differing in quality from the feeling I once
would have had,--for this arose from resentment, not from belief. It
was impossible to live in the atmosphere created by the men with whom I
associated--especially at such a time--without imbibing something of
the emotions animating them,--even though I had been free from these
emotions myself. I, too, had begun to be filled with a desire for
revenge; and when this desire was upon me I did not have in my mind a
pack of reformers, or even the writer of the article in Yardley's. I
thought of Hermann Krebs. He was my persecutor; it seemed to me that he
always had been....

"Well, I'll make speeches if you like," I said to Dickinson.

"I'm glad," he replied. "We're all agreed, Gorse and the rest of us,
that you ought to. We've got to get some ginger into this fight, and a
good deal more money, I'm afraid. Jason sends word we'll need more. By
the way, Hugh, I wish you'd drop around and talk to Jason and get his
idea of how the land lies."

I went, this time in the company of Judah B. Tallant. Naturally we
didn't expect to see Mr. Jason perturbed, nor was he. He seemed to be in
an odd, rather exultant mood--if he can be imagined as exultant. We were
not long in finding out what pleased him--nothing less than the fact
that Mr. Krebs had proposed him for mayor!

"D--d if I wouldn't make a good one, too," he said. "D--d if I wouldn't
show 'em what a real mayor is!"

"I guess there's no danger of your ever being mayor, Judd," Tallant
observed, with a somewhat uneasy jocularity.

"I guess there isn't, Judah," replied the boss, quickly, but with a
peculiar violet flash in his eyes. "They won't ever make you mayor,
either, if I can help it. And I've a notion I can. I'd rather see Krebs
mayor."

"You don't think he meant to propose you seriously," Tallant exclaimed.

"I'm not a d--d fool," said the boss. "But I'll say this, that he half
meant it. Krebs has a head-piece on him, and I tell you if any of this
reform dope is worth anything his is. There's some sense in what he's
talking, and if all the voters was like him you might get a man like me
for mayor. But they're not, and I guess they never will be."

"Sure," said Mr. Jason. "The people are dotty--there ain't one in ten
thousand understands what he's driving at when he gets off things like
that. They take it on the level."

Tallant reflected.

"By gum, I believe you're right," he said. "You think they will blow
up?" he