"They're slashing this whole State
open from one end to the other with their devilish reform hullabaloo,"
he said.
"I hear there _is_ quite a stir outside," agreed the agitator, blandly.
He looked the chairman up and down with interest. "You may call me
Sylvester--Talleyrand Sylvester. Yankee dickerer! Buy and sell
everything from a clap o' thunder to a second-hand gravestone. It brings
me round the country up here, and so I've been the Squire's right-hand
man in the political game, such as there's been of it." He turned his
back on the pondering Duke and continued, sotto voce: "I reckon if he'd
stayed in himself, Colonel, they wouldn't have had the courage to tackle
him. They might have hit him with that whole stockin'ful of mud they've
been collectin', and he wouldn't have staggered. But when they go to hit
the young feller, there, with it, he's down and out."
"Eh!" barked the magnate of Canibas, catching the last words. "I am?
Not by a--" He broke off, ashamed of wasting effort in mere boasts.
"Presson," he went on, evidently now intent on proceeding according to
the plan that he had been meditating, "you've got your own interest in
seeing me keep this district in line, haven't you?"
"You're the head of our row of bricks," bleated the chairman.
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