andidate before that Convention. There is time
enough in the future, and you could not have been nominated."

"On the contrary," answered Austen, quietly, "I could have been
nominated."

Mr. Flint smiled knowingly--but with an effort. What a relief it would
have been to him to charge horse and foot, to forget that he was a
railroad president dealing with a potential power.

"Do you honestly believe that?" he asked.

"I am not accustomed to dissemble my beliefs," said Austen, gravely. "The
fact that my father had faith enough in me to count with certainty on my
refusal to go before the convention enabled him to win the nomination for
the candidate of your railroads."

Mr. Flint continued to smile, but into his eyes had crept a gleam of
anger.

"It is easy to say such things--after the convention," he remarked.

"And it would have been impossible to say their before," Austen responded
instantly, with a light in his own eyes. "My nomination was the only
disturbing factor in the situation for you and the politicians who had
your interests in hand, and it was as inevitable as night and day that
the forces of the candidates who represented the two wings of the machine
of the Northeastern Railroads should have united against Mr. Crewe. I
want to say to you frankly that if my father had not been the counsel for
your corporation, and responsible for its political success, or if he
could have resigned with honour before the convention, I should not have
refused to let my name go in. After all," he added, in a lower tone, and
with a slight gesture characteristic of him when a subject was
distasteful, "it doesn't matter who is elected governor this autumn."

"What?" cried Mr. Flint, surprised out of his attitude as much by
Austen's manner as by Austen's words.

"It doesn't matter," said Austen, "whether the Northeastern Railroads
have succeeded this time in nominating and electing a governor to whom
they can dictate, and who will reappoint railroad commissioners and other
State officials in their interests. The practices by which you have
controlled this State, Mr. Flint, and elected governors and councillors
and State and national senators are doomed. However necessary these
practices may have been from your point of view, they violated every
principle of free government, and were they to continue, the nation to
which we belong would inevitably decay and become the scorn of the world.
Those practices depended for their s