Senator Sayler, the representative of the plutocracy, quarreled with some of his largest clients--his bosses, they fancied themselves, until he, as astute as he was bold and cynical, showed them that he had made himself indispensable to them. He, the rich man as well as the expert and most intelligent politician; they, merely rich men, crudely buying of politicians the coveted robbers’ licenses. The quarrel grew out of the idiotic greediness of his clients. They wished to rob to the point where the goose begins to squawk--and forthwith changes from goose into a creature of a wholly different kind, fighting with ferocity for life. Sayler proceeded to teach them a lesson. He, ostensibly head of the Republican machine and hostile to everything connected with the Democratic party, ordered his faithful ally-lieutenant, the Democratic State boss, Hazelrigg, to make a vigorous unsparing campaign against the plutocracy. “Give ’em hell,” said Sayler. “Don’t turn loose a lot of long-eared cranks. They frighten sensible people and make the plutocracy stronger. Dig up some earnest, conscientious young fellows--if there are any such that haven’t been brought up for these stupid brutes we’re going to teach a lesson.” Hazelrigg had heard of Helm. Pat Branagan had given Helm a letter to him, but Helm had not presented it and had been keeping out of sight until he should have spied out the new land of the State capital. He sent for Helm to look him over. Hazelrigg was a college man who had made up his mind to be rich. Discovering, after a few years of effort by honest ways, that if he succeeded at all it would be when he was too old to enjoy, he had taken the short cut--with notable success. Being the minority boss, he could maintain a pose of virtue that deceived all but shrewd eyes. He understood Helm in the main at a glance--asked him to speak against a rotten bill then pending. Helm spoke. Hazelrigg listened with mingled feelings of joy and fear. “We must keep him poor,” he said to himself. “Then he can’t make trouble for us.” Before the first month was over, Hazelrigg had made George Helm the chief spokesman of the party in its campaign against the rapacities of the plutocracy. The old wheel-horse orators, familiar and more or less discredited slobberers of virtuous sentiments from mouths raw and ragged with corruption, were angered and made futile attempts to “haze” the new favorite. Hazelrigg soon quelled that mutiny. Of all the understrappers at the beck and call of a machine boss, the orators--they upon whose lips the people hang spellbound--are the lowest, the most despised by their fellow slaves and the most brutally worked and the most meagerly paid. As Sayler had taken the muzzle from the press of the State to make his “object lesson” thoroughly effective, in a few weeks George Helm became famous--newspaper famous--the beanstalk variety of fame, showy but perishable. Bill Desbrough came up to see him.