'bus driver fifty cents to
drive him up to the Main Street, and he went into Callahan's tobacco
store and bought two ten-cent cigars and took them across the street and
gave them to Mallory Tompkins of the Times-Herald as a present from the
Prime Minister.

All that afternoon, Bagshaw went up and down the Main Street of
Mariposa, and you could see, if you knew the signs of it, that there was
politics in the air. He bought nails and putty and glass in the hardware
store, and harness in the harness shop, and drugs in the drug store and
toys in the toy shop, and all the things like that that are needed for a
big campaign.

Then when he had done all this he went over with McGinnis the Liberal
organizer and Mallory Tompkins, the Times-Herald man, and Gingham
(the great Independent-Liberal undertaker) to the back parlour in the
Mariposa House.

You could tell from the way John Henry Bagshaw closed the door before he
sat down that he was in a pretty serious frame of mind.

"Gentlemen," he said, "the election is a certainty. We're going to have
a big fight on our hands and we've got to get ready for it."

"Is it going to be on the tariff?" asked Tompkins.

"Yes, gentlemen, I'm afraid it is. The whole thing is going to turn on
the tariff question. I wish it were otherwise. I think it madness, but
they're bent on it, and we got to fight it on that line. Why they can't
fight it merely on the question of graft," continued the old war horse,
rising from his seat and walking up and down, "Heaven only knows. I
warned them. I appealed to them. I said, fight the thing on graft and we
can win easy. Take this constituency,--why not have fought the thing out
on whether I spent too much money on the town wharf or the post-office?
What better issues could a man want? Let them claim that I am crooked
and let me claim that I'm not. Surely that was good enough without
dragging in the tariff. But now, gentlemen, tell me about things in the
constituency. Is there any talk yet of who is to run?"

Mallory Tompkins lighted up the second of his Prime Minister's cigars
and then answered for the group:

"Everybody says that Edward Drone is going to run."

"Ah!" said the old war horse, and there was joy upon his face, "is he?
At last! That's good, that's good--now what platform will he run on?"

"Independent."

"Excellent," said Mr. Bagshaw. "Independent, that's fine. On a programme
of what?"

"Just simple honesty and public morality."