Cobb Irvin Shrewsbury
Old Judge Priest

As Mr. Ezell’s choler rose his brows came down and lowered.

“Huh!” said Mr. Ezell with deadly slowness. “Whut’s a Yankee doin’ down here in this country?”

“Doin’ fairly well,” answered Mr. Bloomfield. “F’r instance, he’s payin’ taxes on that there house next door.” He flirted his whiskered chin over his left shoulder. “F’r instance, also, he’s runnin’ the leadin’ tannery and saddle-works of this city, employin’ sixteen hands regular. Also, he was elected a justice of the peace a week ago last We’nesday by his fellow citizens, regardless of politics or religion – thanky for askin’!

“Also,” he went on, his freckles now standing out beautifully against a mounting pink background – “Also and furthermore, he remembers distinctly having been present on a number of occasions when he helped to lick you Seceshers good and proper. And if you think, my friend, that I’m goin’ to abate one jot or tittle from that statement you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, I tell you!”

Now behold in the rôle of peacemaker Sergeant Jimmy Bagby rising grandly erect to his full height, but keeping his feet and ankles in the foottub.

“Say, listen here, Major,” he pleaded, “ef you kin kindly see your way dear to abatin’ a few jots on behalf of Indiana I’ll bet you I kin induce Georgia to throw off every blamed tittle he’s got in stock. And then ef Indiana kin dig up another of them delightful teacups of his’n I believe I kin guarantee that Kintucky and Georgia will join him in pourin’ a small but nourishin’ libation upon the altar of friendship, not to mention the thresholds of a reunited country. Ain’t I got the right notion, boys? Of course I have! And then, as soon as we-all git settled down agin comfortable I’m goin’ to tell you two boys something mighty interestin’ that come up oncet when I was on hand and heared the whole thing. Did I mention to you before that I belonged to King’s Hell Hounds?”

Diplomacy surely lost an able advocate in the spring of 1865 when Sergeant Bagby laid down the sword to take up retail groceries. As soothing oil upon roiled waters his words fell; they fell even as sweet unguents upon raw wounds. And, besides, just then Mr. Ezell caught a whiff of a most delectable and appealing aroma as the sergeant, on concluding his remarks with a broad-armed gesture, swished his teacup directly under Mr. Ezell’s nose.

Probably not more than ten or twelve minutes had pleasantly elapsed – it usually took the sergeant twenty to tell in all its wealth of detail the story of what General Breckinridge said to General Buckner, and what General Buckner said in reply to General Breckinridge, and he was nowhere near the delectable climax yet – when an interruption came. Into the ken of these three old men, seated in a row upon the parsonage porch, there came up the street a pair whose gait and general air of flurriment and haste instantly caught and held their attention. Side by side sped a young woman and a young man – a girl and a boy rather, for she looked to be not more than eighteen or, say, nineteen, and he at the most not more than twenty-one or so. Here they came, getting nearer, half-running, panting hard, the girl with her hands to her breast, and both of them casting quick, darting glances backward over their shoulders as though fearing pursuit.

“Well,” said Mr. Bloomfield, “all the excitement appears to be happenin’ round here this afternoon. I wonder now what ails them two young people?” He squinted through his glasses at the nearing couple. “Why, the gal is that pore little Sally Fannie Gibson that lives over here on the next street. Do tell now!”

He rose; so, a moment later, did his companions, for the youth had jerked Doctor Grundy’s gate open and both of them were scudding up the walk toward them. Doubtless because of their agitation the approaching two seemed to notice nothing unusual in the fact that these three elderly men, rising at their coming, should each be holding in his right hand a large china teacup, and that one, the central figure of the three, and the largest of bulk, should be planted ankle-deep and better in a small green tub, rising from it at an interested angle, like some new kind of plump, round potted plant.

“Oh! Oh!” gasped the girl; she clung to the lowermost post of the step-rail. “Where is Doctor Grundy, please? We must see Doctor Grundy right away – right this minute!”

“We want him to marry us!” exclaimed the youth, blurting it out.

“We’ve got the license,” the girl said. “Harvey’s got it in his pocket.”

“And here it is!” said the youth, producing the document and holding it outspread in a shaking hand. It appeared crumpled, but valid.

It was but proper that Sergeant Bagby, in his capacity as host pro tem, should do the necessary explaining.

“Well now, young lady and young gentleman,” he said, “I’m sorry to have to disappoint you – monstrous sorry – but, to tell you the truth, the Reverend Doctor Grundy ain’t here; in fact, we ain’t lookin’ fur him back fur quite some time yit.”

