ity of principle
and prejudice.

From the first their relationship had been no better than an armed
truce. Both were courteous men, the one because such was his policy, the
other because he was to this manner born. There was no need for them to
discuss their individual creeds. They tacitly accepted the fact that
there was not a parallel between the two. From the moment when his
election was assured by the returns, Abbott was candidly the man of the
Labor--nay, more--of the Socialist party. McGrath and his associates
manipulated him as readily as a marionette. The promises and pledges of
the campaign were ruthlessly jettisoned. If Governor Abbott did not
stand for anarchy, it was only because, for the moment, anarchy was not
the demand of his party. Withal, he was dignified and self-possessed,
robed in an agreeable suavity which became him at functions and
ceremonials, and assured his popularity with those--and they were, as
always, in the majority--who did not look below the surface.

Lieutenant-Governor Barclay had not been ten days in office before he
realized the futility of resistance to the established order, as
represented in his superior. He had accepted his nomination, and
welcomed his election, with an almost Quixotic elation in the
opportunity thus opened to him. He would accomplish--oh, there was no
telling what Lieutenant-Governor Barclay would _not_ accomplish!

He was standing at his office window now, staring out disconsolately
over the sloping lawns of the capitol grounds, mottled with thin
patches of snow, which had contrived to withstand the recent thaw, and
he was telling himself, for the thousandth time, the dispiriting fact
that, as a force for good or evil in the destiny of his state, he was no
more significant than his stenographer's Remington or his secretary's
roll-top desk. With all his ideals, with all those pledges which are
infinitely more vital when made in private to one's conscience than when
made in public to one's party, he found himself merely a cog in the
state machinery--a cog, too, that, seemingly, might be skipped at any or
every time, without in the least degree disturbing the progress of
routine. On the few occasions, in the early days of their official
relation, when he had ventured to set his will in opposition to that of
the Governor, there had not been manifest in the latter's attitude even
that spirit of resistance which spurs men to more active and resolute
endeavor. Gov