“No wonder,” replied Helm, with a smile. “I haven’t any place yet. I’m trying to find my place.... If the choice in, say, Lincoln’s day, had been what it is now--between serving a knave and serving a fool--between serving a knave that’s owned by its money and serving a fool that’s enslaved to the knave by its folly--if Abe Lincoln had had choice between those two rotten apples, I wonder which he would have chosen?” “Lincoln was a practical man,” said Branagan. “He had all the cranks and romantic reformers down on him. Don’t you believe what the histories say. I _know_ because I lived then.” “Yes--he was a practical man,” said Helm. “He must have been, for he won.” “And I reckon you’ll win, too.” “Yes,” said Helm, with a humorous drawl, “I reckon I will.” The excitement of boss over campaign and victory is the same in kind as the excitement of humblest, most fatuous partisan--though it is vastly different in degree. Branagan had been hypnotized out of his sordidness--for the moment--by the issues and by Helm. But even as he arranged his mind for talking business with Reichman he returned to his normal state; and when he and the Republican boss got together for the grand pow-wow he was wondering at his own sentimentality of a few days before. The chief article of the treaty of peace was no more George Helm. Branagan agreed with a qualm and a genuine regret, but he agreed as one obeying the plain mandate of the instinct of self-preservation. “I wish to God we could get him out of the Senate,” said Reichman. “Of course our boys in charge up at the capital will see that he don’t get a chance to say much or to do anything. Still, I wish he was back in the ranks--away back.” “Well--he will be in two years,” said Branagan. “And what’s two years in politics?” “That’s right,” assented Reichman. “Two years isn’t any time, anywhere.” “Except in jail,” said Branagan, with a loud laugh. Reichman conceded only the feeblest of smiles to this coarse jest, savoring of innuendo. “Those sort of chaps,” pursued he, “have to be caught young and put out of business. I’ve attended to a dozen of ’em in the last ten years.” “I’d never ’a touched him,” said Branagan, “after that first campaign, if I hadn’t been put in a position where I was forced to do it.” “That was my fault, Pat, I admit,” said Reichman. “But it won’t occur again.” “I know it, Emil,” said Pat. “We’ve both had our lesson.... I won’t say nothin’ to Helm. I’ll keep him jollied along until his term’s about up.” “Then--over he drops,” laughed Reichman. Branagan did not laugh. He liked Helm. But he did nod--and Branagan’s nod was as good as his word, and his word he had never broken. III “THERE GOES A MAN”