Townsend did not answer the question. He regarded his visitor with a disquieting lack of interest. “_I_ was given to understand that you said you were as good as reëlected already,” he observed. “If you said that, and believe it, then what I said or what anybody else said isn’t worth fretting about, let alone cruising twelve miles in a rainstorm to find out about.” “Well, but, Cap’n Townsend--” “Heave to a minute. See here, Mooney, you’ve got the Republican nomination.” “Yes. Of course I have, but--” “Wait. And there hasn’t been a Democratic Representative from this district at the state house since the sixties, has there?” “No, but--” “All right. Then you don’t need to talk to me. If you’re a Republican, ready to vote every time with your party and for the district, you are safe enough. Especially,” with a slight twitch of the lip, “when you say yourself you’re as good as reëlected.” This, perhaps, should have been reassuring, but apparently it was not. The Honorable Mr. Mooney shifted uneasily in his chair. “Yes, yes, I know,” he admitted. “That’s all right, so far as it goes.... But, Cap’n Townsend, I--well, I know you aren’t as--well, as strong for me as you were when I ran before. You thought, I suppose--like a good many other folks who didn’t know--that I ought to have voted for that cranberry bill. You, nor they, didn’t understand about that bill. That bill--well, it read all right enough, but--well, there was more to it than just reading. There were influences behind that bill that I didn’t like, that’s all. No honest man _could_ like them.” “Um-hum. I see. Well, what was it that honest men like you didn’t like about that bill? I was one of those ‘influences,’ behind it, I guess. It protected the cranberry growers of the Cape, didn’t it? Looked out for their interests pretty well? I thought it did, and I read it before you ever saw it.” “Yes. Yes, it protected them all right. But there are other sections than the Cape, Cap’n Townsend. They’re beginning to raise cranberries up around Plymouth and--and--” “I know. And there are influences up there, too. Well, what has that cranberry bill got to do with you? You didn’t vote against it. Of course you told me and a few others, before you were elected the first time, that you would vote _for_ it, but you didn’t do that, either. You weren’t in the House when that bill came up to a vote. You’d gone fishing, I understand.” Mr. Mooney was indignant. “No such thing;” he declared, springing to his feet. “I hadn’t gone fishing. I was sick. That’s what I was--sick.”