“We better explain, I guess,” answered the other; and turning to his compatriot: “You tell him, Boswell.” “Well--it's this way--” said Boswell, and came at once to an awkward pause, turning aside sheepishly and unable to proceed. “So that's the way of it, is it?” said the old gentleman. Helen laughed cheerfully, and looked about her with a courageous and encouraging eye. “It is embarrassing,” she said. “Judge Briscoe, we are contemplating 'a piece of the blackest treachery and chicanery.' We are going to give Mr. Halloway the--the go-by!” The embarrassment fell away, and everybody began to talk at once. “Hold on a minute,” said the judge; “let's get at it straight. What do you want with me?” “I'll tell you,” volunteered Keating. “You see, the boys are getting in line again for this convention. They are the old file that used to rule the roost before the 'Herald' got too strong for them, and they rely on Mr. Harkless's being sick to beat Kedge Halloway with that Gaines County man, McCune. Now, none of us here want Rod McCune I guess. We had trouble enough once with him and his heelers, and now that Mr. Harkless is down, they've taken advantage of it to raise a revolution: Rod McCune for Congress! He's a dirty-hearted swindler--I hope Miss Sherwood will pardon the strong expression--and everybody thought the 'Herald' had driven him out of politics, though it never told how it did it; but he's up on top again. Now, the question is to beat him. We hold the committees, but the boys have been fighting the committees--call 'em the 'Harkless Ring,' and never understood that the 'Herald' would have turned us down in a second if it thought we weren't straight. Well, we saw a week ago that Kedge Halloway was going to lose to McCune; we figured it out pretty exactly, and there ain't a ray of hope for Kedge. We wrote to Mr. Harkless about it, and asked him to come down--if he'd been on the ground last Monday and had begun to work, I don't say but what his personal influence might have saved Halloway--but a friend of his, where he's staying, answered the letter: said Mr. Harkless was down with a relapse and was very fretful; and he'd taken the liberty of reading the letter and temporarily suppressing it under doctor's orders; they were afraid he'd come, sick as he was, from a sense of duty, and asked us to withdraw the letter, and referred us to Mr. Harkless's representative on the 'Herald.' So we applied here to Miss Sherwood, and that's why we had this meeting. Now, Halloway is honest--everybody knows that--and I don't say but what he's been the best available material Mr. Harkless had to send to Washington; but he ain't any too bright----” Mr. Martin interrupted the speaker. “I reckon, maybe, you never heard that lecture of his on the Past, Present, and Future'?”