"I swear, you take this thing cool enough!"
"Well, I'm not a rain-storm or a pipe-line, Luke. There's nothing more I can do. When Sylvester gets there with his crowd I'll have a hundred men or so of my own fighting it. And if a man sets fire on his land the law makes him pay the neighbors if the fire gets away and damages them. I'm prepared to settle without beating down prices. Let's go over to The Barracks."
Presson went along grumbling.
"You ought to have stayed in this fight this year for yourself, Thelismer. There was no need of all this uproar in ticklish times. A proposition like this makes the general campaign all the harder." He kept casting apprehensive glances behind at the swelling smoke-clouds.
"I'm paying the freight, Luke."
"There'd have been no fight to it if you'd stayed in yourself. Even your old whooping cyclone of a Niles, there, said that much. You've gone to work and got your grandson nominated, but between him and the bunch and that fire up there it looks to me as though your troubles were just beginning. Say, look here, Thelismer, honest to gad, you're using our politics just to grind your own axes with!"
"And you never heard of anybody except patriots in politics, eh?"
"When you prejudice a State campaign in order to break up a spooning-match and to give your grandson a course of sprouts outside a lumbering operation, you're making it a little too personal—and a little too expensive for all concerned."
The State chairman had his eyes on the fire again.
"As far as my business goes—that's my business," said the Duke, placidly. "As for the expense—well, I never got a great deal of fun out of anything except politics, and politics is always more or less expensive. When the bills get in for what has happened to-day I reckon I'll find the job was worth the price. You needn't worry about me, Luke—not about my failing to get my money's worth. For when I walk across the lobby of the State House, and they can say behind my back, 'There's old Thornton—a gone-by. Got licked in his district!' When they can say that, Luke, life won't be worth living, not if I've got thousand-dollar bills enough to wad a forty-foot driving-crew quilt!"