At dawn a telegraph messenger jangled the bell in the dim hall of "The
Barracks." It was an urgent cry from the chairman of the Republican
State Committee. It announced his coming, and warned the autocrat of the
North Country of the plot. The chairman knew. The plotters had been
betrayed to him, and from his distance he enjoyed a perspective which is
helpful in making political estimates. But Thelismer Thornton only
chuckled over Luke Presson's fears. He went back to bed for another nap.

When he came down and ate breakfast alone in the big mess-room, which he
had not allowed the carpenters to narrow by an inch, he was still amused
by the chairman's panic. As a politician older than any of them, a man
who had served his district fifty years in the legislature, he refused
to believe--intrenched there in his fortress in the north--that there
was danger abroad in the State.

"Reformers, eh?" He sneered the word aloud in the big room of echoes.
"Well, I can show them one up here. There's Ivus Niles!"

And at that moment Ivus Niles was marching into the village from the Jo
Quacca hills, torch for the tinder that had been prepared. It is said
that a cow kicked over a lantern that started the conflagration of its
generation. In times when political tinder is dry there have been great
men who have underestimated reform torches.

It was a bland June morning. The Hon. Thelismer Thornton was bland, too,
in agreement with the weather. A good politician always agrees with what
cannot be helped.

He stood in the door of "The Barracks" and gazed out upon the rolling