“I ask you to bear with me, folks, but I give you fair warning now. When you do know the truth, you’re going to be faced with a decision. You don’t think you’ve got one now, but you do, all right, and you’ll see it. And it’ll get inside your blood and make it boil and you won’t be able to run away from it! Because I’m going to show you that the way this country is going to go depends entirely and wholly and completely on you!”

Tom McDaniel put away his note-pad and walked over to his friend, the lawyer James Wolfe. Wolfe, he noticed, was staring, strained and curious and expectant, like all the others. And, for some reason, this annoyed him. “Sound familiar?” he said.

Wolfe started. “Oh—Tom. Yes, he seems to be a pretty smart kid.”

“But a phony,” Tom said.

“Oh?”

“Absolutely. The accent’s fake; I talked with him earlier. He thinks it’s going to work!”

“What?”

“The plain-folks routine.”

“And you don’t?” Wolfe nodded toward the crowd. “I can’t say I entirely agree.”

“Do you think it’s trouble, Jim?”

“No,” Wolfe said, glancing away from Tom. “The time for trouble’s over.”