and he knows it," said the
other. "The best I could do was fool him out of twenty-five. But that's
doing well--in these times. This Spinney stir has made it cost Everett
more than it has cost any candidate for ten years. I really didn't have
the heart to crowd him for any more. He's been jounced down good and
hard as it is."

Harlan took one more look at the unconscious and fatuous Everett, and
went out of the room. Twenty feet away, as he knew, sat his grandfather,
ready and able to smash the candidate's dreams and chances as a child
bursts a soap-bubble. And the man's money--thrown to the winds when a
word might have held his hand and closed his pocket-book! Harlan,
grandson of Thelismer Thornton, tried to put the thing out of his mind.

"Politics," said a man in the corridor in his hearing, "has got the pelt
off'm second-story work, as they're running the political game in this
State right now. But it's only petty larceny. And that's why the whole
thing makes me sick."

"Me too," said his listener. "You could brag some about a political
safe-blowing, but we all have to turn to and hush up this sneak-thief
work."

Harlan, walking on, wondered whether the coup that was then in process
of elaboration in State Committee headquarters would not be considered
by Everett and his supporters as arising to the proper dignity of
political crime.

To his surprise Spinney's rooms were practically deserted. The candidate
was there, perched on the edge of a table, nursing his knee in his
clasped hands and talking vigorously to a few of his intimates. The
defection was not bothering him, apparently. Harlan promptly understood
why. As he stood for a moment, making sure that neither Linton nor
Wadsworth was there, he heard the mellow blare of distant band music.
Spinney jumped off the table.

"The boys are coming!" cried one of his friends, and stepped out through
the window upon a balcony. "Wait till after I call for the cheers,
Arba!" he called back. "Step out when they strike up _Hail to the
Chief_."

"This will make the Everett bunch sit up and take notice," said a man at
Harlan's elbow. "There'll be a thousand men in line behind that band
when she swings into the square, here! And a Spinney badge on every one
of 'em!"

He was challenged promptly. The corridor was full of Everett men.

"Ten dollars to a drink that your man Spinney pays for the band! And
when a band starts up street you can get every yag, vag, and jag in