“I don’t know; sometimes I wonder if I haven’t.  There is another field that is exceedingly attractive to me, and you have just named it.  No man can study the politics of America to-day without seeing the crying need for good men:  men who will not let the big income they could command in private undertakings weigh against pure patriotism and a plain duty to their country and their fellow-men; strong men who would administer the affairs of the State or the nation absolutely without fear or favor; men who will hew to the line under any and all conditions.  There’s an awful dearth of that kind of material in our Government.”

A quaint smile was playing under the drooping mustaches of that veteran politician the Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.

“I reckon we do need a few men like that, Evan; need ’em mighty bad.  Think you could fill the bill as one of them if you had a right good chance?”

The potential hewer of political chips which should lie as they might fall smiled at what seemed to be merely an expression of parental favoritism.

“I’m not likely to get the chance very soon,” he returned.  “Just at present, you know, I am still a legal resident of the good old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a member of its bar—­eligible to office there, and nowhere else.”

“You’d be a citizen of this State by the time you could get elected to an office in it,” suggested the senator gravely.

“I know; the required term of residence here is ridiculously short.  But you are forgetting that I am as completely unknown in the sage-brush hills as you are well known.  I couldn’t get a nomination for the office of pound-keeper.”

David Blount was chuckling softly as he threw up the brim of the big sombrero he was wearing.

“Sounds right funny to hear you talking that way, son,” he commented.  “Mighty near everybody this side of the Bad Lands will tell you that the slate hangs up behind the door at Wartrace Hall; and I don’t know but what some people would say that old Sage-Brush Dave himself does most of the writing on it.  Anyhow, there is one place on it that is still needing a name, and I reckon your name would fit it as well as anybody’s.”

The young man who was so lately out of the well-balanced East was astounded.

“Heavens!” he ejaculated.  “You’re not considering me as a possibility on the State ticket before I’ve been twenty-four hours inside of the State lines, are you?”

“No; not exactly as a possibility, son; that isn’t quite the word.  We’ll call it a sure thing, if you want it.  It’s this way:  we’re needing a sort of political house-cleaning right bad this year.  We have good enough laws, but they’re winked at any day in the week when somebody comes along with a fistful of yellow-backs.  The fight is on between the people of this State and the corporations; it was begun two years ago, and the people got the laws all right, but they forgot to elect men who would carry them out.  This time it looks as if the voters had got their knives sharpened.  We’ve been a little slow catching step maybe, but the marching orders have gone out.  We’re aiming to clean house, and do it right, this fall.”