st interests
of the town require every one to boost for you. They won't know what
hit 'em!"

"I hope you're right," answered Brassfield, "but Edgington's no fool.
I wouldn't have him for my lawyer if he was."

"Of course he's no fool," was Alvord's reply, "but he's handicapped by
the personality of his man. Edge's doing pretty well, considering. He
probably is wise to the situation. He didn't expect anything like a
contest, you know, owing to that confounded blunder one of you two
made. Now he's doing the best he can; but his man's been too strong in
the God-and-morality way in years gone by to wipe out the stain by one
evening of free booze. On the other hand, your life has been
perfect--always careful and sound in business, no isms or reform
sentiments on any line, a free spender, a paying attendant of the
richest church, but not a member, and no wife full of wild ideas for
the uplifting of folks that don't want to be uplifted. Why, Mrs.
McCorkle's advanced ideas alone are enough to make him lose out."

"I don't know about that," said Brassfield. "McCorkle and his wife are
not the same in these affairs."

"Well, don't you fall down and forget it," said Alvord, "that the
fellows on the seamy side won't see it your way. They've got good
imaginations, and they can see the colonel on one side of the table and
his wife, the president of the Social Purity League, pouring tea on the
other, and they can see the position it would put the mayor in to do
the right thing along liberal lines--and he sort of strict in habits
himself. No, sir, my boy, you go to bed and sleep sweetly. You are
about to reap the reward of living the right kind of a life."

And sweetly Mr. Brassfield slept, with none of the anxiety felt by
Judge Blodgett as to whether he would awake as Brassfield or Amidon.

XVIII

A GLORIOUS VICTORY

Narcissus saw his image, and fell in love with it,
But jilted pretty Echo, who wailed and never quit.
This beauteous youth was far less kind than I,
my friend, or you:
For we adore our own good looks and love our echoes, too.
--_Adventures in Egoism_.

I really shrink from giving an account of the result of the Bellevale
caucuses next evening, for fear of imparting to the general reader--who
is, of course, a violent patriot--the idea that I am narrating facts
showing an exceptionally bad condition in municipal affairs, in the
triumph of one or the other of two bad men