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This personage, whom I recognized, from Alvin's description, as the "minister-lookin'" butler, led us through a hall about as large as our sitting-room, dining-room and kitchen combined, but bearing no other resemblance to these apartments, and opened another door, through which, bowing once more, he ushered us. Then he closed the door, leaving himself, to my relief, outside.

"Anything's in order when Alvin's chairman." The proceedings of the first half hour were disappointingly tame. Most of us had come there to witness a political wrestling match between Tad Simpson and Cyrus Whittaker. Some even dared hope that Congressman Atkins might direct his fight in person. But neither the Honorable nor Captain Cy was in the hall as yet.

Alvin's early life was different in no way from that of other children of the mountains.

Often he would sit for an hour or more upon the door-step, looking out past the arbor of honeysuckle, over the acres of land that had been given him, gazing on to the mountains. But he kept his own counsel. Some of those who lived in the valley, who saw him sitting, thinking, wondered if there had come a longing into Alvin's heart to be out in the world again. But his problem was far from that.

"Why not try to get in touch with some amateur in Cousin Alvin's home town by wireless?" Hal suggested. "That's the very thing I was in hope one of you would propose," Mr. Perry replied. "You boys haven't by any means exhausted the possibilities of your radio outfit."

This hazing gang seems to consist of some pretty rough characters. I want to get in touch with my uncle, Alvin's father." "I will call your uncle on the telephone and tell him what you say," the Port Hope amateur dot-and-dashed in reply. "Ask him to come over to your house, and tell him I will explain everything to him through you, and then perhaps he can form a plan for his son's rescue."

This was the only period of Alvin's life when the wishes of his mother did not control him. These week-end sprees were relaxation and fun, and he worked steadily the remainder of the week. In them he grew jovial and the friends he drew around him were fun, not trouble, makers.

Alvin's mother had often pleaded with her boy that he was not his real self not his better self while drinking. Something happened at a basket-party in 1914 that caused the full meaning of his mother's solicitude to come to him. He left, declaring he would never take another drink, and his drinking and gambling days ended together.

He greets the grumpy checkroom tyrant like a friend and brother, and has just slipped him a cigar when a husky-built square-jawed gent steps up behind and taps Alvin familiar on the shoulder. Alvin's jaw sags disappointed for a second as he turns; but he recovers quick and gives the cheerful hail. "Oh, it's you, is it, Scully?" says he. "I thought I'd given you the slip completely this time.

Williams, at her home, heard so many gunshots off in the woods in the course of a day that she attached no significance to them. But Alvin's and Gracie's meetings along the shaded roadway that leads to the Williams home were discovered, and Mrs. Williams put a ban upon them for Gracie was too young, she maintained, to have thoughts of marriage.