“You bet he is. He hasn’t lifted a finger in the whole campaign, an’ I heerd last night from Al Granger, who’s over from Sullivan, that his fellows over there are openly knifing Garwood, and that gives us a chance to carry Moultrie. Well,” McFarlane paused to swallow, “we can carry DeWitt here—it’s your home county—and the majority against us is less than a hundred; we have a good chance in Piatt, an’ they’re shaky about Logan, particularly down in Millwood to’nship. Garwood had a meetin’ there the other day which was a frost—a change of a hundred an’ fifty votes, an’ you’ve got ’em. Why, I tell you, man, it’s the chance of your life. You can win out.”
McFarlane spoke with the enthusiasm of that confidence into which a politician can work himself when he begins to juggle the handy figures of old election returns, and some of his warmth was communicated to the candidate, who felt his blood tingle, and his heart rise in anticipation. He had never allowed himself to think of the possibility of his election, until that moment; but that moment was the fatal one that comes to every candidate, at a certain stage in his campaign, when he begins to indulge in dreams of victory. And yet Bromley was a wary man and he shrank again, in his habit of judicial deliberation.
“You speak encouragingly, Mr. McFarlane,” he said, “but I do not quite share your confidence. I am not the man to indulge in illusions. You realize, of course, that I took the nomination at some sacrifice, merely for the sake of the party. I had no thought of being elected with the district organized as it is under the present apportionment act.”
“Yes, I know, they carved the district out for Sprague in their last gerrymander, an’ then Sprague got thrown down fer the nomination—that’s why he’s so sore.”
“What plan do you propose?”
“Well,” said McFarlane, “just what I told you. We ought to poll every county in the district, make a separate an’ distinct poll fer ourselves, independent of the county committees, and then—get out the vote. It’ll take money, of course.”
Judge Bromley was tapping his pencil lightly on the desk.
“Do you think I should make a personal canvass of the district?”
McFarlane hesitated.
“Well,” he said, “that might be a good thing a little later.” He looked at the judge’s clothes, made by a Chicago tailor, as he supposed, though they were made by a New York tailor, at his red carnation, at his rimless pince-nez, and thought of his campaigning in the rural districts.