on of a "Citizens Union," whose avowed
object was to make a campaign against "graft" and political corruption
the following autumn. This announcement and the call for a mass-meeting
in Kingdon Hall was received by the newspapers with a good-natured
ridicule, and in influential quarters it was generally hinted that this
was Mr. Blackwood's method of "getting square" for having been deprived
of the Boyne Street line. It was quite characteristic of Ralph Hambleton
that he should go, out of curiosity, to the gathering at Kingdon Hall,
and drop into my office the next morning.

"Well, Hughie, they're after you," he said with a grin.

"After me? Why not include yourself?"

He sat down and stretched his long legs and his long arms, and smiled as
he gaped.

"Oh, they'll never get me," he said. And I knew, as I gazed at him, that
they never would.

"What sort of things did they say?" I asked.

"Haven't you read the Pilot and the Mail and State?"

"I just glanced over them. Did they call names?"

"Call names! I should say they did. They got drunk on it, worked
themselves up like dervishes. They didn't cuss you personally,--that'll
come later, of course. Judd Jason got the heaviest shot, but they
said he couldn't exist a minute if it wasn't for the 'respectable'
crowd--capitalists, financiers, millionaires and their legal tools. Fact
is, they spoke a good deal of truth, first and last, in a fool kind of
way."

"Truth!" I exclaimed irritatedly.

Ralph laughed. He was evidently enjoying himself.

"Is any of it news to you, Hughie, old boy?"

"It's an outrage."

"I think it's funny," said Ralph. "We haven't had such a circus for
years. Never had. Of course I shouldn't like to see you go behind the
bars,--not that. But you fellows can't expect to go on forever skimming
off the cream without having somebody squeal sometime. You ought to be
reasonable."

"You've skimmed as much cream as anybody else."

"You've skimmed the cream, Hughie,--you and Dickinson and Scherer and
Grierson and the rest,--I've only filled my jug. Well, these fellows
are going to have a regular roof-raising campaign, take the lid off of
everything, dump out the red-light district some of our friends are so
fond of."

"Dump it where?" I asked curiously.

"Oh," answered Ralph, "they didn't say. Out into the country, anywhere."

"But that's damned foolishness," I declared.

"Didn't say it wasn't," Ralph admitted. "They talked a lot of that, to