It was a mighty position and yet one that, in moments like the present, was inherently delicate, one in which the fortunate man must move warily lest in gaining a new friend he lose an old. It is all very well to be temperate and profit by drunkenness, to be abstemious and take money from prostitution; it is easy to give presents at Christmas and picnics in summer when the giving is in reality only paying a small rebate to wives for drunken husbands, to mothers for daughters stolen. It is easy to find a place in the municipal government for the man that stuffs a ballot-box for you, or the procurer that registers your fraudulent votes from the houses of his customers; but it is fatal to punish, for what may be a passing disloyalty, anyone that your world, perhaps ignorant that offense has been committed, regards as having been placed by a careless Heaven under your protecting wing,--fatal, that is to say, unless you acquire something more than you throw away. Of all this, though scarcely with such frankness of phrase, Michael O'Malley made thought before he gave Dyker the reply for which that clever young lawyer was waiting. Behind his closed eyes he weighed the chances carefully: the things to be gained against the things that might be lost. Then he thoughtfully lit another black cigar. "You've got to keep out of personal relations with these women," he yawned. Dyker bit his lip. "I don't have them," he replied. "Yes, you do. Cut 'em out. Understand?" Surprisedly, angrily, Dyker found himself bowing obedience, like a school-urchin detected in some breach of academic discipline. "A woman with a past," continued O'Malley, "is all right for the present, but a slow mare in the futurity." "I dare say you're correct," said Wesley Dyker. With a single blow of the whip, the master had demonstrated his mastery. O'Malley smoked a while longer in silence. "Now then," he at last pursued, "about this magistracy. You think the boys'll stand for you?" "I think they will," Wesley replied, with humble mien, but rising assurance. "And I think it ought to make the ticket look better to the uptown people to have--if you will pardon my saying so--my sort of name on it." O'Malley grunted. "Don't you worry about the looks of the ticket, or the value of your sort of a name," he said. "The kid-glove game is played out; it's only the monkey who's always hopping about on his family-tree." Dyker's courage ebbed again, but he knew that to stand upon his dignity was to be overthrown. "At all events," he persisted, "I am pretty well known hereabouts by this time, and I think honestly that I am pretty well liked."