fellow can't come near you without hearing about ballots, ballots, ballots. You're a fine football player, George, but on this election business you're a three-ringed nuisance. I'm going up front and find a seat in which I can ride in peace."
Praska smiled patiently. "You admitted, Perry, that there was nothing funny about setting things down in writing in banks, and"
But Perry fled through the aisle up toward the coach ahead.
The smile remained on Praska's face after Perry had disappeared through the car door, but it did not extend to his eyes, nor was there humor running through his mind. The conductor came through, he handed over his ticket absently, and his gaze wandered out of the window. The train was running through rolling country—brown fields stripped bare of their harvest, cows standing in fall-thinned pastures with bovine placidity, white houses seen through the bare trees and tidy, red barns. But the pastoral picture might just as well not have been there. He did not see it.
His mind was back in Room 13. The room had been in operation for only three weeks, but already it had made a deep and telling impression upon him. He had for it the passionate love that the true citizen feels for his country. It was his country—his school country, his repub-
