id the attorney. "If you like that
kind of thing, you are welcome. If you are willing to be cheated it is
nothing to me. I don't say T. J. Jones set them up to doing all this,
just to throw down your Citizen's Party, but you can see in the TIMES
who printed the whole thing. If you like to have that kind of man run
your only public journal it is no business of mine, but look out for the
next TIMES!"

The butcher had found the edge of the table and was leaning back against
it. The attorney paused with his hand on the door.

"You ought to be able to make the Colonel pay you back that hundred
dollars," he said. "It looks as if he had obtained money under false
pretenses and given a bribe. But if you don't care, I don't," and he
went out.

Outside of the butcher shop the attorney stopped and looked up and down
the street, smiling. He felt that he had done well, so far, setting both
the mayor and Skinner against the editor, making a tool of the mayor,
and inflaming the butcher against the Colonel. He would have liked to
go to the Colonel and set him against the editor and Skinner, but he
neither dared nor felt it really necessary. If Skinner attempted to make
the Colonel take back the lung-testers the ill feeling between the
two would be sufficiently emphasized, and no doubt the Colonel had
sufficient reason, in the publication of the article, to hate the
editor.

Horsewhipped! His face reddened as he thought of it, but he was too
polite to consider a revenge of fists, which would not lessen the
insult of the whipping he had received, but would only add the stigma
of attacking an older man. That he had led the Colonel into the affair,
putting him up to it, did not strike him as being any excuse for the
Colonel. He felt that he had done only what he was entitled to do in the
pursuit of political leadership. He would revenge himself on the
Colonel later. A suit for damages for assault, timed to precede the next
election, would be both revenge and politics. He could, at the moment,
think of nothing else to do to undermine his opponents, and he had
turned toward his office when a fresh idea occurred to him. Should
Miss Sally take back the lung-testers, where then would his case stand?
Guthrie would return the hundred dollars to Skinner. Skinner was fool
enough to be satisfied with that, and Kilo, like many other towns, not
wishing to besmirch herself, would hush up the whole affair. Miss Sally
must not take back the lung-tes