Warner Powell found himself getting interested in this Browning. Was he really a good man, who was unjustly criticised, or was he a sham philanthropist, as charged?
"After all, it doesn't concern me," he said to himself. "The good people of Milwaukee may choose whom they please for mayor so far as I am concerned."
After supper Warner stepped up to the cigar stand to buy a cigar. This, as the reader will remember, was kept by Jack King, an old California acquaintance of Thomas Browning, whose first appearance in our story was in the character of a tramp and would-be burglar.
"Is business good?" asked Warner, pleasantly.
"It is fair; but it seems slow to a man like myself, who has made a hundred dollars a day at the mines in California."
"I have been in California myself," said Powell, "but it was recently, and no such sums were to be made in my time."
"That is true. It didn't last with me. I have noticed that even in the flush times few brought much money away with them, no matter how lucky they were."
"There must become exceptions, however."
"There were. We have a notable example in Milwaukee."
"To whom do you refer?"