for you to find out is to be what I have been. Hearing about it won't
inform you. I want you to meet the men and play the game. I want you to
realize that when I say I've done the best I could, I'm telling you the
truth. Harlan, stand up here with me. Give me your hand. Say that you'll
stand by the old man in this one thing--the biggest he ever has asked of
you. It's a matter between the Thorntons, boy!"

There had been an appeal in his voice that was near wistfulness. And
while he talked the wisdom that had come from the mouth of a child that
evening threaded its own quaint appeal into the argument of the
grandfather. Resentment and obstinacy, if they be tempered with youth,
cannot fight long against affection and the ties of blood.

Harlan took his grandfather's hand.

"That's my boy!" cried the Duke, heartily, and he slipped his arm about
his grandson's shoulders and patted him.

"It straightens things out a good deal," observed Presson, with the
practicality of the politician. "Harlan, you're going to find a winter
at the State House worth while. With your grandfather to set you going
right and post you up, you ought to make good."

"I'd like to have a little light on one point," remarked the young man,
curtly. He felt again the irritating prick of resentment. "What am I to
be down to that legislature--myself, or Thelismer Thornton's grandson?"

"You can't afford to throw good advice over your shoulder," protested
the chairman--"not when it comes from a man that's had fifty years of
experience."