"I always knew he was one of those chaps you have to keep scared to keep straight," said Woodruff. "They think your politeness indicates fear and your friendship fright. Besides, he's got a delusion that his popularity carried the West for him and that you and I did him only damage." Woodruff interrupted himself to laugh. "A friend of mine," he resumed, "was on the train with Scarborough when he went East to the meeting of Congress last month. He tells me it was like a President-elect on the way to be inaugurated. The people turned out at every cross-roads, even beyond the Alleghanies. And Burbank knows it. If he wasn't clean daft about himself he'd realize that if it hadn't been for you--well, I'd hate to say how badly he'd have got left. But then, if it hadn't been for you, he'd never have been governor. He was a dead one, and you hauled him out of the tomb." True enough. But what did it matter now? "He's going to get a horrible jolt before many months," Woodruff went on. "I can see you after him." "You forget. He's President," I answered. "He's beyond our reach." "Not when he wants a renomination," insisted Woodruff. "He can get that without us--_if_," I said. "You must remember we've made him a fetish with our rank and file. And he's something of a fetish with the country, now that he's President. No, we can't destroy him--can't even injure him. He'll have to do that himself, if it's done. Besides--" I did not finish. I did not care to confess that since Frances and I saw Granby swinging from that tree in my grounds I had neither heart nor stomach for the relentless side of the game. Indeed, whether from calculation or from sentimentality or from both--or, from a certain sympathy and fellow feeling for all kinds of weakness--I have never pursued those who have played me false, except when exemplary punishment was imperative. "Well--" Woodruff looked bitterly disappointed. "I guess you're right." He brightened. "I forgot Goodrich for a minute. Burbank'll do himself up through that--I'd have to be in a saloon to feel free to use the language that describes him." "I fear he will," I said. And it was not a hypocrisy--for I did not, and could not, feel anger toward him. Had I not cut this staff deliberately because it was crooked? What more natural than that it should give way under me as soon as I leaned upon it? "Your sickness certainly couldn't have come at an unluckier time," Woodruff observed just before he left. "I'm not sure of that," was my reply. "It would have been useless to have found him out sooner. And if he had hidden himself until later, he might have done us some serious mischief."