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Among the loudest of the agitators was Mr. Pullwool; not that he cared one straw whether the capital went to Fastburg, or to Slowburg, or to Ballyhack; but for the money which he thought he saw in the agitation he did care mightily, and to get that money he labored with a zeal which was not of this world alone. At the table of his hotel, and in the barroom of the same institution, and in the lobbies of the legislative hall, and in editorial sanctums and barbers’ shops, and all other nooks of gossip, he trumpeted the claims of Fastburg as if that little city were the New Jerusalem and deserved to be the metropolis of the sidereal universe. All sorts of trickeries, too; he sent spurious telegrams and got fictitious items into the newspapers; he lied through every medium known to the highest civilization. Great surely was his success, for the row which he raised was tremendous. But a row alone was not enough; it was the mere breeze upon the surface of the waters; the treasure-ship below was still to be drawn up and gutted.

“It will cost money,” he whispered confidentially to capitalists and land-owners. “We must have the sinews of war, or we can’t carry it on. There’s your city lots goin’ to double in value if this bill goes through. What per cent will you pay on the advance? That’s the question. Put your hands in your pockets and pull ’em out full, and put back ten times as much. It’s a sure investment; warranted to yield a hundred per cent; the safest and biggest thing agoing.”

Capitalists and land-owners and merchants hearkened and believed and subscribed. The slyest old hunks in Fastburg put a faltering forefinger into his long pocket-book, touched a greenback which had been laid away there as neatly as a corpse in its coffin, and resurrected it for the use of Mr. Pullwool. By tens, by twenties, by fifties, and by hundreds the dollars of the ambitious citizens of the little metropolis were charmed into the portemonnaie of this rattlesnake of a lobbyist.

“I never saw a greener set,” chuckled Pullwool. “By jiminy, I believe they’d shell out for a bill to make their town a seaport, if it was a hundred miles from a drop of water.”

But he was not content with individual subscriptions, and conscientiously scorned himself until he had got at the city treasury.

“The corporation must pony up,” he insisted, with the mayor. “This bill is just shaking in the wind for lack of money. Fastburg must come down with the dust. You ought to see to it. What are you chief magistrate for? Ain’t it to tend to the welfare of the city? Look here, now; you call the common council together; secret session, you understand. You call ’em together and let me talk to ’em. I want to make the loons comprehend that it’s their duty to vote something handsome for this measure.”

The mayor hummed and hawed one way, and then he hawed and hummed the other way, and the result was that he granted the request. There was a secret session in the council-room, with his honor at the top of the long green table, with a row of more or less respectable functionaries on either side of it, and with Mr. Pullwool and the Devil at the bottom. Of course it is not to be supposed that this last-named personage was visible to the others, or that they had more than a vague suspicion of his presence. Had he fully revealed himself, had he plainly exhibited his horns and hoofs, or even so much as uncorked his perfume-bottle of brimstone, it is more than probable that the city authorities would have been exceedingly scandalized, and they might have adjourned the session. As it was, seeing nothing more disagreeable than the obese form of the lobbyist, they listened calmly while he unfolded his project.