even in the most conservative communities) who contended that Vetch was
in his way a rude genius. Judge Horatio Lancaster Page, for instance,
insisted that the Governor had a charm of his own, that, "he wasn't half
bad to look at if you caught him smiling," that he could even reason
"like one of us," if you granted him his premise. After the open debate
between Vetch and Benham--the great John Benham, hero of war and peace,
and tireless labourer in the vineyard of public service--after this
memorable discussion, Judge Horatio Lancaster Page had remarked, in his
mild, unpolemical tone, that "though John had undoubtedly carried off
the flowers of rhetoric, there was a good deal of wholesome green stuff
about that fellow Vetch." But everybody knew that a man with a comical
habit of mind could not be right.

Again the figure crossed the firelight between the muslin curtains, and
to Stephen Culpeper, standing alone in the snow outside, that large
impending presence embodied all that he and his kind had hated and
feared for generations. It embodied among other disturbances the law of
change; and to Stephen and his race of pleasant livers the two sinister
forces in the universe were change and death. After all, they had made
the world, these pleasant livers; and what were those other people--the
people represented by that ominous shadow--except the ragged prophets of
disorder and destruction?

Turning away, Stephen descended the wide brick walk which fell
gradually, past the steps of the library and the gaunt railing round a
motionless fountain, to the broad white slope of the Square with its
smoky veil of twilight. Farther away he saw the high iron fence and
heard the clanging of passing street cars. On his left the ugly shape
of the library resembled some crude architectural design sketched on
parchment.