penal statutes." And
he threw back his head and gurgled down in his abdomen, while the crowd
roared and Handy showed the wool in his teeth with a dog-like grin.

No other man in town would have dared that with Handy after he became a
statesman; but we figured it out in the office that old Charley Hedrick
was merely exhibiting his brand on Ab Handy to show the town that his
title to Handy was still good. For though there was considerable of the
King Cole about Hedrick--in that he was a merry old soul--he was always
king, and he insisted on having his divine right to rule the politics of
the county unquestioned. That was his vanity and he knew it, and was not
ashamed of it.

He was the best lawyer in the State in those days, and one of the best
in the West. Ten months in the year he paid no attention to politics,
pendulating daily between his house and his office. Often, being
preoccupied with his work, he would go the whole length of Main Street
speaking to no one. When a tangled case was in his mind he would enter
his office in the morning, roll up his desk top, and dig into his work
without speaking to a soul until, about the middle of the morning, he
would look up from his desk to say as though he had just left off
speaking: "Jim, hand me that 32 Kansas report over there on the table."
When he worked, law books sprang up around him and sprawled over his
desk and lay half open on chairs and tables near him until he had found
his point; then he would get up and begin rollicking, slamming books
together, cleaning up his debris and playing like a great porpoise with
the litter he had made. At such times--and, indeed, all the time unless
he was in what he called a "legal trance"--Hedrick was bubbling with
good spirits, and when he left his office for politics he could get out
in his shirt-sleeves at a primary and peddle tickets, or nose up and
down the street like a fat ferret looking for votes. So when Abner Handy
announced that he desired to go to the State Senate, to fill an
unexpired term for two years, he had Hedrick behind him to give strength
and respectability to his candidacy. Between the two Handy won. That was
before the days of reform, when it was supposed to be considerable of a
virtue for a man to stand by his friend; and, being a lawyer, Hedrick
naturally had the lawyer's view that no man is guilty until the jury is
in, and its findings have been reviewed by the supreme court.

So Senator and Mrs. Senator