"You deal exclusively with your resignation, and yet you are issuing this statement from the League’s headquarters. Don’t you think you had better say something about your candidacy? "Hadn’t I better wait till I get it?" "You will have it as soon as the committee meets. Everybody knows that. I don’t propose that you should anticipate all the good points of your letter of acceptance, but merely that you should state what you will stand for. You could say that your name has been mentioned for the nomination and that, if nominated, you will make your campaign on such and such issues." "All right." Luke shrugged his lean shoulders. He turned to the waiting stenographer. "Take this," he said: "In conclusion, I wish to say that my recent experience in the service of the city has convinced me of the crying need of a new movement for civic improvement: a non-partisan movement in which the one object shall be the purification of municipal government and the fearless administration of the law, all of its supporters working together not for any man or party, but for the good of New York. Such a movement is that now started by the conscientious men who compose the Municipal Reform League. "My name has been mentioned as a candidate for office on the ticket of this league, and I shall feel honored, indeed, if I receive my nomination under such happy auspices. In that event, I shall go before the people with a frank appeal to them to drive the money-changers out of the Temple of Justice, the grafters out of the police-force, vice and crime from the streets; and, if elected, I should attempt to do these things, as the will of the people who placed me in power, with favor to no persons, or combination of persons, in Greater New York. But whether I am nominated or not, I shall take my coat off and roll up my sleeves and go to work for the Municipal Reform League as for the only present hope of this city’s moral regeneration." Luke turned to Venable. "How’s that?" he inquired. Venable agreed that it ought to do. "_I_ think it’s stodgy enough," said Luke. Venable visibly winced, but passed the comment by. "I am not quite sure," he said, "about that expression concerning taking off your coat and so on. Our first appeal has to be made to the cultivated voters, you see, and we don’t want to sound too—well, too agricultural." Luke smiled his weary smile. No doubt Venable was right. "Change that," said Luke to the stenographer—"change it to: ’I shall put on my armor and take up my broadsword to go into this battle.’" §3. "Miss Forbes got back?" Luke asked that evening when he again rang the bell at the Forbes house. "Yes, sir," said the servant, "she’s in the parlor. Mr. Forbes is in the library. Shall I——" "I think I can make out with only Miss Forbes—for a while," Luke interrupted. He started to walk past the servant. "Mr. Nicholson is there, too," the careful servant warned him. "He stayed to dinner."