The radicals who sat there
with set teeth and bent brows, hoping to hear denunciation after their
own heart, were disappointed. The politicians who had feared now took
new grip on their hope--it probably was not to be as bad as they had
anticipated.
Harlan Thornton listened to the calm, moderate statement of the State's
general financial and political situation with growing sense of mingled
disappointment and relief. His fighting spirit and his knowledge of
conditions, as they had been revealed to him, made him hope that at last
an honest man proposed to clean the temple--entering upon his task with
bared arms and a clarion call. This mild old man, confining himself to
the details of the State's progress and needs, was not exactly the
leader he had expected him to be. And yet Harlan was relieved. He looked
at the girl beside him, and that relief smoothed away his
disappointment. As matters were shaping themselves he no longer
anticipated that he would be driven into pitched battle, forced to fight
intrenched enemies of reform--Luke Presson's face most conspicuous of
all those behind the party wall of privilege.
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