And yet, as the tide of caucuses swelled and reports of results flowed into State headquarters, Chairman Presson and his lieutenants found themselves unable to mark men with the old certitude of touch. There was a queer kind of slipperiness everywhere. It was evident that the Canibas result had stiffened backbones in many quarters, but more new men than usual were coming forward with nominations in their fists. Many of these men were not telling any one how they felt on the big questions that were agitating the State. Some announced themselves with the usual grandiloquent generalities. It is easy enough to say that one believes in reform and good citizenship, for one can construe that later to suit circumstances. The reformers were making a great deal of noise, mostly threats. They were passing to candidates specific questions as to their stand on the larger issues. Many candidates who had subscribed and declared themselves dodged up to headquarters on the sly and assured the State chairman that they had pledged their positions because it seemed to be a reform year, and they had to do something to shut up the yawp of the reformers. When they privately assured Presson that they would be found on the right side just the same after election, he took heart for a moment, and then was downcast after they were gone; it was tabulating liars--an uncertain job. Presson listened and took what courage he could, but the asterisks in his lists confessed his doubts. "There's a line of stars down those lists that would puzzle the man who invented political astronomy," he told his intimates. "But I don't dare to go looking for the trouble right now. It'll be like a man looking for measles in his family of thirteen; it'll break out if it's there--he won't have to hunt for it." The Republican State Convention was called for late June. The party managers believed that it would clarify the situation somewhat; "it would afford an opportunity for conference and free debate on the big questions where division of opinion existed," so the party organs assured their readers day by day. Chairman Presson asked them to drum this idea into the heads of the people. But what he told himself and the secret council was that there needed to be a round-up where some of the wild steers could be thrown and branded before they should succeed in stampeding the main herd. It was a situation that called for one of the good, old-fashioned "nights before." For a practical politician knows that speeches and band music do not make a convention; they merely ratify the real convention; the real convention is held "the night before," behind closed doors at the headquarters hotel.