kindly smiled the great man. "That's what I call the
square thing. Mr. Boniface, you are a gentleman and a scholar; and I'll
mention your admirable house to my friends. By the way, I shall have to
leave you for a few days."

"Going to leave us!" exclaimed Mr. Boniface, aghast. "I hope not till
this job is put through."

"I must run about a bit," muttered Pullwool, confidentially. "A little
turn through the State, you understand, to stir up the country
districts. Some of the members ain't as hot as they should be, and I
want to set their constituents after them. Nothing like getting on a
few deputations."

"Oh, exactly!" chuckled Mr. Boniface, ramming his hands into his
pockets and cheerfully jingling a bunch of keys and a penknife for lack
of silver. It was strange indeed that he should actually see the Devil
in Mr. Pullwool's eye and should not have a suspicion that he was in
danger of being humbugged by him. "And your rooms?" he suggested. "How
about them?"

"I keep them," replied the lobbyist, grandly, as if blaspheming the
expense--to Boniface. "Our friends must have a little hole to meet in.
And while you are about it, Mr. Boniface, see that they get something
to drink and smoke; and we'll settle it between us."

"Pre--cisely!" laughed the landlord, as much as to say, "My treat!"

And so Mr. Pullwool, that Pericles and Lorenzo de' Medici rolled in
one, departed for a season from the city which he ruled and blessed.
Did he run about the State and preach and crusade in behalf of
Fastburg, and stir up the bucolic populations to stir up their
representatives in its favor? Not a bit of it; the place that he went
to and the only place that he went to was Slowburg; yes, covering up
his tracks in his usual careful style, he made direct for the rival of
Fastburg. What did he propose to do there? Oh, how can we reveal the
whole duplicity and turpitude of Ananias Pullwool? The subject is too
vast for a merely human pen; it requires the literary ability of a
recording angel. Well, we must get our feeble lever under this boulder
of wickedness as we can, and do our faint best to expose all the
reptiles and slimy things beneath it.

The first person whom this apostle of lobbyism called upon in Slowburg
was the mayor of that tottering capital.

"My name is Pullwool," he said to the official, and he said it with an
almost enviable ease of impudence, for he was used to introducing
himself to people who despised and deteste