BOOK II BY THE PEOPLE (continued 2)

Rankin, who had instantly removed his coat on leaving the rostrum, and seated himself in the front row of delegates, though not yet with his fellows from Polk, turned to the man beside him and whispered, prophetically, reader of men that he was:

“You want to look out fer Zeph Bailey—he’s a comin’ man—smart ’s a singed cat.”

Rankin’s comparison seemed to appeal to his neighbor, who did not know how commonly it was employed in Bailey’s own home, and he nodded his instant appreciation.

“Looks like he had lumbago in the back,” the man added. He was a DeWitt County delegate far removed from the limits to which Bailey’s fame at that time had spread. And Rankin whispered back:

“Well, if he has, it must pain him considerable, fer his back bone runs clear down to his heels.”

Bailey still stood there, bent painfully, and remained silent. The hand at the end of a thin wrist that had never known a linen cuff, held the gavel at an awkward angle, but an observer would have noticed that the handle was firm in his fist, and that when it fell, an instant later, it fell with sharp, stern blows, not upon its edge, but full upon its poll, sure sign that a strong man is in the chair.

“The convention—will be—in order.”

He spoke in a sharp, penetrating voice, his words falling strangely into couplets, and then his thin lips closed firmly again. Hale had come forward and taken his seat at the old bow-legged table where the clerk of the court usually sat, and this act of his seemed to personalize the action of Rankin in seizing the whole temporary organization, and so maddened the Sprague men afresh. They had been willing to tolerate Bailey, partly because of his strange popularity, partly because of the recognized precedent that supported Rankin in naming the temporary chairman. There were precedents for such a selection of a temporary secretary, also, as there were precedents for almost everything in the Thirteenth District, but they had expected a test vote on the selection of that officer, and they felt strong then and willing that the issue be joined. When they saw how they had been balked, they were angry, and they vented that anger by shouting at Hale to come away, and now and then they turned their personalities upon Rankin, who only smiled, as if he beheld his work and found it very good.

Bailey cast his inscrutable little eye around the assemblage, and then rapped with his gavel. His thin lips moved, and men saw that he was going to speak. Those who knew him ceased to make noise, not liking to miss anything Zeph Bailey might say. In this desire, they pulled at their neighbors and said:

“Sh! sh! He’s going to say something.”

In the partial quiet they were thus enabled to produce, Bailey drawled:

“If the brethren—will be—seated—another opportunity—will be afforded them—to rise—for prayers—at a later stage—of the revival.”

The tense quality of the situation was dissipated in a laugh, though all the possibilities hung undischarged, electrically, in the hot atmosphere. A moment longer Bailey waited and then he began his speech. While he spoke, he stood stooped over the desk, holding on to his gavel. He spoke all the way through in those sharp couplets of words, slowly wrought out. He bowed to custom only long enough to make the usual adjurations to the delegates to discharge their high duties faithfully, and he bestowed the customary partisan praise on the state administration and on the national administration. There was applause of course, which he endured calmly, bent over the desk, waiting for it to end. But when these formalities had been observed, he talked to them of common things, like the heat and the corn crop, and he made jokes about the distilleries that lined the Illinois River, and at his solemn sarcasms the crowd laughed.

Rankin was in high good humor. He had found a new man, and his beginning augured well for the success of the convention. When Judge Bailey stopped, there were cries of “Go on! go on!”

But the Singed Cat rapped instantly with his gavel and said:

“The convention—again—will be—in order.”

And the speech was done.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “what is—the further pleasure—of the convention?”

The judge uttered this formality with all parliamentary deference, and the twinkle deep hidden in his eyes showed that the irony of it was apparent to him, even if it was lost on the delegates.

The spell of his quaint oratory having been broken, instantly there was a shuffling of boots, and a dozen men sprang to their feet.

“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!” they chorused.

But Bailey’s eyes, having lost the twinkle they had had when he asked the pleasure of the convention, now sought the type-written program lying on the desk before him, that he might be sure of Rankin’s pleasure. And then, his eyes traveling from one to another of the many flushed faces that opened upon him, their cold gleam unerringly rested upon James of the Polk County delegation, and Bailey said:

“The gentleman—from Polk.”

“Mr. Chairman,” said James, hurriedly, “I move that a committee on credentials of seven members, one from each county, be selected.”

“How shall—the committee—be appointed?” inquired the chair. Rankin glared rebukingly at James, and arose to go to him. He detected the chance of blunder whereby all his plans might go wrong.

“By the chair,” he growled at James.

“By the chair,” James repeated.

“Second the motion!” all the Garwood men yelled.

Randolph was on his feet.

“Mr. Chairman!” he cried, “I move you, sir, as a substitute—”

Randolph was ever parliamentary, but Bailey rapped him to order with the gager’s mallet as if he had been a mere disturbing child, and said:

“The gentleman—from Polk; seconded by the gentleman from Tazewell, moves—that a committee—on credentials—consisting—of one delegate—from each county—be appointed—by the chair. As many—as favour—the motion—will say—”

“Mr. Chairman!” Randolph was advancing toward the desk with uplifted arm, his face was very red and already streaming with perspiration. “Mr. Chairman!” he yelled. “It has always been the custom in this district for the delegates to retire by counties and to select their own members for each committee. I move you, sir, as a substitute—”

“The gentleman—from Moultrie,” drawled Bailey, “is out—of order. Those of you—who favor—the motion—of the gentleman from Polk—will say—‘Aye.’”

