Even the Honorable Archer Converse, his legal cautiousness governing his opinion, knowing the temper of conditions in his state, had emphatically discouraged Farr when the young man had timidly questioned him in regard to the advisability of securing a candidate for governor outside the ring's dynasty.
Mr. Converse's discouragement of such hopes would have been even more emphatic had he ever dreamed that this apostle whom he had sent out into the field was coddling the audacious hope that Mr. Converse himself by some miracle might be put into the governor's chair.
The orators proceeded, one after the other. They were applauded. They retired.
Walker Farr was oppressed by the lugubrious conviction that he was the only man in that great assemblage who felt enough of the zealot's fire to be willing to put all his hopes to the test.
He looked at the faces on the platform. There sat Colonel Dodd, wearing his expression assumed for that day and date—smug political hypocrisy.
His henchmen winged out to right and left of him. They represented finance and respectability.
Sometimes political rebels will gallantly and audaciously venture when they rail behind the backs of their leaders; but when those leaders appear and fill the foreground with their personalities the rebels subside; they are impressed by the men whom they behold. They defer, even when they are stung by knowledge of their leaders' principles.
Colonel Dodd and those with him were the accredited leaders.
Delegates glared, but were cowed and silent.
Farr pondered. Perhaps the advice of Mr. Converse was best: