Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/328

 said, in his high, unpleasant voice, "they'll have control of the local machinery of elections." "Perhaps so," Harris conceded, amiably. "It's difficult to get everything at once. They'll accept our nominee for the Supreme Court."

"Because they control the rest of the bench," said Wickson.

"Still," Harris pointed out, "we must begin somewhere—and one is a beginning. We're also to have the coroner, two of the county commissioners, some of the members of the Legislature, some Senators, and some of the state officers. The details aren't decided. It's for us to decide—largely. They're very conciliatory."

Wickson asked, at last, "And who nominates the district attorney?"

Harris replied, "We do."

But he replied with a look that was somewhat too steady—with a look that was rather self-consciously defiant.

The District Attorney had come to know McPhee Harris as "a man of indecisive character and small mind, strengthened and enlarged by the sense of a divine power relying on him as its instrument." There was in Harris's eyes, now, the glint of that resolute instrumentality. Wickson's scrutiny probed and questioned him.

"They don't think," Harris admitted, "that we can re-elect you. They believe you've made too many enemies."