A mighty chorus of “Ayes!” swelled up from the mass of delegates.

“Those opposed—‘No.’”

Another heavy, deep-throated volume of “Noes” burst forth. Instantly Bailey swung his heavy gavel to his ear, and he said, though still in that deliberate way of his:

“The ayes—seem—to have it, the ayes—have it, and the motion is adopted.”

Then his gavel fell. And as the storm broke upon him, he stood with the weak stoop in his back, and looked down on the three score and more of angry men who were howling at him. His face never showed sign of emotion, but with his small eyes blinking slowly, his thin lips closed, he looked at them, and then began a slow, monotonous, persistent tap, tap, tap of the gavel.

“The convention—again—will be—in order,” he drawled, tapping with his gavel all the while. “The convention—again—will be—in order.”

At last the storm wore out, and Randolph, and two or three of his men gathered in a little knot. After they had held their disheveled heads together in counsel for awhile, Randolph raised his hand, and hushed his delegates, and said, when he had stilled the clamor:

“Let ’em alone. It’ll come out all right. We’ve got the votes.”

Bailey meanwhile had ceased to tap, and now stood leaning on the gavel. He began to speak again:

“The chair—appoints,” he said, his eye leaving his program and seeking the men he designated as members of the committee, “Messrs. James of Polk, White of Logan, Kemper of Mason, Brown of Tazewell, Harrington of DeWitt, Parker of Moultrie, and Johnson of Piatt.”

All save Harrington, Parker and Johnson were Garwood men. The program was then followed, in choosing by the same process, the committees on resolutions and on permanent organization. There too the Garwood men were given the majority, though Bailey ignored Rankin’s program in one instance, and that was in naming Randolph for the committee on resolutions, but he did it in some half humorous notion of his own that Randolph could there gratify his love for words, and do little harm. The Garwood men were not particular about the resolutions, though Rankin gave to Ben Fuller, Polk County’s representative on the committee, a copy of the platform Garwood had written out.

Noon had come, and was pouring its heat into the court room. The committees having been chosen, the convention could do nothing more until they reported. Bailey therefore said:

“What is—the further—pleasure—of the convention?”

And Rankin arose.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I move that we take a recess until two o’clock.”

Bailey put the motion and of course it carried. And then he said:

“And the convention—stands adjourned—until two o’clock this afternoon—at which hour—the riot—will be—resumed.”

His gavel fell.

As he was descending from the platform, Rankin rushed heavily toward him, and at the same instant, Randolph also started for him. Before Rankin could congratulate him, Randolph was talking.

“Look here, Zeph, and you, too, Jim,” he began in that curious inofficial tone which men use when their relations become personal again, “we demand a vote on this permanent organization business. We ain’t going to be shut out altogether.”

“Don’t like my presiding, eh?” asked Bailey.

“Oh, I’d like it all right if it was on my side,” Randolph laughed, “but we demand a vote.”

“Oh, you’ll get a vote, Hal,” Rankin remarked, “all the vote you want ’fore you’re through—eh, Zeph?”

“I always aim to treat every one fairly,” answered Bailey.

Randolph looked at him, “Aw, come off!” he said, helplessly.

XI

THE convention assembled at two o’clock, though with the only conspicuous deliberation that our deliberative bodies display, it was half-past two before Judge Bailey brought it to order by a crack of his gavel. The sun had seemed to hang still on the meridian. The white cloud that had mounded itself on the horizon in the early morning had slowly and majestically inflated all the day, until it covered the whole of the western sky, where it flashed in the focalized rays of the sun. Far down at the base of the pile of cloud, an ominous blackness was spreading, so that the farmers of the various delegations, trudging along the sidewalks toward the court house, with their waistcoats unfastened and their coats on their arms, prophesied rain, and, drawn out of the differences of factional feeling into the brotherhood of husbandry, they welcomed it with reciprocal felicitations for the common good it would do their corn. When they reached the court house, the heat was stifling; the day seemed to stand still with the sun, and the air they breathed fairly scorched their nostrils.

The report of the committee on credentials was received; there were no contests. The report of the committee on resolutions was read, and the platform, in the wider partisanship that momentarily swallowed up factionalism, applauded. And then Jim Rankin read the report of the committee on permanent organization. The report recommended that the temporary organization be made permanent.

The sun and the day had seemed to stop, now time itself paused, for the moment had come. The fanning delegates stiffened in their hard chairs and became silent. The heavy air hung heavier still with suspense. The sun, flaming in through the tall western windows of the old court room, fell upon the worn boards of the floor till they smoked faintly and seemed likely to ignite under the pitiless fire.

Rankin stood in the very front, near the chairman’s desk, his coat off, his hair curled close and shining with the perspiration that glistened on brow and face. He took his cigar from his lips and raised his big arm in its moist shirt sleeve, toward Bailey, who leaned wearily, almost sleepily, over the desk. Rankin’s heavy voice broke the stillness.

“Mr. Chairman!” he said, “I move the adoption of the report.”

Randolph meanwhile had arisen slowly, carefully, as if he feared any noise he made would mar the situation.

“The gentleman—from Polk,” drawled Bailey, as if the whole thing wearied him, “seconded—by the gentleman—from—ah—Tazewell, moves the adoption—of the—report. Aire you ready—for the—”

“Mr. Chairman,” said Randolph, heavily and deliberately, “Mr. Chairman,” he repeated, knotting his brows under the mane that hung down to meet them.

“The gentleman—from Moultrie,” sighed Bailey.

