, open-eyed friends who will know just what we are
doing and why we are doing it."

"H'm," mused the senator, "so publicity's the new word, is it?"

"Yes; publicity is the word. The Gordon people say they are going to
show us up; there won't be anything to show up when the time comes. We
are going to beat them to the billboards."

The grizzled veteran of a goodly number of political battles put down
his coffee-cup; he was still old-fashioned enough to drink his coffee in
generous measure with the meat courses.

"You can't do the circus act--ride two horses at once and do the same
stunt on both, son," he remarked gravely. "If you're really going to put
the saddle and bridle on the publicity nag, you've got to turn the other
one out of the corral and let it go back to the short-grass."

"It is already turned out," asserted the young man, not affecting to
misunderstand. "We neither buy votes nor spend illegitimate money in
this campaign."

The stout assertion was good as far as it went; the new division counsel
made it and believed it. But on his way to the governor's mansion, a
little later, he could not help wondering if he had been altogether
candid in making it. The offices in the up-town sky-scraper were not
exclusively a railroad social centre where the disinterested voter could
come and have the facts ladled out to him without fear or favor on the
part of the ladler. They had come to be also a rallying-point for a
heterogeneous crowd of ward-workers, wire-pullers, and small
politicians, most of whom were anxious to be employed or retained as
henchmen. Some of these "stretcher men," as Blount contemptuously called
them, had been employed in past campaigns; others were still the
beneficiaries of the railroad, holding pay-roll places which Blount
acutely suspected were chiefly sinecures.

Latterly, this contingent of strikers and heelers had been greatly
augmented, and it was beginning to make its demands more emphatic. A
dozen times a day Blount had the worn phrase, "nothing for nothing,"
dinned into his ears, and he was beginning to harbor a suspicion that
his office had been made a dumping-ground for all the other departments.

Seeing Gantry at madam the governor's lady's reception, Blount took an
early opportunity of cornering the traffic manager in one of the
otherwise deserted smoking-dens, and when he had made sure there were no
eavesdroppers plunged at once into the middle of things.

"See here, Dick,