Hopewell entered, violin in hand. He greeted Janice in his quiet way and then spoke to Bodley.

"You wanted to see me, Mr. Bodley?"

"Now, how about that fiddle, Hopewell? D'ye really want to sell it?"

asked the bartender, lightly.

"I--I must sell it, Mr. Bodley. I feel that I _must_," said Hopewell, in his gentle way.

"It's as good as sold, then, old feller," said the barkeeper. "I've got a customer for it."

"Ah! but I must have my price. Otherwise it will do me no good to sell the violin which I prize so highly--and which my father played before me."

"That's Yankee talk," laughed Bodley. "How much?"

"I believe it is a valuable instrument--a very valuable instrument,"

said poor Hopewell, evidently in fear of not making the sale, yet determined to obtain what he considered a fair price for it. "At least, I know 't is an _old_ violin."

"One of the 'old masters,' eh?" chuckled Bodley.

"Perhaps. I do not think you will care to pay my price, sir," said the storekeeper, with dignity.

"I've got a customer for it. He seen it down to the dance--and he wants it. What's your price?" repeated Bodley.

"I thought some of sending it to New York to be valued," Hopewell said slowly.

"My man will buy it--sight unseen, as ye might say--on my recommend.

He only saw it for a moment," said Bodley.

"What will he give for it?" asked Hopewell.

"How much do you want?"

"One hundred dollars, Mr. Bodley," said the storekeeper, this time with more firmness.

"_What_? One hundred of your grandmother's grunts! Why, Hopewell, there _ain't_ so much money--not in Polktown, at least--'nless it's hid away in a broken teapot on the top shelf of a cupboard in Elder Concannon's house. They say he's got the first dollar he ever earned, and most all that he's gathered since that time."

Janice heard all this as she stood in the back room with 'Rill. Then, having excused herself to the storekeeper's wife, she ran out of the side door to go across the street to Mrs. Beaseley's.

In fact, she could not bear to stay there and hear Hopewell bargain for the sale of his precious violin. It seemed too, too, bad! It had been his comfort--his only consolation, indeed--for the many years that circ.u.mstances had kept him and 'Rill Scattergood apart. And after all, to be obliged to dispose of it----

Janice remembered how she had brought little Lottie home to the storekeeper the very day she first met him, and how he had played "Silver Threads Among the Gold" for her in the dark, musty back room of the old store. Why! Hopewell Drugg would be utterly lost without the old fiddle.

She was glad Mrs. Beaseley was rather an un.o.bservant person, for Janice's eyes were tear-filled when she looked into the cottage kitchen. Nelson, however, was not at home. He had gone for a long tramp through the fields and had not yet returned. So, leaving word for him to come over to the Day house that evening, Janice went slowly back to her car.

Before she could start it 'Rill came outside. Bodley had gone, and the storekeeper's wife was frankly weeping.

"Poor Hopewell! he's sold the fiddle," sobbed 'Rill.

"To that awful bartender?" demanded Janice.

"Just as good as. The fellow's paid a deposit on it. If he comes back with the rest of the hundred dollars in a month, the fiddle is his.

Otherwise, Hopewell declares he will send it to New York and take what he can get for it."

"Oh, dear me!" murmured Janice, almost in tears, too.

"It--it is all Hopewell can do," pursued 'Rill. "He has nothing else on which he can raise the necessary money. Lottie must have her chance."

CHAPTER XIX

THE GOLD COIN

The campaign against liquor selling in Polktown really had been opened on that Monday morning when Janice and Frank Bowman conferred together near the scene of the young engineer's activities for the railroad.

The determination of two wide-awake young people to _do something_ was the beginning of activities.

Not only was the time ripe, but popular feeling was already stirred in the matter. The thoughtful people of Polktown were becoming dissatisfied with the experiment. Those who had considered it of small moment in the beginning were learning differently. If Polktown was to be "boomed" through such disgraceful means as the sale of intoxicants at the only hotel, these people with suddenly awakened consciences would rather see the town lie fallow for a while longer.

The gossip regarding Hopewell Drugg's supposed fall from sobriety was both untrue and unkind. That the open bar at Lem Parraday's was a real and imminent peril to Polktown, however, was a fact now undisputed by the better citizens.

Janice had sounded Elder Concannon on that very Monday when she had brought him home from the Trimmins place. The old gentleman, although conservative to a fault where money was concerned--his money, or anybody's--agreed that one or two men should not be allowed to benefit at the moral expense of their fellow townsmen.

That the liquor selling was causing a festering sore in the community of Polktown could not be gainsaid. Sim Howell and two other boys in their early teens had somehow obtained liquor, and had been picked up in a frightful condition on the public street by Constable Poley Cantor.

The boys were made very ill by the quant.i.ty of liquor they had drunk, and although they denied that they had bought the stuff at the hotel, it was soon learned that the supply of spirits the boys had got hold of, came from Lem Parraday's bar.

One of the town topers had purchased the half-gallon bottle and had hid it in a barn, fearing to take it home. The boys had found it and dared each other to taste the stuff.

"It's purty bad stuff 'at Lem sells, I allow," observed Walky Dexter.

"No wonder it settled them boys. It's got a 'kick' to it wuss'n Josephus had that time the swarm of bees lit on him."

The town was ablaze with the story of the boys' escapade on Wednesday afternoon when Janice came back from Middletown. She stopped at Hopewell Drugg's store, which was a rendezvous for the male gossips of the town, and Walky was holding forth upon the subject uppermost in the public mind:

"Them consarned lettle skeezicks--I'd ha' trounced the hull on 'em if they'd been mine."

"How would you have felt, Mr. Dexter, if they really were yours?" asked Janice, who had been talking to 'Rill and Nelson Haley. "Suppose Sim Howell were your boy? How would you feel to know that, at his age, he had been intoxicated?"

"Jefers-pelters!" grunted Walky. "I reckon I wouldn't git pigeon-breasted with pride over it--nossir!"

"Then don't make fun," admonished the girl, severely. "It is an awful, _awful_ thing that the boys of Polktown can even get hold of such stuff to make them so ill."

"That is right, Miss Janice," Hopewell said, busy with a customer.

"What else, Mrs. Ma.s.sey?"

"That's all to-day, Hopewell. I hate to give you so big a bill, but that's all I've got," said the druggist's wife, as she handed the store-keeper a twenty-dollar gold certificate.

"He, he!" chuckled Walky, "Guess Ma.s.sey wants all the change in town in his own till, heh?"