ligible to
office there, and nowhere else."

"You'd be a citizen of this State by the time you could get elected to
an office in it," suggested the senator gravely.

"I know; the required term of residence here is ridiculously short. But
you are forgetting that I am as completely unknown in the sage-brush
hills as you are well known. I couldn't get a nomination for the office
of pound-keeper."

David Blount was chuckling softly as he threw up the brim of the big
sombrero he was wearing.

"Sounds right funny to hear you talking that way, son," he commented.
"Mighty near everybody this side of the Bad Lands will tell you that the
slate hangs up behind the door at Wartrace Hall; and I don't know but
what some people would say that old Sage-Brush Dave himself does most of
the writing on it. Anyhow, there is one place on it that is still
needing a name, and I reckon your name would fit it as well as
anybody's."

The young man who was so lately out of the well-balanced East was
astounded.

"Heavens!" he ejaculated. "You're not considering me as a possibility on
the State ticket before I've been twenty-four hours inside of the State
lines, are you?"

"No; not exactly as a possibility, son; that isn't quite the word. We'll
call it a sure thing, if you want it. It's this way: we're needing a
sort of political house-cleaning right bad this year. We have good
enough laws, but they're winked at any day in the week when somebody
comes along with a fistful of yellow-backs. The fight is on between the
people of this State and the corporations; it was begun two years ago,
and the people got the laws all right, but they forgot to elect men who
would carry them out. This time it looks as if the voters had got their
knives sharpened. We've been a little slow catching step maybe, but the
marching orders have gone out. We're aiming to clean house, and do it
right, this fall."

"Not if the slate hangs behind your door--or any man's, father," was the
theorist's sober reminder. "Reform doesn't come in by that road."

"Hold on, boy; steady-go-easy's the word. Reform comes in by any old
trail it can find, mostly, and thanks its lucky stars if it doesn't run
up against any bridges washed out or any mud-holes too deep to ford.
We've got a good man for governor right now; not any too broad maybe,
but good--church good. Nobody has ever said he'd take a bribe; but he
isn't heavy enough to sit on the lid and hold it down. Alec Gordon, the