. Say--you didn't--?" He did not
finish.

Terrified by something in Austen's eye, which may or may not have been
there at the time of the Blodgett incident, Mr. Tooting fled without
completing his inquiry. And, his imagination being great, he reproduced
for himself such a vivid sensation of a bullet-hole in his spine that
he missed his footing near the bottom, and measured his length in the
entry. Such are the humiliating experiences which sometimes befall the
Talleyrands--but rarely creep into their biographies.

Austen, from the top of the stairway, saw this catastrophe, but did not
smile. He turned on his heel, and made his way slowly around the corner
of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the
open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street
windows sat the Honourable Brush Bascom, sphinx-like, absorbing wisdom
and clouds of cigar smoke which emanated from the Honourable Nat
Billings.

"Howdy, Austen?" said Brush, genially, "lookin' for the Honourable
Hilary? Flint got up from New York this morning, and sent for him a
couple of hours ago. He'll be back at two."

"Have you read the pronunciamento?" inquired Mr. Billings. "Say,
Austen, knowin' your sentiments, I wonder you weren't one of the twenty
prominent citizens."

"All you anti-railroad fellers ought to get together," Mr. Bascom
suggested; "you've got us terrified since your friend from Leith turned
the light of publicity on us this morning. I hear Ham Tooting's been in
and made you an offer."

News travels fast in Ripton.

"Austen kicked him downstairs," said Jimmy Towle, the office boy, who
had made a breathless entrance during the conversation, and felt it to
be the psychological moment to give vent to the news with which he was
bursting.

"Is that straight?" Mr. Billings demanded. He wished he had done it
himself. "Is that straight?" he repeated, but Austen had gone.

"Of course it's straight," said Jimmy Towle, vigorously. A shrewd
observer of human nature, he had little respect for Senator Billings.
"Ned Johnson saw him pick himself up at the foot of Austen's stairway."

The Honourable Brush's agate eyes caught the light, and he addressed Mr.
Billings in a voice which, by dint of long training, only carried a few
feet.

"There's the man the Northeastern's got to look out for," he said.
"The Humphrey Crewes don't count. But if Austen Vane ever gets started,
there'll be trouble. Old man Flint's got