“Yes,” said the big man, sunning his back at the fire, “that is one of the things we’re going to flail out right here and now, Hardwick; about the boy and what he’s been doing.  You told him to go out and preach the good, clean gospel of the square deal, didn’t you?”

It was at this point that the listener in the musicians’ gallery, a prey to tumultuous emotions which were making the freshly healing wound in his head throb like a trip-hammer, lost all of his compunctions and drew closer to the fretwork screen.

“He didn’t need any special instructions,” was the vice-president’s rejoinder, and his tone chimed in with the hard-bitted smile.  “Now that it is all over, I don’t mind telling you that he mapped the thing out for himself, and all we had to do was to sit tight and give him plenty of rope.  Candidly, David, I don’t believe I’m hardened enough to play the game as it ought to be played out here in the sage-brush hills.  The young fellow’s sincerity came pretty near getting away with me when I saw how ridiculously in earnest he was.”

“Yet you let him go on, putting himself deeper and deeper in the hole every time he stood up before an audience, and you never said a word—­never gave him a hint that you were not going to back him up in everything he was saying?”

This time the hard-bitted smile broke into a laugh.

“Let’s get down to business, David.  You wouldn’t expect us to throw the game away when somebody was trying his best to put the winning card into our hands.  We needn’t dig back into the campaign for something to jangle over, you and I. We can come right down to the present moment.  You’re cornered, but I don’t deny that you’ve still got a few votes to dispose of.  How much do you want for them?”

Blount saw his father take a step forward, and for a flitting instant he thought there would be violence.  But apparently nothing was farther from the senator’s intention.

“I’m not selling to-night, Hardwick; I’m buying,” he said, with the good-natured smile wrinkling at the corners of his eyes.  “I want to know how much you’ll take to clean up right where you are and make my boy’s word good to the people of this State.”

Mr. McVickar turned to his table-desk and took up a sheaf of telegrams.

“I’m a pretty busy man this evening, David; and if you haven’t anything better than that to offer—­”

“You’ve got a lot of crooked deals out—­special rates and rebates and such things; the boy believed you were going to call them all off and be good, Hardwick.”

The vice-president laid the telegrams aside and turned back again with the air of a man determined to sweep away all the obstructions at one shrewd push.

“You’re wasting your time and mine; let’s get down to business,” he snapped.  “Some little time ago your son began to urge this same ’reform measure,’ as he termed it.  I believe he even went so far as to threaten Gantry and Kittredge with the publication of certain private letters from our patrons, letters written to him in his capacity of field campaigner for our company.  I don’t suppose he really meant to do any such disloyal thing as that, but—­”