sk. His glamorous
fancy saw them as a great anxious throng, dominant men, yet respectful,
who were trembling lest he should make a fatal step--to answer for it
with his political life. Public life--he rejected the term political
life--was of all things what he was preeminently fitted for. How else
could a man so fully serve his fellows?--how so surely and strongly
promote the uplift? And Plonny Neal had served notice on him that he
stood to-day on the crossroads to large public usefulness. The czar of
them all, the great Warwick who made and unmade kings by the lifting of
his finger, had told him, as plain as language could speak, that he,
West, was his imperial choice for the mayoralty, with all that that
foreshadowed.... Truly, he had served his apprenticeship, and was meet
for his opportunity. For eight long months he had stood in line, doing
his duty quietly and well, asking no favor of anybody. And now at last
Warwick had beckoned him and set the mystic star upon his forehead....

Iridescent visionry enwrapped the young man, and he swam in it goldenly.
In time his spirit returned to his body, and he found himself leaning
back in a very matter-of-fact chair, facing a very plain question. How
could the shifting back, the rationalizing, of the paper's position be
accomplished with the minimum of shock? How could he rescue the party
with the least possible damage to the _Post's_ consistency?

West went to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room, pulled out a
large folder marked, _Reformatory_, and, returning to his seat, ran
hurriedly through the _Post's_ editorials on this subject during the
past twelvemonth. Over some of the phrases he ground his teeth. They
floated irritatingly in his head as he once more leaned back in his
chair and frowned at the opposite wall.

Gradually there took form in his mind a line of reasoning which would
appear to grow with some degree of naturalness out of what had gone
before, harmonizing the basic continuity of the _Post's_ attitude, and
minimizing the change in present angle or point of view. His fertile
mind played about it, strengthening it, building it up, polishing and
perfecting; and in time he began to write, at first slowly, but soon
with fluent ease.

XXVI

_In which Queed forces the Old Professor's Hand, and the Old
Professor takes to his Bed._

Raincoat buttoned to his throat, Queed set his face against the steady
downpour. It was a mild, windles