" was the mild rejoinder.

"Well, you'd better believe it, because it's the truth. You are down and
out. I had you beat, David, that night last summer when you gave me your
'de-fi' and I came back by taking your son away from you. The young
gentleman you were going to spring on us for your next attorney-general
has done more than any other one man in the campaign to help our lame
dog over the stile."

"Yes," said the big man, sunning his back at the fire, "that is one of
the things we're going to flail out right here and now, Hardwick; about
the boy and what he's been doing. You told him to go out and preach the
good, clean gospel of the square deal, didn't you?"

It was at this point that the listener in the musicians' gallery, a prey
to tumultuous emotions which were making the freshly healing wound in
his head throb like a trip-hammer, lost all of his compunctions and drew
closer to the fretwork screen.

"He didn't need any special instructions," was the vice-president's
rejoinder, and his tone chimed in with the hard-bitted smile. "Now that
it is all over, I don't mind telling you that he mapped the thing out
for himself, and all we had to do was to sit tight and give him plenty
of rope. Candidly, David, I don't believe I'm hardened enough to play
the game as it ought to be played out here in the sage-brush hills. The
young fellow's sincerity came pretty near getting away with me when I
saw how ridiculously in earnest he was."

"Yet you let him go on, putting himself deeper and deeper in the hole
every time he stood up before an audience, and you never said a
word--never gave him a hint that you were not going to back him up in
everything he was saying?"

This time the hard-bitted smile broke into a laugh.

"Let's get down to business, David. You wouldn't expect us to throw the
game away when somebody was trying his best to put the winning card into
our hands. We needn't dig back into the campaign for something to jangle
over, you and I. We can come right down to the present moment. You're
cornered, but I don't deny that you've still got a few votes to dispose
of. How much do you want for them?"

Blount saw his father take a step forward, and for a flitting instant he
thought there would be violence. But apparently nothing was farther from
the senator's intention.

"I'm not selling to-night, Hardwick; I'm buying," he said, with the
good-natured smile wrinkling at the corners of his eyes. "I want to know
h