In an anteroom, so far removed from the main hall that only the dull rumble of voices and the shredded echoes of the blaring music reached there, was assembled the state’s oligarchy awaiting the pleasure of Colonel Symonds Dodd.

He sat in a big chair, his squat figure crowding its confines.

The state committee and the rest of his entourage were gathered about him.

There was a committeeman from every county in the state—­the men who formed the motive cogs of his machine.

One after the other they had reported to him.

And each time a man finished talking the colonel drove a solid fist down on the arm of the chair and roared:  “I say again I don’t believe it’s as bad as you figure it.  It can’t be as bad.  Do you tell me that this party is going to be turned upside down by a kid-glove aristocrat who has hardly stirred out of his office during this campaign?”

“He has had a chap to do his stirring for him,” stated one of the group.

“A hobo, scum of the rough-scruff, hailing from nowhere!  Shown up in our newspapers as a ditch-digger—­a fly-by-night—­a nobody!  I’m ashamed of this state committee, coming here and telling me that he has been allowed to influence anybody.”

“Colonel Dodd, what I’m going to say to you may not sound like politics as we usually talk it,” declared a committeeman, a gray-haired and spectacled person who had the grave mien of a student, “and it is not admitted very often by regular politicians who run with the machine.  But we are up against something which has happened in this queer old world of ours a good many times.  We have had the best organization here in this state that a machine ever put together.  But in American politics it’s always just when the machine is running best that something happens.  Something is dropped into the gear, and it’s usually done by the last man you’d expect to do it.  The fellows who are tending the machine are too busy watching that part of the crowd they think is dangerous, and then the inconspicuous chap slips one over.”

“I don’t want any lecture on politics,” snapped the boss.  “Do you mean to insinuate that that low-lived Farr has put this over on us?”

“I have hunted to the bottom of things and I do say so, Colonel Dodd.”

“How in blazes did that fellow ever get any influence?  I haven’t been able to believe that he has been accomplishing anything.”

“You ought to have listened a little more closely to us, Colonel,” insisted the committeeman.  “Every once in a while there comes forward a man whom the people will follow.  And he is never the rich man nor the proud man, but he is one who knows how to reach the hearts of the crowd.  A shrewd politician can get power by building up his machine.  And then some fellow in overalls who has some kind of a God-given quality that has never been explained yet so that we can understand, smashes into sight like a comet.  It may be his way of talking to men, it may be his personality—­it is more likely a divine spark in him that neither he himself nor other men understand.  But every now and again some humble chap like that has changed the history of the world, and I reckon it’s pretty easy for such a man to change the politics of a mere state.”