the satirical tone of his
responses. Was it possible that he was the one man in town who did not
treat the fellow as a ridiculous farce?

"If by dirty work you mean the clearing away of obstacles--well,
somebody has to do it, hasn't he?" asked Gideon Vetch. "If you want a
clean street to walk on, you must hire somebody to shovel away the
slush. It is true that we put Gershom to shovelling slush--and you
complain of his methods! Well, I admit that he may have been a trifle
too zealous about it; he may have spattered things a bit more than was
necessary, but after all, he got some of the mud out of the way, didn't
he? There are people," he added, "who believe that the wind he raised
swept me into office."

"I object to his methods," insisted Stephen, "because they seem to me
dishonest."

"Perhaps." The blue eyes--how could he have thought them gray?--had
grown quizzical. "But he wasn't moving in the best company, you know. He
who sups with the Devil must fish with a long spoon."

"You mean that you defend that sort of thing--that you openly stand for
it?"

"I stand for nothing, sir," replied Gideon Vetch sharply, "except
justice. I stand for a square deal all round, and I stand against the
exploitation or oppression of any class. This is what I stand for, and I
have stood for it ever since I was a small, gray, scared rabbit of a
creature dodging under hedgerows."

It was the bombastic sophistry again, Stephen told himself, but he met
it without subterfuge or evasion. "And you believe that such people as
Gershom can serve the cause of justice through dishonest means?" he
demanded.

"I'll answer that some day; but it's a long answer, and I can't speak it
out here in the cold," responded the Governor, while his blustering
manner grew sober. "Gershom is a politician, you see, and I am not. You
may laugh, but it is the Gospel truth. I am a reformer, and all I care
about is pushing on the idea. I use any tools that I find; and one of
the greatest of reformers has said that he was sometimes obliged to use
bad ones. If I find good ones, so much the better; if bad--well, it is
all in the day's job. But the cause is what matters--the thing you are
making, not the implements with which it is made. You dislike my methods
of work, but you must admit that by the only test that counts, the test
of achievement, they have proved to be sound. I have got somewhere; not
all the way; but still somewhere. Without advertisement, withou