e alliance that cuts deeper than anything else
I've had to face."

Once more the deep-set eyes looked out from their bushy penthouses.
"Reckon you could give it a name, son?"

"Yes; when you found that I wasn't going to let you run me for the
attorney-generalship, you arranged with Mr. McVickar to have me put on
the railroad pay-roll. Isn't that the fact?"

"Not exactly," said the senator, and a grim smile went with the
qualified denial. "It was sort of the other way round. I reckon McVickar
thought he was putting one across on me when he offered you the railroad
job and got you to take it."

"I know; that was at first. You and he couldn't come to terms because
you--because the machine wanted more than he was willing to give. But
afterward there was another meeting and you got together. That part of
it was all right, if you see it that way. What broke my heart was the
fact that you and he agreed to put me up as a fence behind which all the
crookedness and rascality of a corrupt campaign could be screened."

In the pause which followed, a deft waiter slipped in to change the
courses. When the man was gone, Blount went on.

"It came mighty near smashing me when I found it out, dad. It wasn't so
much the thing itself as it was the thought that you'd do it--the
thought that you had forgotten that I was a Blount, and your son."

Again the older man nodded gravely. "How come you to find out, Evan,
boy?" he asked.

"It was when Hathaway had been given his chance at me. He opened the
cesspool for me, as you meant he should when you sent him to me. From
your point of view, I suppose it was necessary that I should be shown.
You knew what I was saying and doing; how I was taking it for granted
that the railroad was going in clean-handed, and the one ray of comfort
in the whole miserable business is the fact that you cared enough to
want to give me a glimpse of the real thing that was hiding behind all
my brave talk. But I don't think you counted fully upon the effect it
would have upon me."

"What was the effect, son?"

"At first, it made me want to throw up the fight and run away to the
ends of the earth. It seemed as if I didn't have anybody to turn to. You
were in it, and Gantry was in it--and Gantry's superiors and mine. That
evening I borrowed one of your cars and drove out to Wartrace. I meant
to have it out with you, and then to throw up my hands and quit."

"But you didn't do either one," said the father tenta