ested again. "I
stand with the party,--what am I without it?" he went on in a dull
voice. "The people may forget, but, if I offend the master,--he never
forgives or forgets. I'll sign the bills, Sayler,--_if_ they come to me
as party measures."

Burbank had responded to the test.

A baser man would have acted as scores of governors, mayors, and judges
have acted in the same situation--would have accepted popular ruin and
would have compelled the powers to make him rich in compensation. A
braver man would have defied it and the powers, would have appealed to
the people--with one chance of winning out against ten thousand chances
of being disbelieved and laughed at as a "man who thinks he's too good
for his party." Burbank was neither too base nor too brave; clearly, I
assured myself, he is the man I want. I felt that I might safely relieve
his mind, so far as I could do so without letting him too far into my
secret plans.

I had not spent five minutes in explanation before he was up, his face
radiant, and both hands stretched out to me.

"Forgive me, Harvey!" he cried. "I shall never distrust you again. I put
my future in your hands."

XII

BURBANK FIRES THE POPULAR HEART

That was, indeed, a wild winter at the state capital,--a "carnival of
corruption," the newspapers of other states called it. One of the first
of the "black bills" to go through was a disguised street railway grab,
out of which Senator Croffut got a handsome "counsel fee" of fifty-odd
thousand dollars. But as the rout went on, ever more audaciously and
recklessly, he became uneasy. In mid-February he was urging me to go
West and try to do something to "curb those infernal grabbers." I
refused to interfere. He went himself, and Woodruff reported to me that
he was running round the state house and the hotels like a crazy man;
for when he got into the thick of it, he realized that it was much worse
than it seemed from Washington. In a few days he was back and at me
again.

"It's very strange," said he suspiciously. "The boys say they're getting
nothing out of it. They declare they're simply obeying orders."

"Whose orders?" I asked.

"I don't know," he answered, his eyes sharply upon me. "But I do know
that, unless something is done, I'll not be returned to the Senate.
We'll lose the legislature, sure, next fall."

"It does look that way," I said with a touch of melancholy. "That street
railway grab was the beginning of our rake's pr