to meet at some stated place and
each lunch together,--say at a restaurant or at a club or at some eating
place. This would go on every day with the interest getting keener and
keener, and everybody getting more and more excited, till presently the
chairman would announce that the campaign had succeeded and there would
be the kind of scene that Mullins had described.

So that was the plan that they set in motion in Mariposa.

I don't wish to say too much about the Whirlwind Campaign itself. I
don't mean to say that it was a failure. On the contrary, in many ways
it couldn't have been a greater success, and yet somehow it didn't seem
to work out just as Henry Mullins had said it would. It may be that
there are differences between Mariposa and the larger cities that one
doesn't appreciate at first sight. Perhaps it would have been better to
try some other plan.

Yet they followed along the usual line of things closely enough. They
began with the regular system of some of the business men getting
together in a quiet way.

First of all, for example, Henry Mullins came over quietly to Duff's
rooms, over the Commercial Bank, with a bottle of rye whiskey, and
they talked things over. And the night after that George Duff came over
quietly to Mullins's rooms, over the Exchange Bank, with a bottle
of Scotch whiskey. A few evenings after that Mullins and Duff went
together, in a very unostentatious way, with perhaps a couple of bottles
of rye, to Pete Glover's room over the hardware store. And then all
three of them went up one night with Ed Moore, the photographer, to
Judge Pepperleigh's house under pretence of having a game of poker. The
very day after that, Mullins and Duff and Ed Moore, and Pete Glover and
the judge got Will Harrison, the harness maker, to go out without any
formality on the lake on the pretext of fishing. And the next night
after that Duff and Mullins and Ed Moore and Pete Glover and Pepperleigh
and Will Harrison got Alf Trelawney, the postmaster, to come over, just
in a casual way, to the Mariposa House, after the night mail, and the
next day Mullins and Duff and--

But, pshaw! you see at once how the thing is worked. There's no need to
follow that part of the Whirlwind Campaign further. But it just shows
the power of organization.

And all this time, mind you, they were talking things over, and looking
at things first in one light and then in another light,--in fact, just
doing as the big city men