Better far than Lawyer Hutchings, or any one else, Mr. Gulmore knew that the relative strength of the two parties had altered vastly within the year. Reckoning up his forces at the beginning of the campaign, he felt certain that he could win--could carry his whole ticket, including a rather unpopular Mayor; but the majority in his favour would be small, and the prospect did not please him, for the Professor's speeches had aroused envy. He understood that if his majority were not overwhelming he would be assailed again next year more violently, and must in the long run inevitably lose his power. Besides, “fat” contracts required unquestionable supremacy. He began, therefore, by instituting such a newspaper-attack upon the Professor as he hoped would force him to abandon the struggle. When this failed, and Mr. Gulmore saw that it had done worse than fail, that it had increased his opponent's energy and added to his popularity, he went to work again to consider the whole situation. He must win and win “big,” that was clear; win too, if possible, in a way that would show his “smartness” and demonstrate his adversary's ignorance of the world. His anger had at length been aroused; personal rivalry was a thing he could not tolerate at any time, and Roberts had injured his position in the town. He was resolved to give the young man such a lesson that others would be slow to follow his example. The difficulty of the problem was one of its attractions. Again and again he turned the question over in his mind--How was he to make his triumph and the Professor's defeat sensational? All the factors were present to him and he dwelt upon them with intentness. He was a man of strong intellect; his mind was both large and quick, but its activity, owing to want of education and to greedy physical desires, had been limited to the ordinary facts and forces of life. What books are to most persons gifted with an extraordinary intelligence, his fellow-men were to Mr. Gulmore--a study at once stimulating and difficult, of an incomparable variety and complexity. His lack of learning was of advantage to him in judging most men. Their stock of ideas, sentiments and desires had been his for years, and if he now viewed the patchwork quilt of their morality with indulgent contempt, at least he was familiar with all the constituent shades of it. But he could not make the Professor out--and this added to his dislike of him; he recognized that Roberts was not, as he had at first believed, a mere mouthpiece of Hutchings, but he could not fathom his motives; besides, as he said to himself, he had no need to; Roberts was plainly a “crank,” book-mad, and the species did not interest him. But Hutchings he knew well; knew that like himself Hutchings, while despising ordinary prejudices, was ruled by ordinary greeds and ambitions. In intellect they were both above the average, but not in morals. So, by putting himself in the lawyer's