“You offered to l-le-end to her,” observes the mascot.

“Well, if she had needed the stuff she’d a been after it soon enough, wouldn’t she?  I don’t offer it to everybody.  But that ain’t the point.  I’m going after that roll—­ten thousand dollars!  You want to come?  If I win, you git $500.  I reckon that’s enough for a kid.”

It is a project which is well conceived, for Corkey may easily arrange for a salary from his great newspaper.  To find Lockwin’s body would be a clever feat of journalism, inasmuch as the search has been abandoned by the other papers.

A delegation of dock-frequenters waits on Corkey to demand that he shall stand for Congress in the second special election, made necessary by the death of Lockwin.

“Gentlemen, I’m off on business.  I beg to de—­de—­re—­re—­drop out!  Please excuse me, and take something.”

The touching committees cannot touch Corkey.

“The plant has been sprung,” they comment, “His barrel is empty.”

Corkey had once been rich when he did not know the value of wealth.  He had been reduced to poverty.  On becoming a reporter, he had laboriously saved $1,000 in gold coins.  In a few weeks $300 of this store had been dissipated.

“And all the good work didn’t cost nothing, either,” thinks Corkey.

Would it not be wise now to keep the $700 that remain?  When the vision of a contest, with Emery Storrs as advocate, had crossed poor Corkey’s mind on the Africa, the Contestant could see that his gold was to be lost.  He could not retreat without disgrace.  Now he need not advance.

“You bet I won’t!” thinks Corkey, as he expresses his regrets that enforced absence from Chicago will prevent his candidacy.

“You’d be elected!” chime the touching committees.

“You bet I would,” says Corkey.

“Corkey is too smart,” say the touching committees.  “Wait till he gets into politics from the inside.  Won’t he wolf the candidates!”

Corkey is at last on the shores of Georgian Bay.  The weather soon interferes with the search.  But there are no signs of either body or yawl.

The wreck of the Africa, followed by daily conventional catastrophes, soon fades from public recollection.  The will of David Lockwin is brought into court.  The estate is surprisingly small.

It had been supposed that Lockwin was worth half a million.  Wise men said Lockwin was probably good for $200,000.  The probate shows that barely $75,000 have been left to the wife, and the estate thus bequeathed is in equities on mortgaged property.  Mills that had always been clear of incumbrances are found to have been used for purposes of money-raising at the time of the election, or shortly thereafter.

The public conclusion is quick and unfavorable.

Lockwin ruined himself in carrying the primaries!  The opposition papers, while professing the deepest pity for the dead, dip deep into the scandals of the election.  “It is well the briber is out of the reach of further temptation,” say they.