that any responsibility for it was Boland's. He proclaimed John Boland as a high-minded citizen of the best intent—mistaken sometimes, of course, as men will be—but a high-minded citizen who put always, as far as he could see, the welfare of all the people above the profit of his personal ventures.
But any such gratuitous apologetic for their master was lost upon the proponents of the bill. The point with them was that it failed of passage by just one vote—Henry's of course—and in the lobby Madden, deeply chagrined, breathed threatenings.
"You've been the golden-haired boy of Boland General for quite a spell now, Harrington," he sneered, "but the old man'll have your locks trimmed for this trick and trimmed short."
"And I suppose you think you're going to be one of the barbers, eh, Madden?" retorted Henry.
"Oh, the folks back in Edgewater will attend to you, all right," sneered Madden. "Oh, what they will do to you!"
"My constituents are not grafters," boasted Henry, "and if there is any question about it, I'll hire the Opera House in Edgewater tomorrow night and tell them just what a cheap steal the project is."
With a good conscience and rumbling defiance, Henry drove back through the night to his home. Occasionally his smoldering mind lit up with a brilliant flash. That was when he visioned his ultimate triumph—when illumination should come to Billie and he would feel her arms again ecstatically about his neck.
Next morning the Blade in a three-ply headline screamed out that Assemblyman Henry Harrington had betrayed Socatullo County. It carried also an edi-
