"I have, and I wish that were the worst of it, but it isn't, dad.
There's a thing behind the alliance that cuts deeper than anything else
I've had to face."
Once more the deep-set eyes looked out from their bushy penthouses.
"Reckon you could give it a name, son?"
"Yes; when you found that I wasn't going to let you run me for the
attorney-generalship, you arranged with Mr. McVickar to have me put on
the railroad pay-roll. Isn't that the fact?"
"Not exactly," said the senator, and a grim smile went with the
qualified denial. "It was sort of the other way round. I reckon McVickar
thought he was putting one across on me when he offered you the railroad
job and got you to take it."
"I know; that was at first. You and he couldn't come to terms because
you--because the machine wanted more than he was willing to give. But
afterward there was another meeting and you got together. That part of
it was all right, if you see it that way. What broke my heart was the
fact that you and he agreed to put me up as a fence behind which all the
crookedness and rascality of a corrupt campaign could be screened."
In the pause which followed, a deft waiter slipped in to change the
courses. When the man was gone, Blount went on.
"It came mighty near smashing me when I found it out, dad. It wasn't so
much the thing itself as it was the thought that you'd do it--the
thought that you had forgotten that I was a Blount, and your son.
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