“The Man with the Conscience!” He had been in office less than a month, and three times within the last week he had been called “The Man with the Conscience.”  Once a member of the Senate had declared on the floor that the “two strongest factors in present State politics are found to be in the will of the people and the conscience of the governor.”  The morning papers had reported it, and when, several days later, he had vetoed a bill providing to place certain powers in the hands of a corporation that was backed by large capital, he had been hailed again as “The Man with the Conscience!” Now he wondered as he read what the verdict would be to-morrow, when his refusal to sign a document which lay at that moment upon his desk must become widely known.  He had refused, not because the bill granted too great rights to a corporation, but because it needlessly restricted the growth of a railroad.  Would his refusal in this instance be dubbed “conscience” or “inconsistency”?

At the moment he was the people’s man—­this he knew.  His name was cheered by the general voice.  As he passed along the street bootblacks hurrahed! him.  He had determined that the governorship should cease to represent a figurehead, and for right or wrong, he was the man of the hour.

He laid the paper aside, and lifting a pipe from his desk, slowly lighted it.  As the smoke curled up, it circled in gray rings upon the air, filling the room with the aroma of the Virginia leaf.  He watched it idly, his mind upon the pile of unopened letters awaiting his attention.  Above the mantel hung a small oil painting of a Confederate soldier after Appomattox, and it reminded him vaguely of some one whom he had half forgotten.  He followed the trail for a moment and gave it up.  Higher still was an engraving of Mr. Jefferson Davis, with the well-remembered Puritan cast of feature and the severe chin beard.  Beneath the pictures a trivial ornament stood on the mantel and beside it a white rose in water breathed a fading fragrance.  A child who had come to feed the squirrels in the square had put the rose in his coat, and he had transferred it to the glass of water.

He turned towards his desk and took up several cards that he had not seen.  So Rann had called in his absence—­and Vaden and Diggs.  As he pushed the cards aside, he summoned mentally the men before him and weighed the possible values of each.  Why had Rann called, he wondered—­he had an object, of course, for he did not pay so much as a call without a purpose.  The name evoked the man—­he saw him plainly in the circles of gray smoke—­a stout, square figure, with short legs, his plaid socks showing beneath light trousers; a red, hairy face, with a wart in his left eyebrow, which was heavier than his right one; a large head, prematurely bald, and beneath an almost intellectual forehead, a pair of shrewd, intelligent eyes.  Rann was a match for any man in politics, he knew—­the great, silent voice, some one had said—­the man who was clever enough to let others do his talking for him.  Yes, he was glad that Rann would back him up.