“No,” grunted Conover, “not the Best, only the Highest. And it’s no concern of yours, either way. Good-by!” As the titled couple withdrew, Anice Lanier came in. “Mr. Shevlin, Mr. Bourke and most of the others you sent for have come,” she reported. “Shall I send them up?” “Yes,” said Conover dully, “send ’em along. It’ll be good to talk to real human beings again. Say, Miss Lanier”—as the girl started to obey his order—“did you ever write out that measly interview of mine for the _Star_, endorsing those new views of Roosevelt’s on race-suicide, and saying something about a childless home being a curse to——” “Yes. I was just going to mail it. Shall——?” “Well, don’t! Tear it up. There’s no sense in a man being funny at his own expense.” CHAPTER IV IN TWO CAMPS In the headquarters of the Civic League sat Clive Standish. With him were the committee chosen to conduct his campaign. Karl Ansel, a lean, hard-headed New England giant, their chairman, and incidentally, campaign manager, was going laboriously over a list of counties, towns and villages, corroborating certain notes he made from time to time, by referring to a big colored map of the Mountain State. “I’ve checked off the places that are directly under the thumb of the C. G. & X.,” Ansel was explaining as the rest of the group leaned over to watch the course of his pencil along the map. “I’m afraid they are as hopelessly in Conover’s grip as Granite itself. It’s in the rural districts, and in the towns that aren’t dependent on the main line, that we must find our strength. It’s an uphill fight at best, with——” “With a million-and-a-half people who are paying enormous taxes for which they receive scant value, who have thrust on them a legislature and other officials they are forced to elect at the Boss’s order!” finished Standish. “Surely, it’s an uphill fight that’s well worth while, if we can wake men to a sense of their own slavery and the frauds they are forced to connive at. And that’s what we’re going to do.” The more experienced, if less enthusiastic, Ansel scratched his chin doubtfully. “The people, as a mass, are slow to wake,” he observed. “Oftener they just open one eye and growl at being bothered, and then roll over and go happily to sleep again while the Boss goes through their pockets. Don’t start this campaign too optimistically, Mr. Standish. And don’t get the idea the people are begging to be waked. If you wake them you’ve got to do it against their will. Not with any help of theirs. Maybe you can. Maybe you can’t. As you say, it’s perhaps worth a try. Even if——” “But they’ve been waked before,” insisted Standish. “And when they do awaken, there are no half-measures about it. Look how Jerome, on an independent fight, won out against the Machine in 1905. Why should the Mountain State——”