"What man am I, Keating?" asked Briscoe, cheerily.

"We better explain, I guess," answered the other; and turning to his

compatriot: "You tell him, Boswell."

"Well--it's this way--" said Boswell, and came at once to an awkward

pause, turning aside sheepishly and unable to proceed.

"So that's the way of it, is it?" said the old gentleman.

Helen laughed cheerfully, and looked about her with a courageous and

encouraging eye. "It is embarrassing," she said. "Judge Briscoe, we are

contemplating 'a piece of the blackest treachery and chicanery.' We are

going to give Mr. Halloway the--the go-by!" The embarrassment fell away,

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and everybody began to talk at once.

"Hold on a minute," said the judge; "let's get at it straight. What do you

want with me?"

"I'll tell you," volunteered Keating. "You see, the boys are getting in

line again for this convention. They are the old file that used to rule

the roost before the 'Herald' got too strong for them, and they rely on

Mr. Harkless's being sick to beat Kedge Halloway with that Gaines County

man, McCune. Now, none of us here want Rod McCune I guess. We had trouble

enough once with him and his heelers, and now that Mr. Harkless is down,

they've taken advantage of it to raise a revolution: Rod McCune for

Congress! He's a dirty-hearted swindler--I hope Miss Sherwood will pardon

the strong expression--and everybody thought the 'Herald' had driven him

out of politics, though it never told how it did it; but he's up on top

again. Now, the question is to beat him. We hold the committees, but the

boys have been fighting the committees--call 'em the 'Harkless Ring,' and

never understood that the 'Herald' would have turned us down in a second

if it thought we weren't straight. Well, we saw a week ago that Kedge

Halloway was going to lose to McCune; we figured it out pretty exactly,

and there ain't a ray of hope for Kedge. We wrote to Mr. Harkless about

it, and asked him to come down--if he'd been on the ground last Monday and

had begun to work, I don't say but what his personal influence might have

saved Halloway--but a friend of his, where he's staying, answered the

letter: said Mr. Harkless was down with a relapse and was very fretful;

and he'd taken the liberty of reading the letter and temporarily

suppressing it under doctor's orders; they were afraid he'd come, sick as

he was, from a sense of duty, and asked us to withdraw the letter, and

referred us to Mr. Harkless's representative on the 'Herald.' So we

applied here to Miss Sherwood, and that's why we had this meeting. Now,

Halloway is honest--everybody knows that--and I don't say but what he's

been the best available material Mr. Harkless had to send to Washington;

but he ain't any too bright----"




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