“He is reunionisin’ at the Pastime Skating Rink,” volunteered Mr. Bloomfield. “You’ll have to wait a while, Sally Fannie.”

“Oh,” cried the girl, “we can’t wait – we just can’t wait! We were counting on him. And now – Oh, what shall we do, Harvey?”

Shrinking up against the railing she wrung her hands. The sergeant observed that she was a pretty little thing – small and shabby, but undeniably pretty, even in her present state of fright. There were tears in her eyes. The boy was trembling.

“You’d both better come in and take a cheer and ca’m yourselves,” said the sergeant. “Let’s talk it over and see whut we-all kin do.”

“I tell you we can’t wait!” gulped the girl, beginning to sob in earnest. “My stepfather is liable to come any minute! I’m as ‘fraid as death of him. He’s found out about the license – he’s looking for us now to stop us. Oh, Harvey! Harvey! And this was our only chance!” She turned to her sweetheart and he put both his arms round her protectingly.

“I know that stepfather of yours,” put in Mr. Bloomfield, in a tone which indicated that he did not know much about him that was good or wholesome. “What’s his main objection to you and this young fellow gittin’ married? Ain’t you both of age?”

“Yes, we are – both of us; but he don’t want me to marry at all,” burst from the girl. “He just wants me to stay at home and slave and slave and slave! And he don’t like Harvey – he hates him! Harvey hasn’t been living here very long, and he pretends he don’t know anything about Har-rr-r-vey.”

She stretched the last word out in a pitiful, long-drawn quaver.

“He don’t like Harvey, eh?” repeated Mr. Bloomfield. “Well, that’s one thing in Harvey’s favour anyway. Young man,” he demanded briskly, “kin you support a wife?”

“Yes, sir,” spoke up Harvey; “I can. I’ve got a good job and I’m making good pay – I’m in the engineering crew that came down from Chicago last month to survey the new short line over to Knoxville.”

“Oh, what are we wasting all this time for?” broke in the desperate Sally Fannie. “Don’t you-all know – didn’t I tell you that he’s right close behind us? And he’ll kill Harvey! I know he will – and then I’ll die too! Oh, don’t be standing there talking! Tell us what to do, somebody – or show us where to hide!”

Mr. Bloomfield’s dappled hand waggled his brindled whiskers agitatedly. Mr. Ezell tugged at his hickory neckband; very possibly his thoughts were upon that similar situation of a Northern wooer and a Southern maid as depicted in the lately interrupted film drama entitled At the Cannon’s Mouth. Like a tethered pachyderm, Sergeant Bagby swayed his form upon his stationary underpinning.

“Little gal, I most certainly do wisht there was something I could do!” began Mr. Bloomfield, the spirit of romance all aglow within his elderly and doubtless freckled bosom.

“Well, there is, Major!” shouted the sergeant suddenly. “Shore as gun’s iron, there’s somethin’ you kin do! Didn’t you tell us boys not half an hour ago you was a jestice of the peace?”

“Yes, I did!”

“Then marry ‘em yourself!” It wasn’t a request – it was a command, whoopingly, triumphantly given.

“Cumrud,” said Mr. Bloomfield, “I hadn’t thought of it – why, so I could!”

“Oh, could you?” Sally Fannie’s head came up and her cry had hope in it now. “And would you do it – right quick?”

Unexpected stage fright overwhelmed Mr. Bloomfield.

“I’ve took the oath of office, tubby sure – but I ain’t never performed no marriage ceremony – I don’t even remember how it starts,” he confessed.

“Think it up as you go ‘long,” advised Sergeant Bagby.

“Whutever you say is bindin’ on all parties concerned – I know that much law.” It was the first time since the runaways arrived that Mr. Ezell had broken silence, but his words had potency and pith.

“But there has got to be witnesses – two witnesses,” parried Mr. Bloomfield, still filled with the buck-ague qualms of the amateur.

“Whut’s the matter with me and him fur witnesses?” cried Sergeant Bagby, pointing toward Mr. Ezell. He wrestled a thin gold band off over a stubborn fingerjoint. “Here’s even a weddin’ ring!”

The boy, who had been peering down the silent street, with a tremulous hand cupped over his anxious eyes, gave a little gasp of despair and plucked at the girl’s sleeve. She turned – and saw then what he had already seen.

“Oh, it’s too late! It’s too late!” she quavered, cowering down. “There he comes yonder!”

