of coal where Smelter City itself was built; or the shooting of the Federal Law Officer down at that other coal mine?  These cases involved no “twilight zone” of dispute as to law, in which the “system” and the “ring” could hide.  Every Government man knew the evidence was plain and complete in these cases:  yet they were pigeon-holed, let lapse for the Statute of Limitations to bar action.  Why?

Wayland sat down on the slab seat, and the personal reasons came trooping against his resolutions like the scouts of an oncoming host.

To begin with, he could make more money outside the Service.  The Government men were paid less than foreign ditch-diggers; but then, which of the men remained in the Service for money?  He ran his mind over half a dozen fellows in the Agricultural Department who had increased the nation’s wealth by hundreds of millions a year.  They were working at salaries less than a Wall Street Junior clerk or office girl.  The question of salary didn’t come in as an argument.  That could be dismissed.  But there was the bitter fact, he was accomplishing absolutely nothing by continuing the struggle, nothing more than a woman yoked to a Silenus hoping to reform him when he daily grew worse under her eyes.  The Government had blocked him.  The party had blocked him.  What was the pith of it all, anyway? Should those who had the power be given the legal right to take what they cared to seize?  It was the same old question that had split every country up into revolution.  And closest of all, keenest of all arguments, the new influence that had come into his life, possessing it, obsessing it.  He might put her out of his thoughts as a possibility.  That would not dull the edge of his own hunger.  By staying on he barred all possibility of ultimate happiness, perhaps her happiness:  yet, if he abandoned the fight for right, he would be unworthy of her.  Sooner or later she would know, and, though she might remain mute, was she the one to make semblance of what she did not feel?  If the light died from her eye, it would die from his life.  He was not a Silenus to guzzle hog-like over husks when the life had gone.  Besides—­Wayland laughed aloud—­the idea of her nature permitting a Silenus near enough to breathe the same atmosphere that she breathed was inconceivable.  There was one chance—­one chance only—­Get the issue before the People, squarely, fairly, openly before the People; awaken the People; mass the law of the snow flake to the mighty rush of the avalanche; let the People know, force the People to pronounce the verdict.  Wayland thought of Bat inside the cabin—­, and laughed bitterly.  He rose and began pacing the edge of the Ridge.  There he was, back in the old hopeless circle.