The delegates leaned forward, intent in their surprise that Bailey had even recognized the Sprague leader.

“Mr. Speaker,” said Randolph, “I mean Mr. Chairman, I move you, sir, as a substitute for the report of the committee just presented, the following resolution, which I ask the clerk to read.”

His use of the words “speaker” and “clerk” was to show the effect of legislative habit.

Bailey only leaned a little farther over his desk, and then drawled:

“The chair—will state—to the gentleman—from Moultrie that it is not now—in order——”

Two or three men behind Randolph rose halfway to their feet, protest written in their faces, but without turning his head, or taking his eyes from the chairman, Randolph fluttered his hand at them behind his back and they subsided. It was plain from his manner that this was a play for position so delicate, that they must not risk disturbing it by interrupting their leader. So Bailey continued: “For the gentleman—to present—such a resolution.”

“But, Mr. Speaker,” began Randolph.

“The chair—will add—for the information—of the gentleman—from Moultrie,” Bailey continued, “that—the only thing—in order—at this time—would be—a minority report—and a motion—to substitute it, or, again, a motion—to lay the report—on the table.”

“But, Mr. Chairman,” once more began Randolph, stepping carefully into the aisle, “my resolution is in the very nature of a minority report. The chair will remember the ruling of Speaker Haines in the Thirty-fourth General Assembly—” He was taking higher ground by thus referring to mysteries known only to him and the chairman. But Bailey interrupted him.

“The chair—is acquainted—with the precedent—to which—the gentleman—refers, and is—of the opinion—that it does—not properly—apply—in this instance.”

The delegates listened with rapt attention. It was not often that in their rude, free conventions they had such parliamentary fine play as this, and they forgot the heat and the contest to enjoy their own bewilderment at it. Rankin still stood and smoked in unconcern. He knew he could safely leave Randolph to Bailey.

“And therefore—the motion—of the gentleman—from Moultrie—is out—of order.” As Bailey let his gavel fall, he jerked his head toward Rankin in signal, and then as the big man heaved himself near, he leaned over the desk to whisper to him. Bailey’s very action in leaning over the desk, in removing his eyes from his adversary, in letting the convention for a moment slip his grasp, as it were, was audacious. Randolph, again repressing his followers by the flutter of his hand, smiled with satisfaction. He took a step farther down the aisle.

“Then, Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I appeal from the decision of the chair.”

And immediately his following, glad at last of a chance to do something to save the nation and the day, shouted:

“Second the motion!”

Bailey continued to whisper to Rankin a minute longer, then straightened himself, and looked over the convention. Rankin was examining the end of his cigar, and seemed intent on repairing it, for it had been smoking unevenly and threatening to come apart, as campaign cigars do.

“The gentleman—from Moultrie,” drawled Bailey at last, “appeals—from the decision—of the chair, and the appeal—is seconded—by the gentleman—from—ah—was it Piatt?” The humorous twinkle leaped in Bailey’s eye. Those of the delegates gifted with a sense of humor, remembering the roar of a moment before, laughed. Randolph, who had a career in politics before him, and hence was without that sense, was waiting in the aisle, taking himself seriously. That Bailey, as was plain by his manner, had not so taken him, was a source of chagrin to him and a wound to his pride, for he and Bailey had served together, he reflected, in the House! And then Bailey’s awful deliberation maddened him.

“The question, therefore,” Bailey resumed, “is, Shall the decision—of the chair—stand as the decision—of the convention?”

He paused and glanced over the assemblage, and Rankin, having gone back to his place in the Polk County delegation, was now standing with his arm outstretched toward the chair. Presently Bailey’s eye roved to where Rankin stood, and Rankin said, in the low tones that betoken an understanding with the presiding officer:

“Mr. Chairman.”

“The gentleman—from Polk.”

“Mr. Chairman, I move to lay the appeal on the table.”

“The gentleman—from Polk,” said Bailey, “seconded—by the gentleman—from Mason—moves to lay—the appeal—on the table. Aire you ready—for the question? As many—as favor—the motion—will vote—‘Aye’——”

A great volume of “Ayes” rolled from the throats of the Garwood delegates, while the Sprague delegates began to cry:

“Roll-call! Roll-call! Roll-call!”

Randolph had advanced down the aisle until he was opposite Rankin. His mane was tossing savagely, his face was aflame and as he shook his fist at Bailey his lips moved rapidly, though his hot words were lost in the general din. All the while Bailey calmly looked on, and kept up a careless tap, tap, tapping with his gavel. The spectators who had hung in the rear of the court room pressed forward among the delegates. Randolph approached to the very desk and shook his fist under Bailey’s imperturbable, long nose.

“You promised us a roll-call, and you’ve got to be fair and give us a show! If you don’t, damn you, I’ll——”

Bailey hung far over the desk now and said in his drawl:

“Hal Randolph, you damned—little sucker—you, if you don’t go—sit down—and behave yourself—I’ll have—to lam—you one—with this mallet.”

And then he calmly resumed his tapping. After awhile, his persistence won silence, and he slowly wriggled in his ill-fitting garments as if they were really as uncomfortable as they looked.

“The convention—again—will be—in order,” he said.

Randolph assisted in quieting his band.

“If the convention—will permit—the chair—will explain—the parliamentary situation—in which—the convention—now finds itself.”

He paused and silence hung again upon his words.

