s to soothe him. "Not an idea in
my head all day," he said to himself with drowsy delight.

Four days of this, and on the fifth came the outside world in the form
of Burdick, chairman of the county committee of his party in the county
in which his farm lay. They sat on the fence under the big maple, out
of earshot of the others.

"Larkin's come out for John Frankfort for the nomination for governor,"
said Burdick.

Scarborough smiled. "Even Larkin couldn't get it for Frankfort--he's
too notorious."

"He don't want to get it for him," replied Burdick. "His real man's
Judge Graney."

Scarborough stopped fanning himself with his wide-brimmed straw. Judge
Graney was the most adroit and dangerous of John Dumont's tools. He
had given invaluable aid from the bench at several of the National
Woolens Company's most critical moments. Yet he had retained and
increased his popularity and his reputation by deciding against his
secret master with a brave show of virtue when he knew the higher
courts must reverse him. For several years Scarborough had been
looking forward to the inevitable open conflict between the forces of
honesty in his party and the forces of the machine as ruled by the
half-dozen big corporations who also ruled the machine of the
opposition party. He had known that the contest must come, and that he
must take part in it; and he had been getting ready. But he had not
wished to give battle until he was strong enough to give a battle
which, even if he lost it, would not strengthen the hold of the
corruptionists.

After he rejected Larkin's dazzling offers, conditioned upon his
aloofness rather than frank subservience, he had thought the whole
situation over, and, as he hinted to Pauline, had realized how
apparently hopeless a fight against the machine would be just then,
with the people prosperous and therefore quiescent. And he had decided
to stand aside for the time. He now saw that reluctance to attack
Dumont had been at least a factor in this decision; and he also saw
that he could not delay, as he had hoped. There was no escape--either
he must let his work of years be undermined and destroyed or he must
give battle with all his strength and skill. He remembered what
Pauline had said: "You can't lose!"

"No, one can't lose in this sort of fight," he thought. "Either WE win
or there'll be no victory." He sprang from the fence to the ground.
"Let's go to the house," he said to Burdick.