of a new freedom.  Many older men were eking out a bare living at the law, and the ranks were sadly overcrowded, but he faced the future confidently.  He meant to practice law after ideals established by men whose names were still potent in the community; he would not race with the ambulance to pick up damage suits, and he refused divorce cases and small collection business.  He meant to be a lawyer, not a scandal-hunting detective or pursuer of small debtors with a constable’s process.

He tried to forget politics, and yet, in spite of his indifference, hardly a day passed that did not bring visitors to his office bent upon discussing the outlook.  Many of these were from the country; men who, like Ramsay, were hopeful of at last getting rid of Bassett.  Some of his visitors were young lawyers like himself, most of them graduates of the state colleges, who were disposed to take their politics seriously.  Nor were these all of his own party.  He found that many young Republicans, affected by the prevailing unrest, held practically his own views on national questions.  Several times he gathered up half a dozen of these acquaintances for frugal dinners in the University Club rathskeller, or they met in the saloon affected by Allen’s friends of Lueders’s carpenter shop.  He wanted them to see all sides of the picture, and he encouraged them to crystallize their fears and hopes; more patriotism and less partisanship, they all agreed, was the thing most needed in America.

Allen appeared in Dan’s office unexpectedly one hot morning and sat down on a chair piled with open lawbooks.  Allen had benefited by his month’s sojourn in the Adirondacks, and subsequent cruises in his motor car had tanned his face becomingly.  He was far from rugged, but he declared that he expected to live forever.

“I’m full of dark tidings!  Much has happened within forty-eight hours.  See about our smash-up in Chicago!  Must have read it in the newspapers?”

“A nice, odorous mess,” observed Dan, filling his pipe.  “I’m pained to see that you go chasing around with the plutocrats smashing lamp-posts in our large centres of population.  That sort of thing is bound to establish your reputation as the friend of the oppressed.  Was the chauffeur’s funeral largely attended?”

“Pshaw; he was only scratched; we chucked him into the hospital to keep him from being arrested, that was all.  Look here, old man, you don’t seem terribly sympathetic.  Maybe you didn’t notice that it was my car that got smashed!  It looked like a junk dealer’s back yard when they pulled us out.  I told them to throw it into the lake:  I’ve just ordered a new car.  I never cared for that one much anyhow.”

“Another good note for the boys around Lueders’s joint!  You’re identified forever with the red-necked aristocrats who smash five thousand dollar motors and throw them away.  You’d better go out in the hall and read the sign on the door.  I’m a lawyer, not a father confessor to the undeserving rich.”