“I should resent that.  It would have been a delicate compliment, and he owed that much to you.  I’m afraid he has been a politician long enough to be like all the rest—­to walk up to power on men as one uses a flight of stairs, and then to put the stairs behind his back; for one doesn’t walk up-stairs backward.”

He flushed more deeply.

“I’m not that kind of a fellow—­jealous, or petty, or expecting a great deal for what little service I can render.”

“Put a value on yourself, though,” she advised him.  “It really isn’t human nature, you know, to pick up the things that are thrown away by the owners—­to pick them up and keep them and value them, I mean.  That applies to purses and all other possessions, including hearts and loyalty.”

He started to say something to her—­even though the throng pressed about them he would have said it; but the voice of the crier at the door announced what all were waiting for.

“His Excellency the Governor, the Honorable Council, and his Excellency the Governor-elect and party!”

They filed along in dignified procession down the centre aisle, the uniforms of the officers of the staff giving a touch of color and brightness to the formal frock-coats.

The Secretary of State announced the official figures of the vote electing Varden Waymouth as Governor, and after his sonorous final phrase, “God save the State of ------,” Governor Waymouth repeated the oath of office administered by a gaunt, sallow lawyer who was the president of the Senate.

The clerk of the House set a reading-desk on the Speaker’s table and arranged the Governor’s manuscript.  As the old man read he made a striking picture.  He stood very erect.  His snowy hair, the empty sleeve across his breast, the lines the years had etched on cheeks and brow gave those who looked on him a little thrill of sympathetic regret that one so old should be called from the repose of his later years to take up such public burdens as he had assumed.  But his voice was resonant, his eye was clear.  Nature seemed to have given him new strength to meet what he was now facing.  And yet, thought some of those who listened, it might be that he did not propose to make a martyr of himself, after all.  His address did not threaten or complain.  The radicals who sat there with set teeth and bent brows, hoping to hear denunciation after their own heart, were disappointed.  The politicians who had feared now took new grip on their hope—­it probably was not to be as bad as they had anticipated.

Harlan Thornton listened to the calm, moderate statement of the State’s general financial and political situation with growing sense of mingled disappointment and relief.  His fighting spirit and his knowledge of conditions, as they had been revealed to him, made him hope that at last an honest man proposed to clean the temple—­entering upon his task with bared arms and a clarion call.  This mild old man,