Mr. Crewe was a little taken aback.

"The senator mentioned your name," he admitted.

"He knows. Said I was the man to see if you was a candidate, didn't he?
Told you to talk to Job Braden, didn't he?"

Now Mr. Crewe had no means of knowing whether Senator Whitredge had been
in conference with Mr. Braden or not.

"The senator mentioned your name casually, in some connection," said Mr.
Crewe.

"He knows," Mr. Braden repeated, with a finality that spoke volumes for
the senator's judgment; and he bent over into Mr. Crewe's ear, with the
air of conveying a mild but well-merited reproof, "You'd ought to come
right to me in the first place. I could have saved you all that
unnecessary trouble of seein' folks. There hasn't be'n a representative
left the town of Leith for thirty years that I hain't agreed to.
Whitredge knows that. If I say you kin go, you kin go. You understand,"
said Mr. Braden, with his fingers on Mr. Crewe's knee once more.

Five minutes later Mr. Crewe emerged into the dazzling sun of the Ripton
square, climbed into his automobile, and turned its head towards Leith,
strangely forgetting the main engagement which he said had brought him to
town.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TRIALS OF AN HONOURABLE

It was about this time that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was transformed, by one of
those subtle and inexplicable changes which occur in American politics,
into the Honourable Humphrey Crewe. And, as interesting bits of news
about important people are bound to leak out, it became known in Leith
that he had subscribed to what is known as a Clipping Bureau. Two weeks
after the day he left Mr. Braden's presence in the Ripton House the
principal newspapers of the country contained the startling announcement
that the well-known summer colony of Leith was to be represented in the
State Legislature by a millionaire. The Republican nomination, which Mr.
Crewe had secured, was equivalent to an election.

For a little time after that Mr. Crewe, although naturally an important
and busy man, scarcely had time to nod to his friends on the road.

"Poor dear Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, "who was so used to dropping in
to dinner, hasn't had a moment to write me a line to thank me for the
statesman's diary I bought for him in London this spring. They're in that
new red leather, and Aylestone says he finds his so useful. I dropped in
at Wedderburn to-day to see if I could be of any help, and the poor man
was buttonholed by two r