“The gentleman—from Polk—presented—a report—from the committee—on permanent organization—and moved—its adoption. The gentleman—from—ah—Moultrie—then offered—a resolution. That resolution—the chair—declared—to be—out of order. Thereupon the gentleman—from Moultrie—appealed—from the decision—of the chair. That appeal—the gentleman—from Polk—moved—to lay—upon the table. The question, therefore, recurs—upon the motion—of the gentleman—from Polk—to table—the appeal. Upon that question—the yeas and nays—or, rather, a roll-call—of the delegations—has been—demanded. Those of you—who favor—the motion—that is, those of you—who favor—tabling the appeal—and the adoption—of the report—of the committee on permanent organization—will vote—‘Aye,’ and those—opposed—will vote—‘No’—upon the polling—of your respective—delegations, and the secretary—will call—the roll—of the counties.”

The gavel fell, and Randolph turned, smiling complacently as one who had already won his fight.

“Vote No!” he called to simplify the issue for his men.

And Rankin shouted:

“Vote Aye, boys; vote Aye.”

The delegations gathering in little groups were polled amid a hum of busy interest. Bailey had seated himself and looked with sleepy unconcern down on the mass of men, tearing up their little slips of paper and dropping them in the black slouch hats of southern Illinois. Once he moved, and beckoned to him a man from his own delegation, and cast his ballot with the Mason fellows. At last the hats were reposing between knees, the ballots were counted. Bailey slowly arose.

“Have you all voted?” he asked. The silence acquiesced.

“The secretary—will call—the roll—of the counties.” And then intensity hung again in the air. Hale called off the names of the counties.

“DeWitt?”

“Eighteen votes No!”

“Logan?”

“Thirteen votes Aye, eleven votes No.”

The Sprague men clapped their hands.

“Mason?”

“Eighteen votes Aye!!”

Randolph turned and knit his brows. Then he smiled again. He was keeping tab on his knee.

“Moultrie?”

“Fifteen—N-o-o!”

“Piatt?”

“Fifteen votes No!”

“Polk?”

The silence was absolute. Rankin and Pusey had been wrangling. Pusey announced the vote.

“Twenty-two Yeas and twenty-three Nays.”

There was cheering from the Sprague men and the gavel cracked.

“Tazewell?”

“Thirty votes—Aye!” shouted Carlin, one of Joe Hale’s men, drawing out the affirmative unctuously. He was thinking of Joe’s job.

Then, while the convention awaited the result, Hale figured painfully. Rankin stepped up to help him. The Sprague men howled an objection and Randolph advanced to a place near the secretary. But Hale figured under the shelter of his palm. When he had done, he handed the slip up to the chairman. Bailey examined it attentively an instant, a long instant, then the convention grew impatient and cried:

“Give it to us! Give it to us!”

Bailey waited, again studying the slip. And at last, holding it in his fingers, he said:

“On this vote—the Yeas aire—eighty-three, and the Nays—aire eighty-two, and the motion—”

Randolph was standing in the aisle, his finger poised, his lips apart, his eyes blazing. His face glowed with a delight he could not conceal as he cried:

“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman! A point of order!”

Bailey paused and looked at him inquiringly.

“Well,” he said, wearily, “the gentleman—may state—his point of order.”

Again the silence, again the interest in this fencing between the two parliamentarians.

“My point of order, Mr. Chairman, is this:” Randolph kept his forefinger in its parliamentary poise. “The delegation from Mason County cast eighteen votes in the affirmative.”

Bailey nodded.

“And I believe, Mr. Chairman,” Randolph went on, taking his time, that he might uncover his point slowly and thus make it the more effective in the end, “that the chair is a member of the Mason County delegation.”

“The gentleman—is eminently—correct,” said Bailey.

“Then, Mr. Chairman,” said Randolph, raising his voice for his climax, “as the chair’s delegation cast its full vote, the chair evidently voted on this proposition, and the chair is not entitled to a vote on an appeal from his own decision. With the vote the chair improperly cast eliminated, the result would be a tie, and therefore the motion would not prevail. Hence my point of order; which amounts to a challenge of the chair’s vote.”

The Sprague men began to laugh uproariously, and to applaud while Randolph stood in the aisle in his statesmanlike attitude, enjoying his triumph. And as their laugh began to subside Bailey’s face wrinkled into a strange annoying smile. His little eyes twinkled.

“The gentleman—from Moultrie—is correct,” he began. And there was a shout. He indulged it to the echo, and then went on: “But unfortunately—for the gentleman—from Moultrie, however fortunately—for the chair, this is not—a vote—on an appeal, but—on a motion—to lay—an appeal—on the table. The chair, if not misinformed, has the right—to vote—on all motions—to table;—and on this motion—the chair—votes ‘Aye,’ the motion prevails, and the appeal—is laid—on the table!”

He swung the gavel up and let it fall, and the Garwood men began to cheer. Randolph looked dazed, and was about to speak. But Bailey, striking order again with his gavel, went on:

“The question—now recurs—upon the motion—of the gentleman—from Polk—that the report—of the committee—be adopted. As many—as favor—the motion—will say—‘Aye.’”

There was a mighty shout, “Aye!”

“As many—as are opposed—will vote—‘No!’”

The Sprague men yelled “No!”—an equal volume.

“The ayes—seem—to have it,” said Bailey, “the ayes—have it, and the motion—prevails.”

The gavel fell. The Sprague men sat dumb.

“And the temporary—organization—therefore becomes—the permanent organization—of this convention,” said Bailey, speaking as if he were merely resuming some sentence that all the confusion of balloting had interrupted, an interruption to him of no more importance than the pauses he made in his words. Thus the Garwood men secured the control of the convention and won the first round.

