“If the new Leader’s _you_, Adolphe Staatz,” cut in a rasping snarl, like a dog’s, from the group of politicians, as Billy Shevlin shouldered his way forward and thrust his unshaven face close to the district leader’s bristling gray mustache, “if _you’re_ the new Leader you’re rootin’ for, let me put you wise to somethin’: You’ll go to the primaries straight from the hospital, an’ with your shyster mug in a sling. Fer, if I hear another peep out of you, roastin’ the Boss, I’ll knock you from under your hat, and push your ugly face in till your back teeth bend. _You_ take the Boss’s job? Chee! It’s to ha-ha! Go chase yourself, ’fore I chase you so far you’ll d’scover a new street. _You’d_ backtrack Mister Conover, would you’se? Why, if you go ’round Granite spreadin’ idees of that kind in your own pin-head brain, I’ll sure be c’mpelled to do all sorts of things to you. An’ when I’m finished with you the Staatz family’ll be able to indulge in that alloorin’ pastime called ‘Put Papa Together!’ _You_ fer Leader, eh? Say! I’m flatterin’ you a whole heap when I call you——” “Let him alone, Billy,” intervened Bourke, as the startled Staatz backed toward the wall, ever followed by that belligerent, blue-jawed little face so close to his own—“let him alone. He’s talking straight. I for one——” “You for one,” sounded a sneering voice from the dressing-room doorway behind them, “you for one, friend Bourke, were starving on the street when I took you in and fed you and got your kids out of the Protectory and gave you a job.” At the first word the mumbled assent to Staatz’s and Bourke’s opinion, that had welled up in a dozen throats, died into sacred silence. “You for another, ’Dolphe Staatz,” went on Caleb, still standing on the threshold and viewing the group of malcontents with a cold disgust. “You were on the road to the ‘pen’ for knowing too much about that ‘queer paper’ joint on Willow Street, when I got the indictment quashed and squared things with the district attorney and put you on your feet. “Caine,” turning to the _Star’s_ editor, “I think I heard _you_ agreeing among the rest, didn’t I, hey? Diff’r’t sound from the kind you made when you come to me twelve years ago and cried and said the _Star_ was all in, and would I save you from going bankrupt by taking it over? And there’s plenty more of you here with the same sort of story to tell.” He strode forward and was among them, forcing one after another to meet his eye, dominating by his very presence the men who had sought to dethrone him. In his hour of stress all the old power, the splendid rulership of men, surged back upon the Railroader. He stood a king amid awestruck serfs, a stern schoolmaster among a naughty band of scared children.