sank still deeper beneath the overhanging brows. As for the frock suit, it soon became a wretched exhibit from a rag bag. The “respectable” people—that is, those owning the stocks and bonds of Judge Powers’s protégé companies—laughed at the fantastic figure, roving about in the mud-stained buggy. But—“the common people heard him gladly.”

After six weeks of campaigning with farmers and villagers, Helm felt strong enough to attack the fortress—Harrison. There are those in Harrison who can still tell in minutest detail of the coming of Helm—driving slowly, toward mid-day, down the main street—the direct way to Mrs. Beaver’s boarding-house. The top hat was furry and dusty. The black frock suit was streaked and stained, was wrinkled and mussed. The big shoulders drooped wearily. But the powerful head was calmly erect, and there was might in the great, toil-scarred hands that held the reins on the high bony knees.

Not in the worst days of the whiskers had George Helm been so ludicrous to look at. But no one laughed. The crowds along the sidewalks gazed in silence and awe. A man had come to town.

That afternoon he spoke in Court House square—that afternoon, and again after supper, and twice every day for a week. Never had there been such crowds at political meetings—and, toward the last, never such enthusiasm. The suddenness, the strangeness of the attack paralyzed the opposition. It accepted Judge Powers’s dignified suggestion—“the fellow is beneath contempt, is unworthy of notice.”

At the end of the week, off went George to the sparser regions again, repeating the queer triumph of his first tour. And every one was asking every one else, What are the people going to do? Reichman, the Republican boss, put this question to Democratic boss Branagan when they met a few evenings before the election on the neutral ground of Tom Duffy’s saloon and oyster parlor.

“What do you think the people are going to do?” asked Reichman.

“Dun’ no,” said Branagan. “But I know what I’m goin’ to do.”

This, with a wicked grin and a wink. Said Reichman, “Me, too, Pat.”

And they did it. Not a difficult thing to do at any election, for the people know little about election machinery, and do not watch—indeed, what would the poor blind, ignorant creatures find out if they did watch? Yes, Reichman and his Democratic partner did it. The easiest thing in the world, when the machinery of both parties is in the same hands.

The country went strongly for Helm. But Harrison and the three other towns of the district more than “saved the day for the sanctity of the ermine and the politics of gentlemen.” Judge Powers was reëlected by an only slightly reduced plurality. Helm had polled three times as many votes as any Democratic candidate ever had. But the famous “silent, stay-at-home voter” had come forth and had saved the republic. That famous retiring patriot!—so retiring that the census men cannot find him and the undertaker never buries him. But no matter. He is our greatest patriot. He always appears when his country needs him.

No one saw Helm on election night. At Mrs. Beaver’s it was said that he had gone to bed at the usual time. Next day he appeared, looking much as usual. The gray eyes were twinkling; the humorous lines round the mouth were ready for action. He went to see Branagan at the saloon. They sat down to a friendly glass of beer.

“Well, Mr. Helm,” said Branagan, “you lost.”

“The election—yes,” said Helm.

“Everything,” said Branagan.

“Oh, no,” replied George softly. “Next time I may win.”

Branagan’s hard blue eyes looked straight into Helm’s. Said he: “There ain’t goin’ to be no next time—fur you.”

Helm returned the gaze. “Yes, there is, Pat,” said he.

“Goin’ to make a livin’, practicin’ before Judge Powers—eh?”

“No. I’m going up the State to teach school. But I’m coming back.”

“Oh—hell,” said Pat Branagan—a jeer, but an ill-tempered one.

On his way uptown again George Helm almost walked into Eleanor Clearwater and Clara Hollister. He lifted his hat and bowed, blushing deeply. The two girls looked past him. Clara seemed unconscious that he was there; Eleanor slightly inclined her head—a cold, polite acknowledgment of the salute of a mistaken stranger.

Helm put on the frayed and frowzled top hat. His embarrassment left him. With a sweet and simple smile of apology that made the strong homely face superbly proud, he strode erectly on.