awled,
"but administering knockout drops to a sick party is not to be
recommended."

The chairman's patience left him then.

"What kind of a trick is this, standing up here at the eleventh hour and
putting the knife into your party?" he demanded, wrathfully.

"I had a dog once, Luke, that was snapping at flies in general as he was
lying on the porch here, and he snapped at a brown hackle fly that was
hitched onto a fish-line. And he ran off down the road with a hook in
his mouth and sixty yards of line and a pole following him. You'd better
spit out that last fly, Luke. Now will you take a little advice from me,
on the condition that I'll follow up that advice with some practical
help?"

"That's what I'm waiting for."

"Then you get back onto your job, and leave Everett just where he
is--not one word to him or his friends. That's the advice part. The help
will come when I've got a few things straightened out a little more."

"The convention is less than three weeks off. What's your plan? I want
to know it now."

"Well, you won't."

"Do you think for a moment that I, the chairman of the Republican State
Committee, am going into a convention with blinders on?"

"You can go in any way you want to," retorted the Duke, calmly. "But
that's all you're going to hear from me to-day, Luke. Faith without
works is no good. You furnish the faith, and I'll furnish the works."

"I never heard of any such devilish campaign management as this,"
grumbled the chairman. "You're talking to me as though I didn't know any
more politics than a village hog-reeve."

"Well, I'm the doctor in this case, providing I'm called," said the old
man. "Just now I'm feeling of the pulse and making the diagnosis, and am
getting ready to prescribe the dose. I'll call you into consultation,
Luke, when the right time comes, and I'll guarantee that nothing will
leak out to wound your pride or your political reputation. But I want to
say that if you stand here to-day waiting to hear any more about what I
intend to do, you'd better shut off that automobile. You won't be
leaving for quite a spell."

The chairman knew his man. He trotted down the steps and got into his
car.

"When you get ready to let me know how you're running this campaign,
you'll find me at headquarters," he said, wrathfully, by way of
farewell. Then he departed, with the news of how Thelismer Thornton was
still boss of the northern principality--but that Thelismer Thornton,
Ne