“What is all this trouble I’m hearing about?” I asked him.

“Trouble?—­same old thing:  Alfred Grahame, when he founded, started, this colony, was a true idealist.  But success has turned his head, worsened him, since,—­as it has done with many a good man before.  Now he goes about the country lecturing, on Shakespeare, God, the Devil, or anything else that he knows nothing about....

“But it isn’t that that I object to ... it is that he’s allowing the original object of this colony, and of the Single Tax Idea, to become gradually perverted here.  We’re becoming nothing but a summer resort for the aesthetic quasi-respectables ... these folk are squeezing us poor, honest radicals out, by making the leases prohibitive in price and condition.”

He stopped speaking, while he picked up another pair of shoes, examined them, chose one, and began sewing a patch on it....

He rose, with his leathern apron on, and saw me out....

“—­glad you came to see old Jones ... you’ll see and hear a lot more of me, the next week or so!” and he smiled genially, prophetically.

He looked like Socrates as he stood there ... jovially homely, round-faced ... head as bald as ivory ... red, bushy eyebrows that were so heavy he shrugged them....

“I’m just beginning the fight (would you actually believe it) for free speech here ... it takes a radical community, you know, to teach the conservatives how to suppress freedom....

“You must come around to the big barn Friday night, after the circus.”

“—­the circus?”

“Oh, we have a circus of our own every summer about this time ... we represent the animals ourselves ... some of us don’t need to make up much, neither, if we only knew it,” he roared.

“After the imitation circus, the real circus will begin.  I have compelled the announcement of a general meeting to discuss my grievances, and that of others, who are not game enough to speak for themselves.”

* * * * *

I found nobody but Hildreth—­Mrs. Baxter—­at home, when I returned.  She was lying back in the hammock where Penton lounged to read his news clippings ... near the outdoor table ... dressed easily in her bloomers and white middy blouse with the blue bow tie ... her great, brown eyes, with big jet lashes, drooping langourously over her healthy, rounded cheeks ... her head of rich, dark hair touseled attractively.  She was reading a book.  I caught the white gleam of one of her pretty legs where the elastic on one side of her bloomers had slipped up.

Alone with her, a touch of my old almost paralytic shyness returned ... but the pathway to my tent lay so near her hammock I would almost brush against its side in passing....

She looked up.  She gazed at me indefinitely, as if coming back from a far dream to reality.

“Oh, Johnnie Gregory!  You?” fingering her hair with flexible fingers like a violinist trying his instrument.