been ashamed to put in words."

The two old men were silent. "That was youth, too, Watts,--fighting
and loving, and loving and fighting,--that's youth," sighed the
general.

"Well, Johnnie got his belly full of it in his day, as old Shakespeare
says, Phil--and in your day you had yours, too. Every dog,
General--every dog--you know." The two voices were silent, as two
old men looked back through the years.

McHurdie put the strap he was working upon in the water, and turned
with his spectacles in his hands to his comrade. "Maybe it's this way:
with a man, it's fighting and loving before we get any sense; and with
a town it's the same way, and I guess with the race it's the same
way--fighting and loving and growing sensible after it's over. Maybe
so--maybe so, Phil, comrade, but man, man," he said as he climbed on
his bench, "it's fine to be a fool!"




CHAPTER VII


In Sycamore Ridge every one knows Watts McHurdie, and every one takes
pride in the fact that far and wide the Ridge is known as Watts
McHurdie's town, and this too in spite of the fact that from Sycamore
Ridge Bob Hendricks gained his national reputation as a reformer and
the further fact that when the Barclays went to New York or Chicago or