ll torn up, and you can't
get a room there for love or money. They tell me they've been havin'
conferences steady in Number Seven since the session closed, and Hilary
Vane's sent for all the Federal and State office-holders to be here in
the morning and lobby. Botcher and Jane and Bascom are circulatin' like
hot water, tellin' everybody that because they wouldn't saddle the State
with a debt with your bills you turned sour on 'em, and that you're more
of a corporation and railroad man than any of 'em. They've got their
machine to working a thousand to the minute, and everybody they have a
slant on is going into line. One of them fellers, a conductor, told me
he had to go with 'em. But our boys ain't idle, I can tell you that. I
was in the back of the gallery when you spoke up, and I shook 'em off
the leash right away."

Mr. Crewe leaned back from the table and thrust his hands in his pockets
and smiled. He was in one of his delightful moods.

"Take off your overcoat, Tooting," he said; "you'll find one of my best
political cigars over there, in the usual place."

"Well, I guessed about right, didn't I?" inquired Mr. Tooting, biting
off one of the political cigars. "I gave you a pretty straight tip,
didn't I, that young Tom Gaylord was goin' to have somebody make that
motion to-day? But say, it's funny he couldn't get a better one than
that feller Harper. If you hadn't come along, they'd have smashed him
to pulp. I'll bet the most surprised man in the State to-night, next to
Brush Bascom, is young Tom Gaylord. It's a wonder he ain't been up here
to thank you."

"Maybe he has been," replied Mr. Crewe. "I told Waters to keep everybody
out to-night because I want to know exactly what I'm going to say on the
floor tomorrow. I don't want 'em to give me trouble. Did you bring some
of those papers with you?"

Mr. Tooting fished a bundle from his overcoat pocket. The papers
in question, of which he had a great number stored away in Ripton,
represented the foresight, on Mr. Tooting's part, of years. He was
a young man with a praiseworthy ambition to get on in the world, and
during his apprenticeship in the office of the Honourable Hilary
Vane many letters and documents had passed through his hands. A less
industrious person would have neglected the opportunity. Mr. Tooting
copied them; and some, which would have gone into the waste-basket, he
laid carefully aside, bearing in mind the adage about little scraps of
paper--if t