“No. What good’d Washington be to me? New York State’s big enough for me. If yeh don’t understand that I put my name before the Convention jest to hold my caounty together, ’n’ block Dearborn, yer a dummed sight bigger fool than even I took yeh to be.” “But s’pose Dearborn’s votes cud be thrown to you! They’d nominate yeh! What’d thet be wuth to yeh?” “What ’d it be wuth?” mused the Boss, looking intently at Milton. “Yes! in ready money, here! naow!” The Boss took up his hat, meditatively, and gazed at his companion again. “Did you knaow th’ man that brought yeh here?” he asked. “Yes--’twas Jim Bunner, wa’nt it?” “That man ’d wade threw fire ’n’ water fer me. Yeh couldn’t tempt him with a hundred thaousan’ dollars to so much as say an evil word abaout me, let alone injure me. Yit he’s desprit poor, ’n’ th’ unly thing I ever did fer him in my life, excep’ givin’ him a day’s work naow ’n’ then, was to help him bury his child decently, ten years ago. But _I_ know my _men!_ Here Fairchild has took you off a dunghill, where all yer hull humly, sore-eyed, misrubble fam’ly belong, ’n’ made a man of yeh, trusted his affairs to yeh, clothed yeh, fed yeh, yes, ’n’ let yeh fatten yerself on the profits of his farm--and naow yeh turn ’raound ’n’ offer to sell him aout. By gum! I was right. Fairchild hain’t got no sense! ’N’ you, yeh skunk, git aout! Don’t yeh walk on the same side of the street with me, or I’ll swat the hull top of yer head off!” “We’ll nominate Ansdell ’fore you git a chance!” snarled Milton. ***** The Convention met, depressed by the evident feeling of disappointment among the spectators, who swarmed on all the high, pewlike seats back of the bar railing, while the delegates sat in rows of chairs inside the space reserved in term time for the lawyers. There was ground enough for this disappointment. Fairchild had not come, and the prospects of a good speech, or even a bitter personal contest, were fading away. No one had an explanation for his absence. The Dearborn delegates were more in the dark than outsiders even, for they had been told to meet him in Tyre, before the Convention, and that he would breakfast at the Turnpike Tavern. Milton reassured them for a time by enlarging upon the bad condition of the roads, but even he ended as they took their seats, by professing some fear of an accident. “However, I’ll cast th’ solid vaote, th’ same as before, I suppose?” he said, and the bondsmen nodded assent. The proceedings opened tamely. The Chairman was a professor from the Tecumseh Academy; the other counties each had a secretary. Two written announcements were handed up to be read, one that Milton Squires was authorized to cast seventeen votes for Dearborn County, the other naming a man to perform a similar function for the ten votes of Jay. There was to be no break yet awhile, apparently, in the two machine counties. But--what would Adams do?