“‘Tain’t no sech of a thing!” snapped Sergeant Bagby, actively in command of the situation. “You two young ones come right up here on this porch and git behind me and take hands. Indiana, perceed with your ceremony! Georgia and Kintucky, stand guard!” With big spread-eagle gestures he shepherded the elopers into the shelter of his own wide bulk.

A man with a red, passionate face and mean, squinty eyes, who ran along the nearer sidewalk, looking this way and that, saw indistinctly through the vines the pair he sought, and, clearing the low fence at a bound, he came tearing across the grassplot, his heels tearing deep gouges in the turf. His voice gurgled hoarsely in his throat as he tried to utter – all at once – commands and protests, threats and curses.

From somewhere behind Sergeant Bagby’s broad back came the last feebly technical objection of the officiating functionary:

“But, cumruds, somebody’s got to give the bride away!”

“I give the bride away, dad-gum you!” blared Sergeant Bagby at the top of his vocal register. “King’s Hell Hounds give the bride away!”

Thus, over his shoulder, did Sergeant Bagby give the bride away; and then he faced front, with chest expanded and the light of battle in his eyes.

Vociferating, blasphemous, furious, Sally Fannie’s tyrant charged the steps and then recoiled at their foot. A lean, sinewy old man in a hickory shirt barred his way, and just beyond this barrier a stout old man with his feet in a foot-tub loomed both large and formidable. For the moment baffled, he gave voice to vain and profane foolishness.

“Stop them two!” he yelled, his rage making him almost inarticulate. “She ain’t of age – and even ef she is I ain’t agoin’ to have this!” “Say, ain’t you got no politeness a’tall!” inquired Mr. Ezell, of Georgia. “Don’t you see you’re interruptin’ the holy rites of matrimony – carryin’ on thataway?”

“That’s whut I aim to do, blame you!” howled the other, now sensing for the first time the full import of the situation. “I’ll matrimony her, the little – ” He spat out the foulest word our language yields for fouler tongues to use. “That ain’t all – I’ll cut the heart out of the man that interferes!”

Driving his right hand into his right trousers pocket he cleared the three lower steps at a bound and teetered upon his toes on the very edge of the fourth one.

In the act of making his hand into a fist Mr. Ezell discovered he could not do so by reason of his fingers being twined in the handle of a large, extra-heavy ironstone-china teacup. So he did the next best thing – he threw the cup with all his might, which was considerable. At close range this missile took the enemy squarely in the chest and staggered him back. And as he staggered back, clutching to regain his balance, Mr. Bloomfield, standing somewhat in the rear and improvising as fast as his tongue could wag, uttered the concluding, fast-binding words: “Therefore I pernounce you man and wife; and, whatever you do, don’t never let nobody come betwixt you, asunderin’ you apart!”

With a lightning-fast dab of his whiskers he kissed the bride – he had a flashing intuition that this was required by the ritual – shoved the pair inside Doctor Grundy’s front hall, slammed the door behind them, snatched up Sergeant Bagby’s rusted rifle from where it leaned against Doctor Grundy’s porch post, and sprang forward in a posture combining defence and offense. All in a second or two Mr. Bloomfield did this.

Even so, his armed services were no longer required; for Sergeant Jimmy Bagby stepped nimbly out of his tub, picked it up in both hands and turned it neatly yet crashingly upside down upon the head of the bride’s step-parent – so that its contents, which had been cold and were still coolish, cascaded in swishing gallons down over his person, effectually chilling the last warlike impulse of his drenched and dripping bosom, and rendering him in one breath whipped, choked and tamed.

“With the compliments of the Southern Confederacy!” said Sergeant Bagby, so doing.

The shadows on the grass lay lank and attenuated when the folks came back from the Pastime Rink. Sergeant Bagby sat alone upon Doctor Grundy’s porch. There were puddles of spilt water on porch and step and the walk below, and a green foot-tub, now empty, stood on its side against the railings. The sergeant was drawing his white yam socks on over his water-bleached shanks.

“Well, suh, Jimmy,” said Judge Priest as he came up under the vines, “you certainly missed it this evenin’. That was the best speech Gen’l Tige Gracey ever made in his whole life. It certainly was a wonder and a jo-darter!”

“Whut was the subject, cumrud?” asked Sergeant Bagby.

“Fraternal Strife and Brotherly Love,” replied the judge. “He jest natchelly dug up the hatchet and then he reburied her ag’in – reburied her miles deep under Cherokee roses and magnolia blossoms. But how’s your feet? I reckon you’ve had a purty toler’ble lonesome time settin’ here, ain’t you?”

