did all the wrong things from the start; he began by antagonizing most
of our old wheel-horses; he wouldn't consult with us, and advised with
his own kind. In spite of that, we had a good organization working for
him, and by a week before election I felt pretty confident that our
show was as good as Gorgett's. It looked like it would be close.

Just about then things happened. We had dropped onto one of Lafe's
little tricks mighty smartly. We got one of his heelers fixed (of
course we usually tried to keep all that kind of work dark from
Farwell Knowles), and this heeler showed the whole business up for a
consideration. There was a precinct certain to be strong for Knowles,
where the balloting was to take place in the office-room of a
hook-and-ladder company. In the corner was a small closet with one
shelf, high up toward the ceiling. It was in the good old free and
easy Hayes and Wheeler times, and when the polls closed at six o'clock
it was planned that the election officers should set the ballot-box up
on this shelf, lock the closet door, and go out for their suppers,
leaving one of each side to watch in the room so that nobody could
open the closet-door with a pass-key and tamper with the ballots
before they were counted. Now, the ceiling over the shelf in the
closet wasn't plastered, and it formed, of course, part of the
flooring in the room above. The boards were to be loosened by a
Gorgett man upstairs, as soon as the box was locked in; he would take
up a piece of planking--enough to get an arm in--and stuff the box
with Gorgett ballots till it grunted. Then he would replace the board
and slide out. Of course, when they began the count our people would
know there was something wrong, but they would be practically up
against it, and the precinct would be counted for Gorgett.

They brought the heeler up to me, not at headquarters (I was city