Bassett kept pretty close to Fraserville, running into the city occasionally for a few hours.  He complained now and then because he saw so little of his family, who continued at the lake.  Dan had certain prescribed duties, but these were not onerous.  A great many of the country newspapers began to come to the office, and it was Harwood’s business to read them and cut out any items bearing upon local political conditions.  Bassett winnowed these carefully, brushing the chaff into his wastebasket and retaining a few kernels for later use.  He seemed thoroughly familiar with the state press and spoke of the rural newspapers with a respect that surprised Harwood, who had little patience with what he called the “grapevine dailies,” with their scrappy local news, patent insides, and servile partisan opinions.  Still, he began to find in a considerable number of these papers, even those emanating from remote county seats, a certain raciness and independence.  This newspaper reading, which Dan had begun perfunctorily, soon interested him.  It was thus, he saw, that Bassett kept in touch with state affairs.  Sporadic temperance movements, squabbles over local improvements, rows in school boards, and like matters were not beneath Bassett’s notice.  He discussed these incidents and conditions with Harwood, who was astonished to find how thoroughly Bassett knew the state.

Through all this Dan was not blind to the sins charged against Bassett.  There were certain corporations which it was said Bassett protected from violence at the state house.  But as against this did not the vast horde of greedy corporations maintain a lobby at every session and was not a certain amount of lobbying legitimate?  Again, Bassett had shielded the liquor interests from many attacks; but had not these interests their rights, and was it not a sound doctrine that favored government with the least restraint?  Rather uglier had been Bassett’s identification with the organization of the White River Canneries Company, a combination of industries on which a scandalous overissue of stock had been sold in generous chunks to a confiding public, followed in a couple of years by a collapse of the business and a reorganization that had frozen out all but a favored few.  Still, Bassett had not been the sole culprit in that affair, and was not this sort of financiering typical of the time?  Bassett and Thatcher had both played the gentle game of freeze-out in half a dozen other instances, and if they were culpable, why had they not been brought to book?  In his inner soul Dan knew why not:  in the bi-partisan political game only the stupid are annoyed by grand juries, which take their cue tamely from ambitious prosecuting attorneys eager for higher office.

Bassett’s desk stood against the wall and over it hung a map of Indiana.  It was no unusual thing for Dan to find Bassett with his chair tipped back, his eyes fixed upon the map.  The oblong checkerboard formed by the ninety-two counties of the Hoosier commonwealth seemed to have a fascination for the man from Fraserville.  When Dan found him thus in rapt contemplation Bassett usually turned toward him a little reluctantly and absently.  It was thus that Morton Bassett studied the field, like a careful general outlining his campaigns, with ample data and charts before him.