"Thank you; I shan't want so much time. In any event I appreciate your kindness. It's the most cheering thing that ever happened to me." Bassett glanced at his watch. He had said all he had to say in the matter and closed the subject characteristically. "Here's a little thing I picked up to-day,--a copy of Darlington's 'Narrative,'--he was with St. Clair, you know; and practically all the copies of the book were burned in a Philadelphia printing-office before they were bound; you will notice that some of the pages are slightly singed. As you saw at my house, I'm interested in getting hold of books relating to the achievements of the Western pioneers. Some of these bald, unvarnished tales give a capital idea of the men who conquered the wilderness. They had the real stuff in them, those fellows!" He took the battered volume--a pamphlet clumsily encased in boards, and drew his hand across its rough sides caressingly. "Another of my jokes on the State Library. The librarian told me I'd never find a copy, and this was on top of a pile of trash in a second-hand shop right here in this town. It cost me just fifty cents." He snapped his bag shut on the new-found treasure and bade Dan good-bye without referring again to the proposed employment. Dan knew, as he left the hotel, that if an answer had been imperatively demanded on the spot, he should have accepted Bassett's proposition; but as he walked slowly away questions rose in his mind. Bassett undoubtedly expected to reap some benefit from his services, and such services would not, of course, be in the line of the law. They were much more likely to partake of the function of journalism, in obtaining publicity for such matters as Bassett wished to promulgate. The proposed new office at the capital marked an advance of Bassett's pickets. He was abandoning old fortifications for newer and stronger ones, and Dan's imagination kindled at the thought of serving this masterful general as aide-de-camp. He took a long walk, thinking of Bassett's offer and trying to view it from a philosophical angle. The great leaders in American politics had come oftener than not from the country, he reflected. Fraserville, in Dan's cogitations, might, as Bassett's star rose, prove to be another Springfield or Fremont or Canton, shrouding a planet destined to a brilliant course toward the zenith. He did not doubt that Bassett's plans were well-laid; the state senator was farseeing and shrewd, and by attaching himself to this man, whose prospects were so bright, he would shine in the reflected glory of his successes. And the flattery of the offer was not in itself without its magic.