here to-night. If I can make him see it as you've made me see it, he'll get busy. If he doesn't see it, there's no harm done. But in any event it's your idea, and I'll see to it that you're not cheated out of the credit for it."

The dipsomaniac shook his head. The flame of inspiration had died out in Quinlan; he was a dead crater again—a drunkard quivering for the lack of stimulant.

"Never mind the credit, son. What was it wise old Omar said—'Take the cash and let the credit go'?—something like that anyhow. You run along up to New York and kindle the fires. But before you start I wish you'd loan me about two dollars. Some of these days when my luck changes I'll pay it all back. I'm keeping track of what I owe you. Or say, Drayton—make it five dollars, won't you, if you can spare it?"

Beforehand there was no announcement of the purpose to be accomplished. The men in charge of the plan and the men directly under them, whom they privily commissioned to carry out their intent, were all of them sworn to secrecy. And all of them kept the pledge. On a Monday Congressman Mallard's name appeared in practically every daily paper in America, for it was on that evening that he was to address a mass meeting at a hall on the Lower West Side of New York—a meeting ostensibly to be held under the auspices of a so-called society for world peace. But sometime during Monday every publisher of every newspaper and periodical, of every trade paper, every religious paper, every farm paper in America, received a telegram from a certain address in New York. This telegram was marked Confidential. It was signed by a formidable list of names. It was signed by three of the most distinguished editors in America; by the heads of all the important news-gathering and news-distributing agencies; by the responsible heads of the leading feature syndicates; by the presidents of the two principal telegraph companies; by the presidents of the biggest advertising agencies; by a former President of the United States; by a great Catholic dignitary; by a great Protestant evangelist, and by the most eloquent rabbi in America; by the head of the largest banking house on this continent; by a retired military officer of the highest rank; by a national leader of organised labour; by the presidents of four of the leading universities; and finally by a man who, though a private citizen, was popularly esteemed to be the mouthpiece of the National Administration.

While this blanket telegram was travelling over the wires a certain magazine publisher was stopping his presses to throw out a special article for the writing of which he had paid fifteen hundred dollars to the best satirical essayist in the country; and another publisher was countermanding the order he had given to a distinguished caricaturist for a series of cartoons all dealing with the same subject, and was tearing up two of the cartoons which had already been delivered and for which he already had paid. He offered to pay for the cartoons not yet drawn, but the artist declined to accept further payment when he was told in confidence the reason for the cancellation of the commission.

On a Monday morning Congressman Jason Mallard's name was in every paper; his picture was in many of them. On the day following—— But I am getting ahead of my story. Monday evening comes before Tuesday morning, and first I should tell what befell on Monday evening down on the Lower West Side.

That Monday afternoon Mallard came up from Washington; only his secretary came with him. Three men—the owner of a publication lately suppressed by the Post Office Department for seditious utterances, a former clergyman whose attitude in the present crisis had cost him his pulpit, and a former college professor of avowedly anarchistic tendencies—met him at the Pennsylvania Station. Of the three only the clergyman had a name which bespoke Anglo-Saxon ancestry. These three men accompanied him to the home of the editor, where they dined together; and when the dinner was ended an automobile bore the party through a heavy snowstorm to the hall where Mallard was to speak.

That is to say, it bore the party to within a block and a half of the hall. It could get no nearer than that by reason of the fact that the narrow street from house line on one side to house line on the other was jammed with men and women, thousands of them, who, coming too late to secure admission to the hall—the hall was crowded as early as seven o'clock—had stayed on, outside, content to see their champion and to cheer him since they might not hear him. They were half frozen. The snow in which they stood had soaked their shoes and chilled their feet; there were holes in the shoes which some of them wore. The snow stuck to their hats and clung on their shoulders, making streaks there like fleecy epaulets done in the colour of peace, which also is the colour of cowardice and surrender. There was a cold wind which made them all shiver and set the teeth of many of them to chattering; but they had waited.

A squad of twenty-odd policemen, aligned in a triangular formation about Mallard and his sponsors and, with Captain Bull Hargis of the Traffic Squad as its massive apex, this human ploughshare literally slugged a path through the mob to the side entrance of the hall. By sheer force the living wedge made a furrow in the multitude—a furrow that instantly closed in behind it as it pressed forward. Undoubtedly the policemen saved Congressman Mallard from being crushed and buffeted down under the caressing hands of those who strove with his bodyguard to touch him, to embrace him, to clasp his hand. Foreign-born women, whose sons were in the draft, sought to kiss the hem of his garments when he passed them by, and as they stooped they were bowled over by the uniformed burlies and some of them were trampled. Disregarding the buffeting blows of the policemen's gloved fists, men, old, young and middle-aged, flung themselves against the escorts, crying out greetings. Above the hysterical yelling rose shrill cries of pain, curses, shrieks. Guttural sounds of cheering in snatchy fragments were mingled with terms of approval and of endearment and of affection uttered in English, in German, in Russian, in Yiddish and in Finnish.

Afterward Captain Bull Hargis said that never in his recollection of New York crowds had there been a crowd so hard to contend against or one so difficult to penetrate; he said this between gasps for breath while nursing a badly sprained thumb. The men under him agreed with him. The thing overpassed anything in their professional experiences. Several of them were veterans of the force too.

It was a dramatic entrance which Congressman Mallard made before his audience within the hall, packed as the hall was, with its air all hot and sticky with the animal heat of thousands of closely bestowed human bodies. Hardly could it have been a more dramatic entrance. From somewhere in the back he suddenly came out upon the stage. He was bareheaded and bare-throated. Outside in that living whirlpool his soft black hat had been plucked from his head and was gone. His collar, tie and all, had been torn from about his neck, and the same rudely affectionate hand that wrested the collar away had ripped his linen shirt open so that the white flesh of his chest showed through the gap of the tear. His great disorderly mop of bright red hair stood erect on his scalp like an oriflamme. His overcoat was half on and half off his back.

At sight of him the place rose at him, howling out its devotion. He flung off his