You see I speak square.
Will you join me?"

The question was thrown out abruptly. Mr. Gul-more had caught a gleam in
the other's eye as he spoke of a good Mayor and his qualifications. "He
bites, I guess," was his inference, and accordingly he put the question
at once.

Mr. Hutchings, brought to himself by the sudden interrogation,
hesitated, and decided to temporize. He could always refuse to join
forces, and Gulmore might "give himself away." He answered:

"I don't quite see what you mean. How are we to join?"

"By both of us givin' somethin'."

"What am I to give?"

"Withdraw your candidature for Mayor as a Democrat."

"I can't do that."

"Jest hear me out. The city has advertised for tenders for a new Court
House and a new Town Hall. The one building should cover both, and be
near the middle of the business part. That's so--ain't it? Well, land's
hard to get anywhere there, and I've the best lots in the town. I guess"
(carelessly) "the contract will run to a million dollars; that
should mean two hundred thousand dollars to some one. It's like this,
Hutchin's: Would you rather come in with me and make a joint tender, or
run for Mayor and be beaten?"

Mr. Hutchings started. Ten years before the proposal would have won him.
But now his children were provided for--all except Joe, and his position
as Counsel to the Union Pacific Railroad lifted him above pecuniary
anxieties. Then the thought of the Professor and May came to him--No! he
wouldn't sell himself. But in some strange way the proposition excited
him; he felt elated. His quickened pulse-beats prevented him from
realizing the enormity of the proposed transaction, but he knew that
he ought to be indignant. What a pity it was that Gulmore had made no
proposal which he might have accepted--and then disclosed!

"If I understand you, you propose that I should take up this contract,
and make money out of it. If that was your business with me, you've made
a mistake, and Professor Roberts is right."

"Hev I?" asked Mr. Gulmore slowly, coldly, in sharp contrast to the
lawyer's apparent excitement and quick speech. Contemptuously he thought
that Hutchings was "foolisher" than he had imagined--or was he sincere?
He would have weighed this last possibility before speaking, if the
mention of Roberts had not angered him. His combativeness made him
persist:

"If you don't want to come in with me, all you've got to do is to say
so. You've no call to get up on you