ed up his law books and moved to Kilo, where he was in a
Republican town, a Republican county, and a Republican congressional
district, in a Republican State that formed part of a Republican nation.
He selected Kilo, after considering other good little Republican towns,
because the Republicans of Kilo needed aid and assistance; they were out
of office; kicked out.

Every so often the small town of the West turns the regular party out
of office and puts in a Citizens' ticket, just to show that the people
still rule, and to let the greedy officeholders, some of whom get as
much as one hundred dollars a year in salary, know that their offices
are not life positions. When Attorney Toole descended on Kilo, the
Citizens' Party was "in," and the Republicans were "out," and the
attorney saw an opportunity of making himself valuable to his party by
working to put the party "in" again.

Never before had the Colonel climbed his stairs, and Toole smiled like
an Irish sphinx when the Colonel entered his office. He smiled most of
the time, not because he thought a smile becoming to his freckled
face, but because he found things so eternally amusing. In law a man is
considered innocent until he has been proved guilty; in Kilo Attorney
Toole considered everything amusing until it had been proved serious,
and he considered the Colonel and Skinner, and the whole Citizens' Party
they had been instrumental I organizing, as parts of the same joke. They
would stand until he was ready to lazily push out his hand and topple
them over. It was almost time to topple them, now, and he was glad to
see the Colonel; he motioned him to a seat, and smiled.

The Colonel took his hat from his mat of coarse iron-gray hair, and laid
it carefully on the floor. Out of his small sharp eyes ignorance and
cunning peered, and the mass of beard that hid the greater part of his
face could not hide the hard line of his mouth.

"I jest dropped up," he explained, after he had acknowledged the
attorney's cheerful greeting with a gruff "mornin'," "I jest dropped up,
sort of friendly-like, thinkin' you might have nothin' to do, an' might
like to sit an' chin a while. You don't charge nothin' for sittin' an'
chinnin' do ye?"

Toole said he did not.

"I didn't figger you did," said the Colonel. "If I'd thought you did I
wouldn't have dropped up, for I ain't got no money to spend on lawyers.
I'd sooner throw money away than spend it at law. But I figgered you was
yo