“There’s no time to waste. I might as well talk up ’n’ daown with yeh. Your man Fairchild makes me tired. Ef he’d set his heart on goin’ to Congress, why on airth didn’t he come to me in the first place, ’n’ say so? It could ’a’ been arranged, easy’s slidin’ off a log. But no, instid of that, he must go ’n’ work up th’ thing his own way, ’n’ then come ’n’ buck agin me in my own caounty, ’n’ obleege me to fight back. D’yeh call that sense? He’s smart enough in his way, I grant yeh. He’s fixed up a putty fair sort o’ organisation in Dearborn, although it can’t last long, simply because it’s all built up on money, ’n’ I don’t go a cent on that kind of organising. Still it’s good enough in its way. _But_, he made his mistake in lettin’ the idea run away with him that he could skeer me into a conniption fit with his musharoon organisation. He didn’t knaow me. He never took the trouble to find aout abaout me. He jest took it fur granted that I’d crawl daown aout o’ my tree, like Davy Crockett’s coon, as soon’s he pinted his gun at me. Well, I didn’t come worth a cent. Then, when he faound aout that he’d struck a snag, ’n’ that Dearborn County wasn’t the hull deestrick, he turns raoun’ ’n’ aouts with his wallet, ’n’ tries to hire me to come daown. Fur that’s what you was here for last week, ’n’ you knaow it’s well’s I do.” Milton tried to get in some words here, of dissent or explanation, but the Boss would not hear them. “Lem me go on; ’s no use your lyin’. That was Fairchild’s second mistake. He thought politics was all money. Ef I was poorer than Job’s turkey, he couldn’t buy me to so much as wink an eye fur him. I’m not in politics fur what I kin make aout of it. I’m in because I like it; because it’s meat ’n’ drink to me; because I git solid, substantial comfort aout of it. Ther’s satisfaction in carryin’ yer eend; there’s pretty nigh as much in daownin’ them that’s agin yeh. Jest naow I’m a thinkin’ a good deal what fun it ’d be to let the floor aout from under your man altogether, ’n’ nominate this feller from Tecumsy.” “But,” broke in Milton, “you’re a candidate yer-self, ’n’----”