Agnes smiled across at him in calm content. She had but very little to say now. She was in that blissful happiness that comes to any woman when the man most in her mind is reaping his meed of success from a long and hard-fought battle. "Spoken like your father, Bobby," laughed Uncle Dan. "You're coming to look more and more like him every day. You talk like him and act like him. You have the same snap of your jaws. Your father, however, never dabbled in politics. He always despised it, and I see you're bound to be knee-deep in it." "My father would have succeeded in politics," said Bobby confidently, "as he succeeded in everything else, after he once got started. I have his confession in writing, however, that he made a few fool mistakes himself along at first. As for politics, I _am_ in it knee-deep, and I'm going to elect my own slate next fall." "Another reform party, of course," suggested Uncle Dan with a smile. "Not for Bobby," replied that decided young gentleman. "I am forming an affiliation with Cal Lewis." "Cal Lewis!" exclaimed Uncle Dan aghast. Then he closed his eyes and laughed softly. "As notorious in his way as Sam Stone himself. Why, Bobby, that's fighting fire with gasolene." "It's setting a thief to catch a thief. You must remember that for fifteen years Cal hasn't had any of the pie except in a minor way, and all this time he's been fighting Stone tooth and toe-nail. The late reform movement, which failed so lamentably to carry out its gaudy promises after it had won, left him entirely out of its calculations, and Lewis actually joined with Stone in overturning it. I propose to use Lewis' knowledge of political machinery, but in my own way. As a matter of fact, I have already engaged him and put him on salary; a good, stiff one, too. His business is to organize my political machine. I'm going to have a slate of clean men, who will not only conduct the business of this county and city with probity but with discretion, and I do not mind telling you that my candidate for mayor is Chalmers." Agnes gave a little cry of delight, and even Aunt Constance clapped her hands lightly, for Chalmers, a young lawyer of excellent social connections, was a prime favorite with the Ellistons, and in the business he had transacted for the Burnit estate Bobby had found in him sterling qualities. "Chalmers is a good man," agreed Uncle Dan, "though he is young, and practically without political influence; but, if you can make him mayor, I predict a brilliant political future for him." "He will have it," said Bobby confidently, "for I intend to make him the attorney for the investigating committee, and through his work I expect to have not less than a hundred thousand dollars of stolen money turned back into the city and county treasuries."