. The
reporter did venture to pick out a little man and inquire what kind
of business called him to Marion, and the little man informed him with
sarcasm that he was a baker from Banbury and had come down to purchase
doughnut holes.

The reporter thereupon dodged into the bar to escape the grins of some
of the office crew, and his haste was such that he nearly beat the baize
doors into the face of Richard Dodd, who was coming out.

"You're the first real politician I've seen in this bunch," affirmed the
reporter. "What's it all about?"

"What's what about?"

"This convention that's assembling here."

"I know nothing about it," stated Mr. Dodd, with dignity. "It's nothing
of a political nature, I can assure you of that."

The reporter noted that young Mr. Dodd's eyes were red and that his
step wavered, and that he exhaled the peculiar odor which emanates from
gentlemen who have been prolonging for some time what is known vulgarly
as a "toot." In fact, the reporter remembered then the rumor in
newspaper circles that the chief clerk of the state treasury had been
attending to stimulants instead of to business for almost two weeks.

"I assure you that I know all that's to be known about politics,"
insisted Mr. Dodd. "If there's a convention here, who's running it?"

They had returned from the bar into the main office.

"I don't know--can't find out. That tall fellow over there seems to
know everybody who had been coming in--all the bunch of outsiders. But I
never saw him before."

Mr. Dodd closed one eye in order to focus his attention on this unknown
across the office.

A deep glow of antipathy and distrust came into the eye which located
and identified Walker Farr.

Mr. Dodd cursed without using names, verbs, or information.

"Oh, you know him, do you?"

"No, I don't know him." Mr. Dodd hung to his vengeful secret doggedly.
He left the reporter and went and sat down in a chair and continued to
stare at Farr, who remained oblivious to this inspection.

The reporter went across the office. There seemed to be more or less
mystery about this man who had provoked all those curses from the
secretive chief clerk of the treasury.

"Can you give me any information about these men who are meeting here
to-day?"

"Meeting of the Independent Corn-Growers' Association." The reporter's
gaze was frankly skeptical, but Farr met it without a flicker of the
eyelids.

"I never heard of any such association."

"You ha