“Say, you hit it just right,” cried the visitor, too exultant to take off his overcoat.  “I’ve been down through the Pelican, and there ain’t been such excitement since Snow and Giddings had the fight for United States senator in the ’80’s.  The place is all torn up, and you can’t get a room there for love or money.  They tell me they’ve been havin’ conferences steady in Number Seven since the session closed, and Hilary Vane’s sent for all the Federal and State office-holders to be here in the morning and lobby.  Botcher and Jane and Bascom are circulatin’ like hot water, tellin’ everybody that because they wouldn’t saddle the State with a debt with your bills you turned sour on ’em, and that you’re more of a corporation and railroad man than any of ’em.  They’ve got their machine to working a thousand to the minute, and everybody they have a slant on is going into line.  One of them fellers, a conductor, told me he had to go with ’em.  But our boys ain’t idle, I can tell you that.  I was in the back of the gallery when you spoke up, and I shook ’em off the leash right away.”

Mr. Crewe leaned back from the table and thrust his hands in his pockets and smiled.  He was in one of his delightful moods.

“Take off your overcoat, Tooting,” he said; “you’ll find one of my best political cigars over there, in the usual place.”

“Well, I guessed about right, didn’t I?” inquired Mr. Tooting, biting off one of the political cigars.  “I gave you a pretty straight tip, didn’t I, that young Tom Gaylord was goin’ to have somebody make that motion to-day?  But say, it’s funny he couldn’t get a better one than that feller Harper.  If you hadn’t come along, they’d have smashed him to pulp.  I’ll bet the most surprised man in the State to-night, next to Brush Bascom, is young Tom Gaylord.  It’s a wonder he ain’t been up here to thank you.”

“Maybe he has been,” replied Mr. Crewe.  “I told Waters to keep everybody out to-night because I want to know exactly what I’m going to say on the floor tomorrow.  I don’t want ’em to give me trouble.  Did you bring some of those papers with you?”

Mr. Tooting fished a bundle from his overcoat pocket.  The papers in question, of which he had a great number stored away in Ripton, represented the foresight, on Mr. Tooting’s part, of years.  He was a young man with a praiseworthy ambition to get on in the world, and during his apprenticeship in the office of the Honourable Hilary Vane many letters and documents had passed through his hands.  A less industrious person would have neglected the opportunity.  Mr. Tooting copied them; and some, which would have gone into the waste-basket, he laid carefully aside, bearing in mind the adage about little scraps of paper—­if there is one.  At any rate, he now had a manuscript collection which was unique in its way, which would have been worth much to a great many men, and with characteristic generosity he was placing it at the disposal of Mr. Crewe.