It is not to be supposed that this comedy nor its winter prologue had diverted Peter from other things.  In spite of Miss De Voe’s demands on his time he had enough left to spend many days in Albany when the legislature took up the reports of the Commissions.  He found strong lobbies against both bills, and had a long struggle with them.  He had the help of the newspapers, and he had the help of Costell, yet even with this powerful backing, the bills were first badly mangled, and finally were side-tracked.  In the actual fight, Pell helped him most, and Peter began to think that a man might buy an election and yet not be entirely bad.  Second only to Pell, was his whilom enemy, the former District-Attorney, now a state senator, who battled himself into Peter’s reluctant admiration and friendship by his devotion and loyalty to the bills.  Peter concluded that he had not entirely done the man justice in the past.  Curiously enough, his chief antagonist was Maguire.

Peter did not give up the fight with this defeat.  His work for the bills had revealed to him the real under-currents in the legislative body, and when it adjourned, making further work in Albany only a waste of time, he availed himself of the secret knowledge that had come to him, to single out the real forces which stood behind and paid the lobby, and to interview them.  He saw the actual principals in the opposition, and spoke with utmost frankness.  He told them that the fight would be renewed, on his part, at every session of the legislature till the bills were passed; that he was willing to consider proposed amendments, and would accept any that were honest.  He made the fact very clear to them that they would have to pay yearly to keep the bills off the statute book.  Some laughed at him, others quarrelled.  But a few, after listening to him, stated their true objections to the bills, and Peter tried to meet them.

When the fall elections came, Peter endeavored to further his cause in another way.  Three of the city’s assemblymen and one of her senators had voted against the bills.  Peter now invaded their districts, and talked against them in saloons and elsewhere.  It very quickly stirred up hard feeling, which resulted in attempts to down him.  But Peter’s blood warmed up as the fight thickened, and hisses, eggs, or actual attempts to injure him physically did not deter him.  The big leaders were appealed to to call him off, but Costell declined to interfere.

“He wouldn’t stop anyway,” he told Green, “so we should do no good.  Let them fight it out by themselves.”  Both of which sentences showed that Mr. Costell understood his business.