they are all working so. And depend upon it, they’ll carry the legislature and turn Slowburg out to grass unless you wake up and do something.”

“By heavens!” exclaimed the iracund mayor, turning red again. “It’s a piece of confounded rascality. It ought to be exposed.”

“No, don’t expose it,” put in Mr. Pullwool, somewhat alarmed. “That game never works. Of course they’d deny it and swear you down, for bribing witnesses is as easy as bribing members. I’ll tell you what to do. Beat them at their own weapons. Raise a purse that will swamp theirs. That’s the way the world goes. It’s an auction. The highest bidder gets the article.”

Well, the result of it all was that city magnates of Slowburg did just what had been done by the city magnates of Fastburg, only, instead of voting fifty thousand dollars into the pockets of the ring, they voted sixty thousand. With a portion of this money about him, and with authority to draw for the rest on proper vouchers, Mr. Pullwool, his tongue in his cheek, bade farewell to his new allies. As a further proof of the ready wit and solid impudence of this sublime politician and model of American statesman, let me here introduce a brief anecdote. Leaving Slowburg by the cars, he encountered a gentleman from Fastburg, who saluted him with tokens of amazement, and said, “What are you doing here, Mr. Pullwool?”

“Oh, just breaking up these fellows a little,” whispered the man with the Devil in him. “They were making too strong a fight. I had to see some of them,” putting one hand behind his back and rubbing his fingers together, to signify that there had been a taking of bribes. “But be shady about it. For the sake of the good cause, keep quiet. Mum’s the word.”

The reader can imagine how briskly the fight between the two capitals reopened when Mr. Pullwool re-entered the lobby. Slowburg now had its adherents, and they struggled not men who saw money in their warfare, and they struggled not in vain. To cut a very long story very short, to sum the whole of an exciting drama in one sentence, the legislature kicked overboard the bill to make Fastburg the sole seat of government. Nothing had come of the whole row, except that a pair of simple little cities had spent over one hundred thousand dollars, and that the capital ring, fighting on both sides and drawing pay from both sides, had lined its pockets, while the great creator of the ring had crammed his to bursting.

“What does this mean, Mr. Pullwool?” demanded the partially honest and entirely puzzled Tom Dicker, when he had discovered by an unofficial count of noses how things were going. “Fastburg has spent all its money for nothing. It won’t be sole capital, after all.”

“I never expected it would be,” replied Pullwool, so tickled by the Devil that was in him that he could not help laughing. “I never wanted it to be. Why, it would spoil the little game. This is a trick that can be played every year.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Dicker, and was dumb with astonishment for a minute.

“Didn’t you see through it before?” grinned the grand master of all guile and subtlety.

“I did not,” confessed Mr. Dicker, with a mixture of shame and abhorrence. “Well,” he presently added, recovering himself, “shall we settle?”

“Oh, certainly, if you are ready,” smiled Pullwool, with the air of a man who has something coming to him.

“And what, exactly, will be my share?” asked Dicker humbly.

“What do you mean?” stared Pullwool, apparently in the extremity of amazement.

“You said snacks, didn’t you?” urged Dicker, trembling violently.