- sions when Carroll had been in it before. The
shades were high at the window, admitting flames of heat, wads of crumpled paper bestrewed the floor, a huge table had been brought in and it was already littered with newspapers and telegraph blanks. The bureau had been moved, the tall white door it had hidden so long had been unlocked, and Carroll heard the incessant clicking of a typewriter in the adjoining room. Two or three men sat idly about, gossiping, as men will, about political battles of the past. There seemed to be none of the industry of politics apparent, though political head-*quarters seldom do display that, perhaps because a good part of the industry of politics consists in talking and smoking and drinking, and partly, perhaps, because of the necessity of concealment that always exists. These men were gathered to organize the defeat of a crafty and unscrupulous man who had a national, state and city machine at his command, with money to heart's desire, and yet they sat and smoked, stirring only when a telegram came from down the state, or some long-forgotten politician came in to offer himself as a recruit.
For a month the colonel did not go out of the
