“If Squiers has made false registrations he must stand the consequences.  I want you to understand, sir, that I do not countenance any underhand dealing.”

“Then it’s all off?  You won’t vote the mill hands?”

“Not a man shall vote who is not properly registered.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Hopkins.  Perhaps you can get that twenty-five hundred back.  I don’t think Squiers has cashed the check yet.”

The Honorable Erastus gave a roar like a wild bull, but Uncle John had walked quietly out and climbed into his buggy.  He looked back, and seeing Mr. Hopkins’s scowling face at the window returned a pleasant smile as he drove away.

Mr. Watson had just finished his interview with the dentist when Uncle John picked him up at the corner.  The lawyer had accomplished more than the other two, for he had secured a paper exonerating Lucy Rogers and another incriminating the Honorable Erastus Hopkins, as well as the sixty dollars paid by Tom Gates.  The dentist was thoroughly frightened, but determined, now that the conspiracy was defeated, that the man who had led him to the crime should not escape in case he was himself arrested.  So he made a plain statement of the whole matter and signed it, and Mr. Watson assured Squiers immunity from arrest, pending good behavior.  The man had already cashed Hopkins’s check, and he knew the Representative could not get the money away from him, so after all the dentist lost nothing by the exposure.

It was a jolly party that assembled at the dinner-table in Elmhurst that evening.

“You see,” explained Uncle John, “the thing looked as big as a balloon to us at first; but it was only a bubble, after all, and as soon as we pricked it—­it disappeared.”

CHAPTER XXI

THE “RETURNS” FROM FAIRVIEW

Election day dawned sunny and bright; but there was a chill in the air that betokened the approach of winter.

Uncle John had suggested serving coffee to the voters at the different polling places, and Kenneth had therefore arranged for a booth at each place, where excellent coffee was served free all day long.  These booths were decorated with Forbes banners and attracted a great deal of comment, as the idea was a distinct innovation in this district.

“You wouldn’t catch Hopkins giving anything away,” remarked one farmer to another. “’Rast is too close-fisted.”

“Why, as fer that,” was the reply, “the thing is done to catch votes.  You know that as well as I do.”

“S’pose it is,” said the first speaker.  “I’d ruther my vote was caught by a cup of hot coffee on a cold day, than by nothin’ at all.  If we’ve got to bite anyhow, why not take a hook that’s baited?”

Patsy and Beth made the rounds of the polling places in an automobile covered with flags and bunting, and wherever they appeared they were greeted with cordial cheers.