esulted in a resounding defeat.
Out of the thirty-two Democratic aldermen nominated only ten were
elected, giving the opposition a full two-thirds majority in council,
Messrs. Tiernan and Kerrigan, of course, being safely in their places.
With them came a Republican mayor and all his Republican associates on
the ticket, who were now supposed to carry out the theories of the
respectable and the virtuous. Cowperwood knew what it meant and
prepared at once to make overtures to the enemy. From McKenty and
others he learned by degrees the full story of Tiernan's and Kerrigan's
treachery, but he did not store it up bitterly against them. Such was
life. They must be looked after more carefully in future, or caught in
some trap and utterly undone. According to their own accounts, they
had barely managed to scrape through.

"Look at meself! I only won by three hundred votes," archly declared
Mr. Kerrigan, on divers and sundry occasions. "By God, I almost lost
me own ward!"

Mr. Tiernan was equally emphatic. "The police was no good to me," he
declared, firmly. "They let the other fellows beat up me men. I only
polled six thousand when I should have had nine."

But no one believed them.

While McKenty meditated as to how in two years he should be able to
undo this temporary victory, and Cowperwood was deciding that
conciliation was the best policy for him, Schryhart, Hand, and Arneel,
joining hands with young MacDonald, were wondering how they could make
sure that this party victory would cripple Cowperwood and permanently
prevent him from returning to power. It was a long, intricate fight
that followed, but it involved (before Cowperwood could possibly reach
the new aldermen) a proposed reintroduction and passage of the
much-opposed General Electric franchise, the granting of rights and
privileges in outlying districts to various minor companies, and last
and worst--a thing which had not previously dawned on Cowperwood as in
any way probable--the projection of an ordinance granting to a certain
South Side corporation the privilege of erecting and operating an
elevated road. This was as severe a blow as any that had yet been
dealt Cowperwood, for it introduced a new factor and complication into
the Chicago street-railway situation which had hitherto, for all its
troubles, been comparatively simple.

In order to make this plain it should be said that some eighteen or
twenty years before in New York there had been de