"He said he gave you the envelope to mail and that you hid it for him in a hollow stump near the water-tank at Thorlakson Siding when Wade came after it. He said that Wade and Cranston gave both of you the third degree and that you lit into Wade and gave him one awful calling down for not accepting your word that you hadn't seen any envelope and knew nothing about it. He said it made Wade so mad that he not only fired Podmore but told you also that you couldn't work for the C.L.S. another minute, so it was no use you rejoining this survey party you were with. It's a swell kettle of fish you've got into, Phil. What's your uncle going to say to all this?"
"Nothing. Unless you tell him he won't know I've bumped into this mix.
He's got enough worries of his own without bothering about me."
"But Phil,——"
"Listen, Blatch. I know what was in that envelope and where it came from. I want to know where Uncle Milt stands in connection with this campaign-fund money, and I want to know what Podmore is trying to do. What did he want?"
"Podmore isn't as clever as he thinks he is," Ferguson laughed. "He actually came here to see if he could work out a little graft proposition by threatening to expose a deal which he imagines has taken place between the Alderson Construction Company and your uncle. His mind works that way. He thinks everybody is as crooked as himself and that all governments are like the late Rives administration. Well, he knows different now."
"Then no such deal is involved?"
"Good heavens, Phil! Surely you didn't think that? Neither your uncle nor the Party cares a hang about this money of Nickleby's or Alderson's, or whoever owns it. We're not interested in what becomes of it. There's been no deal of any kind."
"That's all I want to know, Blatch," said Kendrick, rising. "It's just one of those things a fellow bumps into now and then, and if Uncle Milt needed my help at all I wanted to know it, that's all. I know he's absolutely on the square, of course."
"Absolutely," assured Ferguson earnestly. "Your uncle is one of the hardest working, most conscientious and high principled public men of the day, Phil, and perhaps I have had greater opportunity of knowing that than most. No man can hold high public office, seemingly, without paying the penalty of prominence—petty jealousy, envy, deliberate misrepresentation, even underhand attacks upon his character. A certain class of political aspirant seems to look on that sort of thing as part of the game, and you don't want to believe all you see in some newspapers around election time. That's the way it's been. But false accusation never yet downed an honest man, Phil. Remember that."
As Kendrick noted the expression on the lawyer's face he thought to himself that in spite of the marks of dissipation which marred it, there was a finer side to Blatch Ferguson's character which few would suspect.