direct levy, without a vote of the people,--a court-house so large
that it would settle the county-seat matter out of hand.

The general, however, took no chances even with his commissioners. For
he had his son elected as one, and with the knowledge that John was
investing in real estate in the Ridge and had an eye for the main
chance, the general picked John for the other commissioner. The place
was on the firing-line of the battle, and John took it almost
greedily. As the spring of '73 opened, there were alarms and rumours
of strife on every breeze, and youth was happy and breathed the fight
into its nostrils like a balsam. For all the world of Sycamore Ridge
was young then, and all the trees were green in the eyes of the men
who kept up the town. Each town had its hired desperadoes, and there
were pickets about each village, and drills in the streets of the two
towns, and a martial spirit all over the county. And as John limped
about his tasks in those stirring spring days, he felt that he was
coming into his own. But it was all a curious mock combat,--that
between the towns,--for though the pickets drilled, and the bad men
swaggered on the streets, and the bullies roared their anathemas, the
social relations between the towns were not seriously disturbed.
Youths and maidens came from Minneola to the Ridge for parties and
dances, and from the Ridge young men went to Minneola to weddings and
festivals of a social nature unmolested, for it takes a real war--and
sometimes more than that--to put a bar across the mating ground of
youth. So Bob and Molly and John drove to Minneola time and again for
Jane Mason, and other boys and girls came and went from town to town,
while the bitterness and the bickering and the mimic war between the
rival communities went on.

Dolan was made sheriff, and Bemis county attorney, and with those two