Perhaps you will argue that it smacked of the underhand to thus steal upon Jimmy the Blacksmith and take his place from him without due warning given. I confess it would have been more like chivalry if I had sent him, so to say, a glove and told my intentions against him. Also it would have augmented labor and multiplied risk. The great thing is to win and win cheaply; a victory that costs more than it comes to is nothing but a mask for defeat. “You're down and out,” said Big Kennedy, when Jimmy the Blacksmith brought his injuries to that chieftain. “Your reputation is gone too; you were a fool to say 'Peach Orchard' when you lacked the nerve to make it good. You'll never hold up your head ag'in in th' ward, an' if I was you I'd line out after Gaffney. This is a bad ward for a mongrel, Jimmy, an' I'd skin out.” Jimmy the Blacksmith followed Gaffney and disappeared from the country of Big Kennedy. He was to occur again in my career, however, as he who reads on shall see, and under conditions which struck the color from my cheek and set my heart to a trot with the terrors they loosed at its heels. CHAPTER VII--HOW THE BOSS WAS NAMED FOR ALDERMAN NOW it was that in secret my ambition took a hearty start and would vine-like creep and clamber. My triumph over Jimmy the Blacksmith added vastly to my stature of politics. Moreover, the sly intrigue by which I conquered began to found for me a fame. I had been locally illustrious, if I may so set the term to work, for a granite fist and a courage as rooted as a tree. For these traits the roughs revered me, and I may say I found my uses and rewards. Following my conquest of that under-captaincy, however, certain upper circles began to take account of me; circles which, if no purer than those others of ruder feather, were wont to produce more bulging profits in the pockets of their membership. In brief, I came to be known for one capable and cunning of a plot, and who was not without a genius for the executive. With Big Kennedy I took high position. His relations with Jimmy the Blacksmith never had been close; he had never unbuckled in any friendship and felt for him nothing nearer than distrust. But for me he held another pose. Big Kennedy, upon my elevation, fair made me his partner in the ward, a partnership wherein, to speak commercially, I might be said to have had an interest of one-fourth. This promotion brought me pleasure; and being only a boy when all was said, while I went outwardly quiet, my spirit in the privacy of my own bosom would on occasion spread moderately its tail and strut.