XII

THE sun poured its rays now on a dead level through the unwashed glass of the western windows; the dust beaten out of the old floor by the stamping feet of Garwood’s successful cohorts quivered in its beams. The storm, promised early in the afternoon, had inconsequently vanished after some unvindicated mutterings of its prophetic thunder, and left the town hotter than ever. The air was oppressed with heavy humidity, and the farmer delegates, dreaming vaguely of their corn, beheld it drying in the heat, rattling its yellow leaves. In the crowded court room the delegates languished in their shirt sleeves, the collars of those who still wore collars, wilted into moist and shapeless masses at their throats. The fight had beaten the life out of them, even those who were radiant in victory. Some one, a Sprague man, moved an adjournment. But Rankin frowned and shouted, “No, no,” to his followers. He had just then an advantage he did not care to lose. And so, when the motion was put, the Singed Cat, glancing at the solemn judicial clock and seeing that two hours of the afternoon yet remained, declared it defeated, and then he drawled:

“Nominations—of candidates—for representative—in Congress—aire now—in order.”

When he had said this, he seemed glad to sit down, though he alone of all the others was unperturbed by that awful heat, and wore his ill-fitting coat as though he would preserve the decorum of the occasion, as Napoleon, for example to his men, wore his uniform buttoned to the chin while he led them across the hot sands of Egypt.

The tired and exhausted delegates settled down gloomily to hear the nominating speeches. Some of them showed an intention of slipping out of the court room, lured by thought of the cooling drafts of beer in the saloons that presented their fronts eagerly to the very face of the temple of Tazewell County justice, but the bosses of either side, fearing some advantage might be taken of their absence, held them to their posts. And so they listened to the impassioned speech into which Randolph was able to work himself in placing in nomination the name of “that profound jurist, that able statesman, that honest man, Conrad Sprague!”

Then followed Dorsey, whom Rankin had chosen for the honor of naming his candidate. Every one knew of course whom Dorsey was presenting, and yet he treasured his name as a hidden surprise for his closing sentence; in which he epitomized him as “the tall Sycamore of the Sangamon, whose eloquence still reverberates in the halls of national legislation, whose fame is growing brighter and fairer as the days go by, in honoring whom the people of the Thirteenth District, representing as it does the pride and glory of central Illinois, are but honoring themselves—that champion of popular rights, that man of the common people, our present representative, the Honorable Jerome B. Garwood!”

There were speeches seconding these nominations, and applause following them, carefully apportioned by the supporters of each, and then when all had done, when every one thought the last word had been spoken, when the Singed Cat had arisen, leaned over the desk and inquired:

“Aire there—any other—or further—nominations?”

Grant Knowlton of Lincoln arose and said:

“Mr. Chairman.”

Because it was unexpected, the common phrase fell upon their ears with a dramatic force. The delegates scraped about to face the new speaker.

“The gentleman—from Logan,” said the Singed Cat.

“Mr. Chairman,” Knowlton began, “and gentlemen of the convention: Old Logan brings you from her ripening corn fields, from her sun-kissed prairies, from her populous towns, the name of her favorite son. She comes, Mr. Chairman, bringing you a man who ranks foremost in the affections of the citizens of the thriving city which the great Emancipator himself laid off with his own chain and compass, that now repose as honored relics in his hallowed tomb in Springfield, the town to which he gave his own name, who has never sought the consideration of his neighbors but has always had it; who stands to-day among her leading men, who, in the great hour of national peril when the skies were dark, went forth to help strike the shackles from the bleeding limbs of four millions of human beings, who has since served his country equally as well if in an humbler capacity.“

Knowlton poured forth his sentences so rapidly that the delegates scarce could follow them, and filled with curiosity as they were, they could not determine from his mixed relatives whether he was about to nominate Abraham Lincoln himself, or some man of a later, and if not an abler, at least a livelier generation. The young lawyer felt that he had at last his opportunity, and he was seizing it. He had cleared a space among the chairs about him, and in this he strode back and forth, waving his arms, and shaking his head so fiercely that his black locks flapped, and his face became a mere red blur. The young man had a deep resonant voice, and its tones vibrating to his own passion thrilled at last the hearts of the men who listened, a physical manifestation in which is to be found doubtless the success of much oratory. So he was kept on fire by cheers. But at last, the curiosity to know who was this new Richmond in the field, as Charlie Cowley called him in his despatches the next morning, this new Richmond who took them by such surprise and so thoroughly destroyed their calculations, grew beyond mastery, and the youth’s periods were marred by cries of:

“Name him! Name him!”

The interruption did not fluster the young orator. Men all about him were straining to catch the first accents of the name of this dark horse from Logan County, farther away old men placed their hands behind their ears to aid their hearing, still farther off delegates leaned anxiously forward, with brows knit in a painful intensity. Young Knowlton took it all as a tribute to his oratory, and his really fine voice, a voice that would carry any man far in public speaking, rolled to the ceiling of the old court room. The Singed Cat alone remained impassive and cold. Rankin and Randolph stood and hung on his words, trouble written in their faces. But Knowlton was exhausting himself. His deep voice grew husky, the perspiration streamed from his face, his breath came in a vapor from his mouth, hot as the atmosphere was. At last it was plain that he had worn himself out.

