Every time a matter is decided between factions, or a political seeker wins a subordinate job, a rival and his friends are sent away to sulk.  And so at last, in the process of making the fortress impregnable, the big wall falls and “the unders” come into the citadel.

Chairman Presson would not allow that the situation in that year of reform unrest was as bad as the “unders” seemed to think.  But he was worried because he was finding all men liars.  And when men are lying and marking time in politics and glancing over their shoulders, look out for the stampede!

In a stampede “a logical candidate” is the first one to be trampled on.  This one was threatened in earnest.

His opponent in his own party was Protest walking on two legs and thundering anathema through a mat of mustaches that made him a marked figure in any throng.  His enemies called him “Fog-horn” Spinney; his admirers considered him a silver-tongued orator.  As a professional organizer of leagues, clubs, orders, and societies he knew by their first names men enough to elect him if he could be nominated.  And Arba Spinney’s methods may be known from the fact that once he got enough votes to make him a State Senator by asking his auditors at each rally to feel of the lumps in the corners of their ready-made vests.  A man who is fingering the sheddings of shoddy feels like voting for the candidate who declares that he will make a sheep a respectable member of society once more.

As “a logical candidate,” David Everett, ending his four years as a member of the Governor’s executive council, was the refinement of political grooming.  And he was “safe.”  A well-organized political machine has no use for any other sort!

Arba Spinney, vociferous, rank outsider, apostrophizing the “tramp of the cowhide boots,” reckless in his denunciation of every man who held office, promising everything that would catch a vote, urging overturn for the sake of overturn and a new deal, marked the other extreme.  For the mass, Change, labelled Reform, seems wholly desirable.  Political sagacity saw trouble ahead.  And no one in the State was politically more sagacious than Thelismer Thornton, who had seen men come and seen men go, and knew all their moods and fancies.

On the morning that the State chairman hurried out of Fort Canibas he discussed the matter of the rival candidates with the old man—­that is to say, he talked and Thornton listened.  And the more the chairman talked, the more his own declarations convinced him.

“Why, the old bull fiddle can’t fool the convention, Thelismer.  He’s running around the State now, and they’re listening to him like they’d listen to a steam calliope, but what he says don’t amount to anything for an argument.  It’s the pledged delegates that count.”

The old man drew a fat, black wallet from his hip pocket, and leisurely extracted a packet of newspaper clippings.

“I’ve been watching the lists of delegates as they’ve been chosen, Luke.  But I fail to see where you’re getting pledged delegations.”