He held up to him a vision of the penitentiary as the reward of grafting, and when the mayor was sufficiently wilted, rebraced him by promising to defend him, whatever happened, and finally restored him to complacency by showing him that the transaction was not graft at all.

When he parted from the mayor, that official was, as opposition papers put it, "a creature of the attorney's." The attorney found Skinner in his butcher-shop surrounded by a group of friends, to whom he was relating a story of how he had been attacked by the Colonel, and what would have happened to the Colonel if intervention had not come just when it did.

Toole entered briskly and pushed his way through the group to where the butcher stood.
"Skinner," he said, "I want half a dozen words with you, at once," and his manner was enough to silence the butcher.

Skinner led the way to the back room where the sausage machine made its home, and Toole carefully closed the door.
"Now," he said, taking the butcher by the shirtsleeve," you have had a taste of what comes of taking the political lead away from the party to which it rightly belongs.

You have had an experience of what happens when people who know nothing about politics meddle with thing that the natural political leaders should be left to handle.