"What is the political programme, as you have it figured out, David?" he asked presently. "It'll be a landslide for us, as I have told you. Gordon will go in by the biggest majority that has ever been rolled up in this State. Dortscher will succeed himself as attorney-general; and by and by, after things have quieted down, he will resign. That will give Gordon the appointment of his successor, and I'm thinking it might be a pretty good thing for you, as well as for the people of the State, if Alec should happen to pick out a bright young fellow who knows your side of the question as well as the people's, and who is square enough to give you a fair show when it comes to framing up any new railroad legislation." "That will be your son, I suppose?" "If he'll take it," was the imperturbable rejoinder. For the third time the vice-president, dying hard, as befitted him, deliberated thoughtfully. At the end of the thoughtful interval he took a cigar from the open box and clamped it between his teeth. "We trade," he said shortly. And then: "How will you take it--in stock or bonds?" The Honorable David rose slowly and snapped the cigar ash into the fire. "I'm right sorry, Hardwick, but this is one time when I reckon we'll have to have what you might call the spot cash. Promises don't go. You're too good a fighter to be allowed to get up merely because you've hollered 'enough.' Come on into your telegraph-shop and let me hear you dictate that string of 'come-off' orders. Then we'll drive to town in my road-car, and you can tip off Kittredge and a few of the other prominent victims by word of mouth, as you'll most likely want to." For a full minute after the two had left the lobby together Evan Blount sat motionless in the screened orchestra gallery. Then he got up and groped once more for the door-knob. It yielded at his touch, and in the semi-darkness beyond the opening he saw his father's wife with her arms upstretched to him. "Oh, Evan, dear--am I forgiven?" she asked softly. "Little mother!" he said, and then he took her face between his hands and kissed her. * * * * * When the Honorable David Blount reached the city an hour or more later, and had dropped his passenger at the Railway Club, he found his son waiting for him in the otherwise deserted sitting-room of the Inter-Mountain private suite. "I couldn't sleep without telling you first, dad," the waiting one broke out. "I've been eavesdropping; I was a listener, unwilling at first, but not afterward, to everything that was said an hour or so ago in the lobby of the little hotel at the head of Shonoho. Do I need to tell you in so many words how deep the plough has gone?"