“Shall I name him?” he gasped. “Shall I name this peerless son of old Logan, who in every hour of public need has been ready to answer the call of public duty? He is known to you all, he is known to every one in the seven counties that comprise this agricultural empire of the Thirteenth District. Aye, his fame has spread beyond her confines, it is written on the pages where are enrolled the glorious names of those who fought the nation’s battles, it is emblazoned in the fair temple of civic triumph. We bring you a leader, Mr. Chairman, to harmonize all your differences, to cement the grand old party for another mighty onward march to victory, who will plant your flag as he has planted that proud emblem of a free people, the glorious stars and stripes, on the ramparts of the routed and flying enemy. Nominate him, gentlemen, and in the Ides of November, when the ballots come

he will be found to have been elected.”

And Knowlton sank into his chair, gasping for breath, his chest heaving with the violence of his exertion. The delegates looked at him and at one another a moment in surprise, and then they began to cry all at once:

“What’s his name?”

“You didn’t name him!”

“Give us his name!”

“Name him!”

Knowlton sprang to his feet; for an instant he stood and looked helplessly around. His face flamed a deeper crimson and he said in a hoarse, tired voice:

“Our candidate, gentlemen—his name is General William M. Barrett.”

The anti-climax produced a laugh which relieved the tensity of the situation.

Knowlton sank into his chair again and was mopping his neck with his handkerchief. The members of his own delegation pressed about him in congratulation. Moist hands were thrust at him from all sides. Rankin himself strode back and offered his felicitations. Knowlton smiled, and shook his head in depreciation of his own effort. Some one thought to second the nomination of Barrett, and the Singed Cat arose.

“Aire there—any other—or further—nominations?” he asked. “If not—the nominations—aire now—closed. The delegates will prepare their ballots—and the secretary—will call—the roll—of the counties.”

The interest tightened. Delegations assembled close to their leaders, and hats were passed for the ballots. The supreme moment had come.

Knowlton thought to create a sensation by his speech; he created a greater by his nomination. The Logan County delegation had been promised to Rankin by Jim O’Malley, but when at the county convention in Lincoln O’Malley had been unable to secure a Garwood indorsement, Rankin had feared the result there, and his fears had been confirmed when he could not induce the full delegation to cast its solid vote for his plan to make the temporary organization permanent. Their action in dividing on that question had placed their twenty-four votes in the doubtful column, and now that they had seen fit to spring a candidate at the last moment, they had injected an uncertain element into the calculations of both sides that perplexed the leaders. Rankin had hoped to hold his eighty-three votes together that afternoon and nominate Garwood on the first ballot. Now he saw that this would be impossible. A long, stubborn fight was before him, and he had a candidate, as he recognized himself, though by no means would he admit it, who would not gain in strength as the hours passed by. At that moment he felt that he was stronger than he ever would be again. That was why he had refused to let the convention adjourn.

General Barrett, whom the Logan County delegation had thus brought out, was, while not all perhaps that Knowlton had described him, nevertheless Lincoln’s leading man. He was popular in his own community, he had amassed, if not strictly in his practice of the law, yet in the opportunities that practice opened to him, a comfortable competency. He had gone to Lincoln in an early day; he had led a regiment to the Civil War, and had come out of the army with a clean if not a brilliant record, and in the general distribution of brevets immediately following the close of the mighty conflict he had shared to the extent of an honorary brigadier-generalship. He had then gone home to resume his quiet life, and by carefully pursuing a middle course in all things, and avoiding the making of enemies, he had gradually built up a reputation for honesty and integrity that made him an ideal figure of the colorless, eminently respectable, safe and conservative citizen. He had been a strict, though not an aggressive party man, and whenever Logan County wished a name to juggle with in conventions, they chose the name of General William M. Barrett, knowing that he would not object, and so long as he was not nominated, that no one else could object. He had never been elected to an office of profit, and he had never been an avowed candidate for any, though he had served on the school board and on all the public committees, in addition to being invited to deliver orations on Decoration Day, yet he was ever in a calm and receptive mood, and while Logan County delegations had never gone so far as to nominate him for anything, he seemed never to doubt the sincerity of their support. But there comes a time in the career of the men whose names are continually before conventions when the lightning strikes them, and both Rankin and Randolph saw that the present hour was charged with just such a possibility.

The delegates had voted and now sat awaiting the delivery of the first ballot. Hale began to call the roll of the counties.

“DeWitt?” Hale called.

“Eighteen votes for Conrad Sprague.”

“Logan?”

O’Malley was up.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “on behalf of the solid delegation from Logan County I cast twenty-four votes for General William M. Barrett.” O’Malley winked at Rankin as he sat down.

“Mason?”

“Mr. Chairman,” cried McKimmon, emulative of O’Malley, “on behalf of the solid delegation from Mason County I have the honor to cast her eighteen votes for our present able congressman, Honorable Jerome B. Garwood!”

And Rankin started a cheer.

“Moultrie?”

Randolph was standing prominently in the middle aisle, or what had been an aisle early in the day.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, in heavy tones, “Moultrie County gives her fifteen votes to our next congressman, Honorable Conrad Sprague.”

And then the Sprague delegations cheered.

“Piatt?” the roll-call proceeded.

“Sprague fifteen votes!”

“Polk?”

