"You'll find out when you get up there. He's as mad as a rhinoceros horning sand in a desert." "But what does he want?" Acres insisted. "Wants you to double your subscription to the campaign fund. Better not go up if you can't do it. He got me for a cool hundred." "What's he in such a hurry for? The campaign doesn't begin for months yet!" "He says it's on, began two days ago. Says the liberty of every man in this county is at stake. Says he needs a fund of four times as much as usual to meet the situation," answered Coleman. "What's he doing with it?" "Can't tell you; not a cent of it is deposited in the bank." "Well, I know he has taken in over a thousand dollars in the last two days." "It's no time to collect now with everybody in suspense over this Mosely will," groaned Coleman. "I'll be hanged if it doesn't look like blackmail to me!" exclaimed Acres. "Why submit, then?" demanded Coleman with a grin. "You know we are all in too deep with Prim. You submitted, didn't you?" "Yes, and you will, too, when you see him. He's got conviction in his manner and compulsion in his tongue," said Coleman as Acres passed him upon the stairs. "Mabel, my boy, can you lend me fifty dollars?" Acres beheld Colonel Adams standing in the deep shadows at the top of the stairs. He wore a yellow seersucker coat, brown linen trousers, carpet slippers, with the toes of his right foot bandaged and exposed through a slit in the red leather. He was forlornly sober, pale, with his moustache drooping like a rooster's tail in the rain. "Fifty dollars, Colonel!" exclaimed Acres. "I'm absolutely obliged to have it, Mabel." "Make it fifty cents and I'll be glad to accommodate you." "Very well, fifty cents then. Thank you, Mabel. I'll just go down with this. No use to face Mike with half a dollar. He wants fifty." "Shearing you, too?" "No, you can't shear a sheep that's been plucked as clean as your hand. Prim keeps me mighty cool." "What's he want with so much money, do you know?" The Colonel limped forward very painfully, placed one hand upon Acres's shoulder, ogled Prim's door, and whispered: "There are only two things in this world more expensive than women and wine, Mabel: politics and piety." "You ought to be able to economize on piety," Acres retorted. "When you do that, you get in deeper with politics--comes to the same thing--and I've never held an office in my life!" he concluded with a groan, as he placed his good foot on the second step of the stairs and drew the other tenderly after it. When he had descended three in this manner, he beckoned to Acres. "Say, Mabel, if Mike asks about me, tell him I'm standing on the courthouse steps, with both feet bandaged and my trousers rolled up showing my barked shins. Tell him I'm begging for the cause, and as soon as I've got fifty dollars I'll be up to see him!"