“I see – love and war! War and love,” commented the sergeant softly.

Before answering further, he raised his head and glanced over the top of the intervening hedge toward the house next door. From its open door issued confused sounds of which he alone knew the secret – it was Georgia trying to teach Indiana the words and music of the song entitled Old Virginny Never Tire!

“Oh, my feet are mighty nigh cured,” said he; “and I ain’t had such a terrible lonesome time as you might think fur either – cumrud.”

“That’s the second time you’ve called me that,” said Judge Priest suspiciously. “Whut does it mean?”

“Oh, that? That’s a fureign word I picked up to-day.” And Sergeant Bagby smiled gently. “It’s a pet name the Yankees use when they mean pardner!”

VI. ACCORDING TO THE CODE

THE most important thing about Quintus Q. Montjoy, Esquire, occurred a good many years before he was born. It was his grandfather.

In the natural course of things practically all of us have, or have had, grandfathers. The science of eugenics, which is comparatively new, and the rule of species, which is somewhat older, both teach us that without grandfathers there can be no grandchildren. But only one in a million is blessed even unto the third generation by having had such a grandfather as Quintus Q. Montjoy had. That, indeed, was a fragrant inheritance and by day and by night the legatee inhaled of its perfumes. I refer to his grandfather on his father’s side, the late Braxton Montjoy.

The grandfather on the maternal side must have been a person of abundant consequence too, else he would never have begat him a daughter worthy to be mated with the progeny of that other illustrious man; but of him you heard little or nothing. Being long deceased, his memory was eclipsed in the umbra of a more compelling personality. It would seem that in all things, in all that he did and said in this life, Braxton Montjoy was exactly what the proud grandsire of a justly proud grandscion should be. He was a gentleman of the Old School in case that conveys anything to your understanding; and a first family of Virginia. He was a captain of volunteers in the War of Eighteen-Twelve. He was a colonel in the Mexican war; that though was after he emigrated out over the Wilderness Trail to the newer and cruder commonwealth of Kentucky. He was one of the founders of our town and its first mayor in that far-distant time when it emerged from the muddied cocoon of a wood-landing on the river bank and became a corporation with a charter and a board of trustees and all. Later along, in the early fifties, he served our district in the upper branch of the State Legislature. In the Civil war he would undoubtedly have been a general – his descendant gainsaying as much – except for the unfortunate circumstance of his having passed away at an advanced age some years prior to the beginning of that direful conflict. Wherefore the descendant in question, being determined that his grandfather should not be cheated of his due military meed by death, conferred an honourary brevet upon him, anyway.

Nor was that all that might be said of this most magnificent of ancestors – by no means was it all. Ever and always was he a person of lofty ideals and mountainous principles. He never drank his dram in a groggery nor discussed the affairs of the day upon the public highway. Spurning such new-fangled and effetely-luxurious modes of transportation as carriages, he went horseback whenever he went, and wheresoever. In the summer time when the family made the annual pilgrimage back across the mountains to Old White Sulphur he rode the entire distance, both going and coming, upon a white stallion named Fairfax. To the day of his death he chewed his provender with his own teeth and looked upon the world-at-large through eyes, unlensed.

Yet he might have owned a hundred sets of teeth or five hundred pairs of spectacles, had he been so minded, for to him appertained eighty slaves and four thousand acres of the fattest farm lands to be found in the rich bottoms of our county. War and Lincoln’s Proclamation freed the slaves but the lands remained, intact and unmortgaged, to make easier the pathways of those favoured beings of his blood who might come after him. Finally, he was a duellist of a great and fearsome repute; an authority recognised and quoted, in the ceremonials of the code. In four historic meetings upon the field of honour he figured as a principal; and in at least three more as a second. Under his right shoulder blade, a cousin of President Thomas Jefferson carried to his grave a lump of lead which had been deposited there by this great man one fair fine morning in the Valley of Virginia, during the adjudication, with pistols, of a dispute which grew out of a difference of opinion touching upon the proper way of curing a Smithfield ham.

We did not know of these things at first hand. Only a few elderly inhabitants remembered Braxton Montjoy as he had appeared in the flesh. To the rest of our people he was a tradition, yet a living one, and this largely through virtue of the conversational activities of Quintus Q. Montjoy, the grandson aforesaid, aided and abetted by Mrs. Marcella Quistenbury.

