“No, sir!” declared this simple Boniface, turning crimson with enthusiasm. “You are going to put thousands of dollars into my purse, and I’ll take nothing out of yours. And any little thing in the way of cigars and whisky that you want, sir, why, call for it. It’s my treat, sir.”

“Thank you, sir,” kindly smiled the great man. “That’s what I call the square thing. Mr. Boniface, you are a gentleman and a scholar, and I’ll mention your admirable house to my friends. By the way, I shall have to leave you for a few days.”

“Going to leave us!” exclaimed Mr. Boniface, aghast. “I hope not till this job is put through.”

“I must run about a bit,” muttered Pullwool confidentially. “A little turn through the State, you understand, to stir up the country districts. Some of the members ain’t as hot as they should be, and I want to set their constituents after them. Nothing like getting on a few deputations.”

“Oh, exactly!” chuckled Mr. Boniface, ramming his hands into his pockets and cheerfully jingling a bunch of keys and a penknife for lack of silver. It was strange indeed that he should actually see the Devil in Mr. Pullwool’s eye and should not have a suspicion that he was in danger of being humbugged by him. “And your rooms?” he suggested. “How about them?”

“I keep them,” replied the lobbyist grandly, as if blaspheming the expense—to Boniface. “Our friends must have a little hole to meet in. And while you are about it, Mr. Boniface, see that they get something to drink and smoke, and we’ll settle it between us.”

“Pre—cisely!” laughed the landlord, as much as to say, “My treat!” And so Mr. Pullwool, that Pericles and Lorenzo de’Medici rolled in one, departed for a season from the city which he ruled and blessed. Did he run about the State and preach and crusade in behalf of Fastburg, and stir up the bucolic populations to stir up their representatives in its favour? Not a bit of it; the place that he went to, and the only place that he went to, was Slowburg; yes, covering up his tracks in his usual careful style, he made direct for the rival of Fastburg. What did he propose to do there? Oh, how can we reveal the whole duplicity and turpitude of Ananias Pullwool? The subject is too vast for a merely human pen; it requires the literary ability of a recording angel. Well, we must get our feeble lever under this boulder of wickedness as we can, and do our faint best to expose all the reptiles and slimy things beneath it. The first person whom this apostle of lobbyism called upon in Slowburg was the mayor of that tottering capital.

“My name is Pullwool,” he said to the official, and he said it with an almost enviable ease of impudence, for he was used to introducing himself to people who despised and detested him. “I want to see you confidentially about this capital ring which is making so much trouble.”

“I thought you were in it,” replied the mayor, turning very red in the face, for he had heard of Mr. Pullwool as the leader of said ring; and being an iracund man, he was ready to knock his head off.

“In it!” exclaimed the possessed one. “I wish I was. It’s a fat thing. More than fifty thousand dollars paid out already!”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed the mayor in despair.

“By the way, this is between ourselves,” added Pullwool. “You take it so, I hopé. Word of honour, eh?”

“Why, if you have anything to communicate that will help us, why, of course, I promise secrecy,” stammered the mayor. “Yes, certainly; word of honour.”

“Well, I’ve been looking about among those fellows a little,” continued Ananias. “I’ve kept my eyes and ears open. It’s a way I have. And I’ve learned a thing or two that it will be to your advantage to know. Yes, sir! fifty thousand dollars!—the city has voted it and paid it, and the ring has got it. That’s why