“Whyn’t ye go an’ vote, Dake?” said the candidate, leaning forward to scan Gideon Dake’s countenance. “Ye ain’t goin’ ter try ter git folks ter vote twict, air ye?” said Dake, jocosely. “I hev voted wunst ter-day, an’ they tells me ez that be ez off’n ez the law allows.” “I hopes ye voted the right way,” said Nevins, with a bland and mollifying demonstration of the candidate’s smile. The specious Dake nodded his head convincingly. “I’ll be bound I did,” he said equivocally, and yet so unequivocally that the momentary fears of the candidate were set at rest. The others, mindful of Dake’s recent representations as to the casting of his vote under Teck Jepson’s tutelage, experienced a certain embarrassment and preserved an awkward silence, none arrogating the tact to innocuously continue the conversation. If the candidate be a wily genus, the craft of the voter is sometimes commensurate. Nevins seemed the most innocent of men, as he himself reopened the subject. He had approached the group with the intention of merely commending himself by some timely and jocose observations, and then strolling to other coteries. He had, however, encountered unexpected opposition to-day; he had thought himself almost assured of success, and when the doubt began to arise in his mind, untutored to jeopardy, he felt himself losing his balance. “What ails Teck Jepson, ter git so sot agin me?” he observed, anxiously. “He hev jes’ been a-bouncin’ aroun’ electioneerin’ fur Eli ter-day like—like—a chicken with its head off. I axed him awhile ago,—I beckoned him off, an I say, ‘What ails ye, ter work agin me, Teck? I ain’t done nuthin’ ter you-uns, hev I? Air ye holdin’ a gredge agin me?’ An’ he said, ‘Don’t ye know I be kin ter Eli nowadays? My half-brother married his cousin,’ Teck say. Shucks! I know that ain’t the reason.” He glanced in plaintive interrogation at the others. “Waal, things turns out mos’ly ez they air bid from above,” said one of the men, with an unexpected attack of piety. Nevins looked lugubriously at him. This was an arbitration to which he was not prepared to submit. He was feeling exceedingly helpless in the hands of Providence. “I dunno ’bout that,” he observed. “Things in Brumsaidge turns out mos’ly ez Teck Jepson wills, an’ Providence sings mighty small.” Then reflecting that this was a dolorous prognostication on his own account, he gathered himself together as jauntily as he could, and declared, “But Teck Jepson’s rule is over. Folks in Brumsaidge hev tried Eli Strobe, an’ he didn’t ’gree with ’em,—he seen too much ‘_Eli Strobe, Big Man!_’ in his office, ter suit ’em; an’ now they air lookin’ fur a man what jes’ wants ter sarve the people,—an’ that’s my bes’ wish.”