Rankin had taken a seat, and sat with his fat elbows on his fat knees. He had been keeping the count in his mind, as Randolph had been keeping it on a scrap of paper. He knew what he had, and he knew that when Sprague received the twenty-three votes Pusey would deliver to him, Sprague would be in the lead. Pusey had passed his old straw hat for the ballots, and it had ground Rankin to have to drop his own vote in it, held as it was by the man who now usurped the place in the Polk County delegation he had held for so many years. Pusey arose, and his thin voice piped:

“Mr. Chairman, Polk County casts twenty-two votes for Garwood, and twenty-three for Barrett.” Rankin looked up. Randolph, who had been preparing to order a volley of cheers for his candidate, stood stricken dumb. The vote came as a surprise to everybody, but more than all to the Logan County men. They were nonplussed. They had nominated Barrett with a little more, perhaps, than their usual sincerity, but they had merely gone to him temporarily in order to put themselves in a controlling position between the other two candidates. Pusey, who had been counted for Sprague by all, now held the balance of power. Hale looked up as if there had been some mistake. At last Rankin, smiling sardonically, and, as it were, to himself, arose and lumbered into the aisle near Randolph. As he steered past the Sprague leader, still dumbfounded, he said, with no attempt to conceal his words:

“I told you, Hal, you couldn’t depend on the little cuss.”

The Singed Cat smote his gavel down.

“The convention—will be—in order. Let—the roll-call—proceed.”

“Tazewell?”

“Thirty votes for Garwood.”

And then while Hale was footing his three little columns, conversation hummed again among the delegates.

Pusey sat quietly tracing his mysterious figures on the floor with the point of his little stick.

Rankin had paused by Hale’s table where Cowley sat. Rankin smiled down on the correspondent.

“Case o’ buy, heh?” he said. “What?”

Cowley shrugged his shoulders expressively, like a foreigner.

“What?” Rankin repeated, his teeth showing in a broad significant grin.

Hale had written the result on a slip of paper and passed it up to Bailey. The Singed Cat took it, and studied it.

“On this ballot,” he began presently, “there have—been cast—one hundred and sixty-five votes; necessary—to a choice, eighty-three. Of these Mr. Garwood—has—received—seventy, Mr. Sprague—forty-eight, and General Barrett forty-seven. No candidate—having received—the necessary number—of votes, there has been—no nomination—and you will, therefore—prepare your votes—for another ballot.”

“Mr. Chairman,” Rankin said, with a promptness that recognized the change in the situation.

“The gentleman—from Polk.”

“Mr. Chairman, I move that the convention do now adjourn until to-morrow morning at nine o’clock.”

The motion prevailed. The sun was a red ball, hanging low beyond the river. It seemed that the hour was the hottest of the afternoon. Pusey was sitting there moving his wrinkled jaws and puckered lips over his tobacco, as inscrutably as the Singed Cat himself might have done, had he chewed tobacco. It would take a night to find the bearings that had been lost that afternoon.

XIII

GENERAL BARRETT, hearing from Pekin that his county’s delegation had taken pardonable liberties with his name at the convention, arrived on an evening train, and though his quiescent absence would have suited his supporters better, they welcomed him at the old station with as much enthusiasm as they could generate on so short a notice. The general drove to the hotel in a carriage, and when he entered the office bowed seriously, playing well the part of the distinguished and respectable leader whom the voice of the people had summoned. To Cowley, who interviewed him when his headquarters had been opened, he said solemnly that he was in the hands of his friends, that he considered this a fair field and an open contest, and esteemed his own opportunities to be as favorable as those of either of the other distinguished and able candidates.

All through the hot night the rooms of the three candidates blazed. Delegates hung about them as the nocturnal bugs wheeling in on heavy wing from the darkness outside fluttered around the coal oil lights, though not all of them stuck as closely to the flame that had brought them thither as did those hapless insects whose tragic fate matted their wings at last to the oily glass bowls of the lamps. The general remained in his room, democratically, where all could see him and grasp his hand, and doubtless derived as much satisfaction from these little levees as if he were holding larger and more significant ones. Both Sprague and Garwood had other rooms opening off those where the public were invited to gather and participate freely in the distribution of campaign cigars that stood in boxes on the center tables.

Garwood sat on the tumbled bed in his inner room, pale and haggard. A cigar fumed constantly in his teeth. A tray of whisky glasses lay on the table. With Garwood were Rankin and Bailey. They had gone over the situation again and again. Delegate after delegate had been led in to interview the congressman, every argument, every persuasion, every threat that the three men could devise had been used. But they made no appreciable headway. They had seventy votes and they felt that they could hold them, for Rankin vouched for the twenty-two men from Polk, the Singed Cat was calmly certain of his eighteen votes from Mason, and Hale scouted the idea of any one of the thirty Tazewell fellows failing. The remaining voles were so evenly divided between Garwood’s opponents that each would hesitate to go to the other. Any coalition with the Sprague men was impossible; they were as determined as Garwood’s own. They must look for strength to the Barrett following. They considered Pusey, and the twenty-three votes he controlled.

“Can’t you see him, Jim?” Garwood suggested to Rankin.

The big man spat and shook his head.

“It ’uld do no good fer me to see him. I’d hate to speak to the little cur, anyway.”

“Well, look here, Jim, you mustn’t let any personal feeling stand in the way of our success,” Garwood snarled. He was growing peevish from the heat, the strain, the anxiety. Rankin laughed, as if at the whim of a child.

“Don’t worry ’bout me, Jerry,” he said. He had dropped back into his own old way of calling Garwood by his familiar name since the contest for renomination had brought the congressman down to the hard earth again. “I’ll play my end of the game. Let Zeph here see him.”

