“You may bolt the State ticket as much as you d----d please. I don’t like your doing it, and it will injure you more than any efforts of mine can make good, but I can’t help it, and it wasn’t for that that I wanted to see you. But if you bolt _me_, Mr. Seth, or put so much as a straw in my path, by God! I’ll grind you, and your paper, and everybody responsible for it, finer than tooth-powder! However--we will exhaust the other side of the subject first. I’ve had it in mind for a long while, in fact ever since I first procured you a place there, to buy you a share in the _Chronicle_. Workman would be glad of the ready money--he itches for it as much as any living man--and it would be a good thing for you. Would you like that?” “You haven’t told me yet what you dragged me up here, away from my work, for,” said Seth. “You presumably had an object of some sort.” “Ah, you want to get down to business, do you? You shall have it, in a nutshell. I want you to see Ansdell, and get him to promise that if I beat him in the Convention he will support me squarely at the polls; I want you to get a pledge from Workman that the _Chronicle_ will come out for me, solid, the day after I am nominated. _That’s_ what I want, and it is mighty little for _me_ to ask of _you!_ And you may tell Workman for me that if he and his paper give me the smallest ground for complaint, and waver in the least in backing me up, I’ll start a paper in Tecumseh before Christmas that will crush the _Chronicle_ out of sight. The paper is no good, anyway. I know hundreds of good citizens who would rejoice to have a decent substitute for it.” The pride of the editor was wounded. “You seem to worry a good deal about this worthless paper, at all events,” he said, bitterly. “Don’t bandy words with me, youngster!” cried Albert, scowling and pacing the floor. “I want your answer, or the answer of your employer--yes or no! I’ll have none of your impudence!” Seth held his temper down. He could not help feeling that his brother, from the fraternal standpoint at least, had some pretty strong arguments on his side. He made answer: “I should have no influence with Ansdell, one way or the other, even if I talked with him. He knows his own business best, and if he has made up his mind to a certain course, nothing that I could say would move him. As for the _Chronicle_ we’ve kept our hands off, thus far, on your account, and we’ve said nothing at all about your leading the Dearborn County delegates into the machine camp at the State Convention, although the whole rest of the State is ringing with it. But I am charged to say that that is as much as we can do. If you are nominated, we can’t and won’t support you. It is not a nice thing for me to have to say to you, but there’s no good mincing matters. Besides, you know--there may be a way out of it; you may not be nominated to-morrow.”