dity and for the power of the
shoulders; but already there were indications that the solidity, come
of hard manual labor in early life, was soon to soften into fat under
the melting influence of prosperity and the dissipation it put within
too easy reach. The striking features of his face were a pair of keen,
hard, greenish eyes and a jaw that protruded uglily--the jaw of
aggressiveness, not the too prominent jaw of weakness. At sight of
Jane he halted awkwardly.

"How're you, Mr. Hastings?" said he.

"Hello, Dick," said the old man. "This is my daughter Jane."

Jane smiled a pleasant recognition of the introduction. Kelly said
stiffly, "How're you, ma'am?"

"Want to see me alone, I suppose?" Hastings went on. "You go out on
the porch, Jenny."

As soon as Jane disappeared Kelly's stiffness and clumsiness vanished.
To head off Hastings' coming offer of a cigar, he drew one from his
pocket and lighted it. "There's hell to pay, Mr. Hastings," he began,
seating himself near the old man, tilting back in his chair and
crossing his legs.

"Well, I reckon you can take care of it," said Hastings calmly.

"Oh, yes, we kin take care of it, all right. Only, I don't want to do
nothing without consulting you."

In these two statements Mr. Kelly summed up the whole of politics in
Remsen City, in any city anywhere, in the country at large.

Kelly had started life as a blacksmith. But he soon tired of the
dullness and toil and started forth to find some path up to where men
live by making others work for them instead of plodding along at the
hand-to-mouth existence that is the lot of those who live by their own
labors alone. He was a safe blower for a while, but wisely soon
abandoned that fascinating but precarious and unremunerative career.
From card sharp following the circus and sheet-writer to a bookmaker he
graduated into bartender, into proprietor of a doggery. As every
saloon is a political club, every saloon-keeper is of necessity a
politician. Kelly's woodbox happened to be a convenient place for
directing the floaters and the repeaters. Kelly's political importance
grew apace. His respectability grew more slowly. But it had grown and
was growing.

If you had asked Lizzie, the maid, why she was a Democrat, she would
have given no such foolish reason as the average man gives.

She would not have twaddled about principles--when everyone with
eyeteeth cut ought to know that principles have departed from