ing, and when the mayor was
sufficiently wilted, rebraced him by promising to defend him, whatever
happened, and finally restored him to complacency by showing him that
the transaction was not graft at all. When he parted from the mayor,
that official was, as opposition papers put it, "a creature of the
attorney's."

The attorney found Skinner in his butcher-shop surrounded by a group of
friends, to whom he was relating a story of how he had been attacked by
the Colonel, and what would have happened to the Colonel if intervention
had not come just when it did. Toole entered briskly and pushed his way
through the group to where the butcher stood.

"Skinner," he said, "I want half a dozen words with you, at once," and
his manner was enough to silence the butcher. Skinner led the way to the
back room where the sausage machine made its home, and Toole carefully
closed the door.

"Now," he said, taking the butcher by the shirtsleeve," you have had a
taste of what comes of taking the political lead away from the party
to which it rightly belongs. You have had an experience of what happens
when people who know nothing about politics meddle with thing that
the natural political leaders should be left to handle. You have been
choked, and you have been cheated, and you deserve to be kicked. You
pay money to this editor her in town, for an advertisement that you know
does you no good, and in return he prints an article to make you laughed
at. You form a combination with Guthrie to put in outsiders instead of
good party men, and Guthrie uses his pull to have an ordinance passed to
make you spend money for fire-extinguishers. You elect a mayor, by your
influence as a leading citizen, and he takes a bribe from Guthrie, and
passes an ordinance to rob you. And you, like a fool, let him do it. And
you let Guthrie, that he may stand in solidly with the very woman you
have your eye on, sell you--what? Fire-extinguishers? Not much! Not
fire-extinguishers at all, but useless, no-account lung-testers!
Lung-testers, that he makes you pay one hundred dollars for, and that
you will have to throw away. That is what they are, lung-testers,
and you can pocket a loss of one hundred dollars, and buy four real
fire-extinguishers now, as the ordinance tells you, and makes you!"

The butcher's mouth opened and his eyes stared. He felt weakly behind
him for the edge of the table, pawing uncertainly in the air.

"That's all I have to say to YOU," sa