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 get ready to give it to us and not before. That's how they play the game, and when you try to stop them you simply butt your head against a stone wall. The Fifth Ward Improvement Association will get just what the politicians are ready to give the Fifth Ward, and nothing else."

George's hot blood had turned to ice. After a while his father came to the doorway drying his hands with a towel.

"What are those papers you have there, son? Something you wanted to show me?"

"No, sir," George said faintly; "just some scribbling," and put the school petition in his pocket.

But the faith that was in him was too deep to be long shaken. For months he had sat with Mr. Banning, daily in Room 13, at stated intervals in the civics classroom. The pure faith of the man had been as a flame, and the light had found its way into the depth of the boy's soul. America had ceased to be a section of the earth; it had become the one land where every man in his own right was king of his country's destiny. "If we have good government," Mr. Banning was wont to say, "it is because the people are vigilant and demand good government and do their part to get it. If we have poor government it is because the people are lax. In a Republic such as ours