would let a fine young fellow be sent to jail for kissing his girl?"

"Do you mean," interrupted Capen, "that if we don't like the law we should disobey it and violate our oaths?"

"The voters of this State don't want such oaths kept, and take good care not to elect men who will keep them. You 're the servants, not the masters, of the people, aren't you? They want the law for political reasons only. They won't have it enforced. I'll put it on this ground, if you like it better: the wicked prejudice against the law, if you choose to call it so, is an important fact to be taken into account in deciding what is the reasonable proof on which you are required to act, that is, what proof is reasonably sure to convict. It's an old maxim that the law does n't demand impossibilities of anybody, not even of the mayor and aldermen. If it should command you to dip up the Atlantic Ocean with a quart pot, you would n't be bound to do it, would you?"

"What-would-you-advise?" asked the mayor, raising his head, with a sigh.

"You might authorize the city marshal, as chief of police, to enforce the law, and instruct him to enforce the ordinances."

"Authorized to enforce the law, and instructed to regulate its violation!" exclaimed Capen, when the vote had been taken. "If we don't have the contempt of honest men on both sides, it won't be because we have n't earned it!"

X

"WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD"

RAIGIN published the particulars of that session. He wrote editorials so biting and caustic that they were copied far and wide, even by journals that had no sympathy with prohibition; and far and wide people shook their sides over the torment of the Apsleigh city fathers and in imagination "saw 'em wiggle." Every one laughed at them. Some despised them. No one hated them. They had avoided making enemies, and in the lottery of politics they might soon be again "available" as "prudent and conservative men."

Events took a different course. At a recent session of the legislature an act had been passed declaring that all buildings, places, and tenements used for the illegal sale, or keeping for sale, of intoxicating liquors were common nuisances, and might be enjoined or abated as such upon the petition of twenty or more legal voters. The legislature, occupied with a great railroad fight, passed the act without thought or discussion. When it adjourned people discovered, or thought they did, that the new law was an irresistible

engine of warfare. Hope and fear, a desire to exalt or condemn the law, ignorance of legal principles, and sensational journalism combined to set the wildest ideas afloat. Many imagined that the liquor traffic could be abolished by petitioning the Supreme Court, and even intelligent men supposed that an injunction would be a perpetual encumbrance on real estate. Armed, as they thought, with such a tremendous weapon, advocates of prohibition became zealous for For a time their confidence and the demoralization of the enemy made their imaginary advantage real. In a number of the cities and large towns petitions under the nuisance act were sharply followed by prosecutions under the old law, and many liquordealers, bewildered and disheartened, made the best terms they could, and were enjoined by consent. Apsleigh alone had a Denman, and, while the war of words went on, there seemed no disposition to come to blows.

war.

Weeks had passed into months when, one morning in May, Eben Harpswell entered the county attorney's office. If Harpswell had lived in the days of the Inquisition he would have gloried equally in going to the stake himself and in sending others there for the slightest differences of opinion. He was a man of small caliber and great activity, utterly incapable of comparing means with ends, sincere, narrow, fanatical. "Mr. Strickland," he said, "I want you to enforce the nuisance act. Here are the papers."

His manner was that of one claiming the right to command and expecting it would be questioned. It was the lawyer's first intimation of the proceedings.

He controlled his impulse to swear, lighted his customary sedative, and mechanically read the papers from beginning to end.

"What evidence have you got?" he inquired at last. "I've got twenty names. What's the need of evidence?"

"I can't do anything without evidence," replied Strickland, his voice trembling with indignation.

"I don't see why not. The law says 'upon petition of twenty or more legal voters.' It does n't say anything about evidence."

"Another law," exclaimed Strickland, "says that on petition of one person a dangerous lunatic may be sent to the madhouse! Do you think that means without proof that he's a dangerous lunatic?"

"Then how's the new law any better than the old?" "I don't know that it is. It has n't been tried." "Has n't been tried! Have n't you read a newspaper for two months?"

"Is a battle-ship tried before any one knows whether her guns are steel or solder?”

Well, if the new law has n't been tried, it 's high time it was. I want you to go right ahead with those papers. You can get evidence enough."

Strickland refilled his pipe and smoked in silence, fighting hard for self-control, while his visitor eyed him suspiciously.

"Mr. Harpswell," he said at length, "John Brown tried to free four million slaves with a dozen men and as many old muskets. His heart was right, but his head was wrong. It's the same with you."

"I've only done what's been done in other places."

"Done in other places! In other places the movement was led by influential men of all political parties, evidence was collected beforehand, court was in session instead of five months away, and there was no John Denman. Even in those places it remains to be seen whether it's anything more than a passing whirlwind. It's different here. How you got three or four of those names I can't imagine. They won't train with you, and the rest will damn the movement in public opinion from the start. You 've begun war without a cartridge, or a gun to fire one in. You withdrew from the Temperance Union, publicly declaring that it had n't the courage of its convictions, and would n't do anything, and never intended to do anything. The members of its executive committee, whom you despised as cowards, have a glimmering idea of what war with Denman means, and are quietly preparing for it. You have cut off their only chance of victory." "I had no idea-"

"Of course you had n't! If you had ideas, as many as Denman, and were as squarely on the other side, you could n't do a tenth of the mischief you 've done already. The war has got to begin now, not because you say so, but because you 've gone so far it can't be helped. These signers can't hold their tongues a couple of months."

That evening, after a hard day's work, Strickland sat in a cheerful room, in anything but a cheerful frame of mind. He had scarcely eaten since breakfast.

"What's the matter, darling?" asked his wife, smoothing his forehead with two white hands, and kissing it in a pretty way she had.