To his surprise, she said, "You are bad--all of you. If the women could
vote we would cease to have trouble. It may please you all to know that
since that idiot Pole has mortgaged his farm to Swallow and bought out
the butcher at the mills, he has repented of his Democratic wickedness
and says, 'After all the Squire was right.'"

"And where, my dear, did you get all this gossip?" asked Penhallow.

"It is complicated; ask Pole."

"I could guess," laughed Leila.

"And I," cried the Squire.

"You will all suffer," cried Ann, "and don't complain, James Penhallow,
if tough beef is the final result of political complications." Whereupon
she gathered her skirts and fled laughing.

"Pole will pay dearly," said the Squire, who was secretly securing meat
for the discharged mill-hands and understood what had influenced Pole.

Grey Pine and Westways during the summer and fall of 1858 felt, like many
in the Northern States, the need to live with economy. Want of employment
added to the unrest, and the idle men found time to discuss the angry
politics which rang through the debates in the Senate. The changed tariff
on iron, to which Pennsylvania was always selfishly sensitive, affected
the voting, and Penhallow was pleased when the Administration suffered
disaster in the October elections. All parties--Republican, American and
Douglas Democrats--united to cast discredit on the President's policy,
but Penhallow knew that the change of duties on iron had little to do