I should be depriving an estimable lady of a share of the credit due her did I omit some passing mention of Mrs. Quistenbury from this narrative. She was one who specialised in genealogy. There is one such as she in every Southern town and in most New England ones. Give her but a single name, a lone and solitary distant kinsman to start off with, and for you she would create, out of the rich stores of her mind, an entire family tree, complete from its roots, deeply implanted in the soil of native aristocracy, to the uttermost tip of its far-spreading and ramifying branches. In the delicate matter of superior breeding she liberally accorded the Montjoy connection first place among the old families of our end of the state. So, too, with equal freedom, did the last of the Montjoys, which made it practically unanimous and left the honour of the lineage in competent hands.

For Quintus Q. – alas and alackaday – was the last of his glorious line. Having neither sisters nor brothers and being unmarried he abode alone beneath the ancestral roof tree. It was not exactly the ancestral roof tree, if you wish me to come right down to facts. The original homestead burned down long years before, but the present structure stood upon its site and was in all essential regards a faithful copy of its predecessor.

It might be said of our fellow-townsman – and it was – that he lived and breathed and had his being in the shadow of his grandfather. Among the ribald and the irreverent stories circulated was one to the effect that he talked of him in his sleep. He talked of him pretty assiduously when awake; there wasn’t any doubt of that. As you entered his home you were confronted in the main hall by a large oil portrait of an elderly gentleman of austere mien, wearing a swallow-fork coat and a neck muffler and with his hair brushed straight back from the forehead in a sweep, just as Andrew Jackson brushed his back. You were bound to notice this picture, the very first thing. If by any chance you didn’t notice it, Quintus Q. found a way of directing your attention to it. Then you observed the family resemblance.

Quintus Q., standing there alongside, held his hand on his hip after exactly the same fashion that his grandfather held his hand on his hip in the pictured pose. It was startling really – the reproduction of this trait by hereditary impulse. Quintus Q. thought there was something about the expression of the eyes, too.

If during the evening some one mentioned horses – and what assemblage of male Kentuckians ever bided together for any length of time without some one mentioning horses? – the host’s memory was instantly quickened in regard to the white stallion named Fairfax. Fairfax achieved immortality beyond other horses of his period through Quintus Q. Some went so far as to intimate that Mr. Montjoy made a habit of serving hams upon his table for a certain and especial purpose. You had but to refer in complimentary terms to the flavour of the curly shavings-thin slice which he had deposited upon your plate.

“Speaking of hams,” he would say – “speaking of hams, I am reminded of my grandfather, the old General – General Braxton Montjoy, you remember. The General fought one of his duels – he fought four, you know, and acted as second in three others – over a ham. Or perhaps I should say over the process of smoking a ham with hickory wood. His antagonist was no less a person than a cousin of President Thomas Jefferson. The General thought his veracity had been impugned and he, called the other gentleman out and shot him through the shoulder. Afterwards I believe they became great friends. Ah, sir, those were the good old days when a Southern gentleman had a proper jealousy of his honour. If one gentleman doubted another gentleman’s word there was no exchange of vulgar billingsgate, no unseemly brawling upon the street. The Code offered a remedy. One gentleman called the other gentleman out. Sometimes I wish that I might have lived in those good old days.”

Sometimes others wished that he might have, too, but I state that fact in parenthesis.

Then he would excuse himself and leave the table and enter the library for a moment, returning with a polished rosewood case borne reverently in his two hands and he would put the case down and dust it with a handkerchief and unlock it with a brass key which he carried upon his watch chain and from their bed of faded velveteen within, bring forth two old duelling pistols with long barrels, and carved scrolls on their butts and hammers that stood up high like the ears of a startled colt. And he would bid you to decipher for yourself the name of his grandfather inscribed upon the brass trigger guards. You were given to understand that in a day of big men, Braxton Montjoy towered as a giant amongst them.

Aside from following the profession of being a grandson, Quintus Q. had no regular business. There was a sign reading Real Estate and Loans upon the glass door of his one-room suite in the Planters’ Bank building, but he didn’t keep regular hours there. With the help of an agent, he looked after the collecting of the rents for his town property and the letting upon shares or leaseholds of his river-bottom farms; but otherwise you might say his chief occupation was that of being a sincere and conscientious descendant of a creditable forebear.

