produced him--that he existed rather as an outlet for political
tendencies than as the product of international violence. He was more
than a theatrical attitude--a torrent of words. Even a free country--and
Stephen thought sentimentally of America as "a free country"--must have
its tyrannies of opinion, and consequently its rebels against current
convictions. In the older countries he had imagined that it might be
possible to hold with the hare and run with the hounds; but in the land
of opportunity for all there was less reason to be astonished when the
hunted turned at last into the hunter. Where every boy was taught that
he might some day be President, why should one stand amazed when the
ambitious son of a circus rider became Governor of Virginia? After all,
a fair field and no favours was the best that the most conservative of
politicians--the best that even John Benham could ask.

Yes, there was a cause, there was a reason for the miracle of disorder,
or it would not have happened. The hour had called forth the man; but
the man had been there awaiting the strokes, listening, listening, with
his ear to the wind. It had been a triumph of personality, one of those
rare dramatic occasions when the right man and the appointed time come
together. This the young man admitted candidly in the very moment when
he told himself that he detested the demagogue and all his works. A man
who consistently made his bid for the support of the radical element!
Who stirred up the forces of discontent because he could harness them
to his chariot! A man who was born in a circus tent, and who still
performed in public the tricks of a mountebank! That this man had power,
Stephen granted ungrudgingly; but it was power over the undisciplined,
the half-educated, the mentally untrained. It was power, as John Benham
had once remarked with a touch of hyperbole, over empty stomachs.

There were persons in Stephen's intimate circle (there are such persons