"What shall we do for a home paper, now?"
"There is only one course left us, and that is buy up the Advertiser, which is in the market; but we must get legal hold of the concern. That is the only way now, for we must have an organ."
"Call at my office early to-morrow morning, and we will arrange the matter. Curse the luck! but I will block that little game. Good-night!" and the Senator entered the house, not to sleep, but to lie upon his bed thinking over the two exciting problems of the day, namely, how to entrap Alden, and in what manner to counteract the effects of Rawlings' treachery.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
DALEY'S STRENGTH WANES.
The appearance of the Investigator next morning was like a thunderbolt in the village of Cleverdale. It came out boldly against Senator Hamblin, and charged that his action at the convention meant the overthrow of his party. The editor stated that he had stood by the man as long as he had even a piece of argument to catch his toes on, but when the wisdom of the men controlling the convention could not bring Senator Hamblin to see his duty, when a compromise candidate was asked for and refused, it was time for all respectable men in the party to declare themselves on the side of honesty, justice, and common-sense. It cited the charges first brought by Sargent, copied Sargent's first statement in full, and then charged that the profligate use of money had done more than anything else to make the elective franchise a farce. Senator Hamblin was held responsible for the disgrace of corrupting voters in the village of Cleverdale. The article was a scathing arraignment of Hamblin before the bar of public opinion, and apparently its influence foreboded disaster to the regular candidate.
During the early morning hours Miller met his "boss" at the private office of the latter, having previously seen the editor of the Advertiser, who offered to sell his paper for twenty-five hundred dollars. The price was considered high, but that being the best that could be done, Miller was ordered to purchase the concern at once. One of Cleverdale's young lawyers was placed in charge of the Advertiser's editorial columns, and the first number devoted itself to Rawlings' treachery and Daley's private character. The latter, the new editor asserted, was, unlike that of Cæsar's wife, not above suspicion, while Senator Hamblin's private character was pure and spotless.
The fight between the papers was so full of acrimony that Satan himself would have delighted in it, had there been any possibility of his receiving fire-proof copies. Both candidates were attacked, and the sins of their ancestors were carefully elaborated and fired off as campaign fireworks.