"Come. We've decided. Now, put up or shut up. No more beating about the bush."

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Tell us what you intend, Stirling," said Number One. "We are committed beyond retreat. Come in with us, or stay outside the breastworks."

"Perhaps," said Peter, "since you've taken your own position, without consulting me, you will allow me the same privilege."

"Go to--where you please," said Number Six, crossly.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Well, what do you intend to do?" asked Number One.

Peter knocked the ash off his cigar. "You consider yourselves pledged to support Maguire?"

"Yes. We are pledged," said four voices in unison.

"So am I," said Peter.

"How?"

"To oppose him," said Peter.

"But I tell you the majority of the convention is for him," said Number One. "Don't you believe me?"

"Yes."

"Then what good will your opposition do?"

"It will defeat Maguire."

"No power on earth can do that."

Peter puffed his cigar.

"You can't beat him in the convention, Stirling. The delegates pledged to him, and those we can give him elect him on the first ballot."

"How about November fourth?" asked Peter.

Number One sprang to his feet. "You don't mean?" he cried.

"Never!" said Number Three.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Come, Stirling, say what you intend!"

"I intend," said Peter, "if the Democratic convention endorses Stephen Maguire, to speak against him in every ward of this city, and ask every man in it, whom I can influence, to vote for the Republican candidate."

Dead silence reigned.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"You'll go back on the party?" finally said one, in awe-struck tones.

"You'll be a traitor?" cried another.

"I'd have believed anything but that you would be a dashed Mugwump!"

groaned the third.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"Say you are fooling?" begged Number Seven.

"No," said Peter, "Nor am I more a traitor to my party than you. You insist on supporting the Labor candidate and I shall support the Republican candidate. We are both breaking our party."

"We'll win," said Number One.

Peter puffed his cigar.

"I'm not so sure," said the gentleman of the previous questions. "How many votes can you hurt us, Stirling?"

"I don't know," Peter looked very contented.

"You can't expect to beat us single?"

Peter smiled quietly. "I haven't had time to see many men. But--I'm not single. Bohlmann says the brewers will back me, Hummel says he'll be guided by me, and the President won't interfere."

"You might as well give up," continued the previous questioner. "The Sixth is a sure thirty-five hundred to the bad, and between Stirling's friends, and the Hummel crowd, and Bohlmann's people, you'll lose twenty-five thousand in the rest of the city, besides the Democrats you'll frighten off by the Labor party. You can't put it less than thirty-five thousand, to say nothing of the hole in the campaign fund."

The beauty about a practical politician is that votes count for more than his own wishes. Number One said:

"Well, that's ended. You've smashed our slate. What have you got in its place?"

"Porter?" suggested Peter.

"No," said three voices.

"We can't stand any more of him," said Number One.

"He's an honest, square man," said Peter.

"Can't help that. One dose of a man who's got as little gumption as he, is all we can stand. He may have education, but I'll be hanged if he has intellect. Why don't you ask us to choose a college professor, and have done with it."

"Come, Stirling," said the previous questioner, "the thing's been messed so that we've got to go into convention with just the right man to rally the delegates. There's only one man we can do it with, and you know it."

Peter rose, and dropped his cigar-stump into the ash-receiver. "I don't see anything else," he said, gloomily. "Do any of you?"