So much for the grandfather. So much, at this moment, for the grandson. Now we are going to get through the rind into the meat of our tale:

As may be recalled, State Senator Horace K. Maydew, of our town and county, being a leader of men and of issues, once upon a time hankered mightily to serve the district in Congress and in the moment that he could almost taste of triumph accomplished had the cup dashed from his lips through the instrumentality of one who, locally, was fancied as being rather better than a dabster at politics, himself. During the months which succeeded this defeat, the mortified Maydew nursed a sharpened grudge toward the enemy, keeping it barbed and fletched against the time when he might let fly with it. Presently an opportunity for reprisals befell. Maydew’s term as State Senator neared its close. For personal reasons, which he found good and sufficient, the incumbent did not offer as a candidate to succeed himself. But quite naturally, and perhaps quite properly, he desired to name his successor. Privily he began casting about him for a likely and a suitable candidate, which to the senator’s understanding meant one who would be biddable, tractable and docile. Before he had quite agreed with himself upon a choice, young Tobias Houser came out into the open as an aspirant for the Democratic nomination, and when he heard the news Senator Maydew re-honed his hate to a razor-edge. For young Tobe Houser, who had been a farmer-boy and then a country school teacher and who now had moved to town and gone into business, was something else besides: He was the nephew of Judge Priest, the only son of the judge’s dead sister. It was the judge’s money that had helped the young man through the State university. Undoubtedly – so Maydew read the signs of the times – it was the judge’s influence which now brought the youngster forth as an aspirant for public office. In the Houser candidacy Maydew saw, or thought he saw, another attack upon his fiefship on the party organisation and the party machinery.

On an evening of the same week in which Tobe Houser inserted his modestly-worded announcement card in the Daily Evening News, Senator Maydew called to conference – or to concurrence – two lieutenants who likewise had cause to be stalwart supporters of his policies. The meeting took place in the living room of the Maydew home. When the drinks had been sampled and the cigars had been lighted Senator Maydew came straight to the business in hand:

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I’ve got a candidate – a man none of us ever thought of before. How does the name of Quintus Q. Montjoy seem to strike you?”

Mr. Barnhill looked at Mr. Bonnin, and Mr. Bonnin looked back at Mr. Barnhill. Then both of them looked at Maydew.

“Montjoy, eh?” said Barnhill, doubtfully, seeming not to have heard aright.

“Quintus Q. Montjoy you said, didn’t you?” asked Bonnin as though there had been any number of Montjoys to choose from. He spoke without enthusiasm.

“Certainly,” answered Maydew briskly, “Quintus Q. Montjoy, Esquire. Any objections to him that you can think of, off-hand?”

“Well,” said Mr. Barnhill, who was large of person and slow of speech, “he ain’t never done anything.”

“If I’m any judge he never will do anything – much,” supplemented Mr. Bonnin, who was by way of being small and nervous.

“You’ve said it – both of you,” stated their leader, catching them up with a snap. “He never has done anything. That gives him a clean record to run on. He never will do anything – on his own hook, I mean. That’ll make him a safe, sound, reliable man to have representing this district up yonder at Frankfort. Last session they licked the Stickney warehouse bill for us. This season it’ll come up again for passage. I guarantee here and now that Quint Montjoy will vote right on that proposition and all other propositions that’ll come up. He’ll vote right because we’ll tell him how to vote. I know him from the skin out.”

“He’s so powerfully pompious and bumpious – so kind of cocksure and high-an’-mighty,” said Mr. Barnhill. “D’ye reckin, Hod, as how he’ll stand without hitchin’?”

“I’ll guarantee that, too,” said Senator Maydew, with his left eyelid flickering down over his left eye in the ghost of a wink. “He don’t know yet that he’s going to be our candidate. Nobody knows it yet but you and me. But when he finds out from us that he’s going to have a chance to rattle round in the same seat that his revered granddaddy once ornamented – well, just you watch him arise and shine. There’s another little thing that you’ve overlooked. He’s got money, – plenty of it; as much money as any man in this town has got. He’s not exactly what I’d call a profligate or a spendthrift. You may have noticed that except when he was spending it on himself he’s very easy to control in money matters. But when we touch a match to his ambition and it flares up, he’ll dig down deep and produce freely – or I miss my guess. For once we’ll have a campaign fund with some real money behind it.”

His tone changed and began to drip rancour:

“By Judas, I’ll put up some of my own money! This is one time when I’m not counting the cost. I’m going to beat that young lummox of a Houser, if it’s the last thing I do. I’m going to rub his nose in the mud. You two know without my telling you why I’d rather see Houser licked than any other man on earth – except one. And you know who that one is. We can’t get at Priest yet – that chance will come later. But we can get his precious nephew, and I’m the man that’s going to get him. And Quint Montjoy is the man I’m going to get him with.”