They considered in turn the twenty-four men from Logan County. O’Malley was sent for, and came, half fearfully, reporting that his hands were tied by the exigencies of affairs in his own county. He was half afraid to be seen at Garwood’s headquarters, lest suspicion stab him, though a combination by which Garwood, when he knew his own chances were gone, would throw his strength to Barrett was the one practical thing to do.

With such manœuvering the night wore away. Garwood could reach no agreement with the Barrett men. Bailey saw Pusey, but the little editor was wily, he was playing some strange game of his own, and he sent word that if Garwood wished to see him, to come himself. What his game was none of them could find out; they did not think him at all sincere in his support of Barrett, and hourly feared that he might draw Barrett’s forces into the Sprague column. Meanwhile, Pusey’s political attitude was that of one who had simply taken refuge in the peaceful eddy that swam in the wake of Barrett’s utter respectability and availability, until some definite turn should be taken by the current. Towards morning some of the tired delegates declared truces, and arranged poker games. Their clicking chips could be heard on all that second floor of the hotel. And some of them went out under the purple sky of a summer night, a sky studded with brilliant stars. Leo was low in the west, the moon swam in a sea of silver along the horizon. They heard the calming voice of insects, they felt the breeze of the night on their brows.

The morning came, with its brazen sky. Once more the white clouds mounted in the west as if trying again for rain, and the day wore on like the one before, without change. The sun blazed on high, seeming to shrink in its own fierce dazzling concentration as it flashed its rays into that hot court room where the convention sat and balloted, one ballot after another, until a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, had been taken, until the floor was strewn with paper and discolored by tobacco, the air heavy with smoke, the feculence of all their breathing, the acrid smell of perspiration. The sky darkened, and those tired men sighed for rain. The thunder rolled down the valley of the Illinois, and then ceased. The sky cleared, and the heat increased. And all the while the ballots which Hale announced were the same:

Garwood Sprague Barrett

DeWitt 18

Logan 24

Mason 18

Moultrie 15

Piatt 15

Polk 22 23

Tazewell 30

— — —

Totals 70 48 47

XIV

THURSDAY came and another day with its oppressive heat and even more oppressive suspense wore away; and still another came and wore away like the one before it. The week was marching by, and the delegates were no nearer a choice than when they first began. The convention had taken twelve hundred and sixty ballots; more than had been taken at the Clinton convention two years before. Still the ballot was unchanged, Garwood seventy, Sprague forty-eight, Barrett forty-seven.

Evening came, and the delegates, drawn and spent, refused to hold a night session. They trudged back to the hotel, and resumed the tiresome rounds of the headquarters, the fruitless conferences, the profitless scheming. They gathered in groups in the hotel office, filling the air with their cigar smoke. The noise of conversation ascended to the floors above, but it no longer was lightened by laughter; now it had a harsh, angry note of contest. Surely the strain could not last much longer. It must end as must the insatiable heat.

Up in Garwood’s room they had tried all their arts again, and again they had all proved unsuccessful. They had approached Pusey, and he had shuffled away with his impenetrable air, they had sounded the Logan County delegation, but found that the whim which had led it to bring out Barrett had now developed, under the pressure of the long unbroken deadlock, into an unaccountable opposition to Garwood, that had in it all the bitterness of a personal aversion. The Sprague men, of course, were utterly out of the question, and the only consolation they had was that Garwood was still in the lead, and that his delegates, upon being canvassed once more, declared that they would “go down into the last ditch with Jerry.” To Garwood it seemed that they were in the last ditch then. Each new step in the hall seemed to him the coming of the news that Sprague and Barrett had coalesced. He felt the need of instant action.

The strain was telling even on Rankin, but he was never idle. Most of the men in Garwood’s rooms had visibly relaxed, and some one, feeling no doubt that they were about to settle down to one of those long deadlocks that last for weeks, had suggested a game of poker, and had asked Rankin to join in it.

“No,” he said, “I’ve got my work to do. I must see some fellers to-night. You boys play, though,” he added in his kindly way. “The judge here’ll play with you. You play, don’t you, Zeph?”

“Well,” the Singed Cat drawled, “I’m better’n a—green hand.”

And so they got out the chips. It all irritated Garwood beyond endurance. He slung on his coat savagely, and seized his hat. For them to sit calmly down to play cards while he was in that clutch of circumstance, was more than he could bear.

“I’m going out awhile,” he flung at them.

“That’s right, Jerry,” said Rankin, “that’s the thing for you to do. The exercise’ll do you good. I’m goin’ to see O’Malley after while—I’ll look after things. Stay long’s you want."

And Garwood left, swearing. Down the hallway he heard the click of the chips of other games; at Barrett’s room he had a glimpse of the old man sitting in all his dignity with some of the boys from Logan County leaning over him. Sprague’s door, too, was open; he caught the laughter within, and as he passed, he suddenly beheld O’Malley and Knowlton talking with Randolph. The scene was etched on his mind, the three men standing there in the bright light, the hats of O’Malley and Knowlton thrown back, Randolph bareheaded, his coat and waistcoat off, his long cravat unknotted, and dangling over his soiled bosom. As he passed he heard Knowlton say:

“All right then, Hal.”

Garwood hastened on. Hot as the little old hotel was, he broke into a cold sweat. The very thing he had feared was coming to pass! And they were so open about it, too!

His first thought was to turn back and rouse Rankin, but a strange childish fear of Randolph seized him, a morbid dread of being seen by any of his opponents just then, and he kept on.

When he reached the head of the stairs, Garwood saw Pusey shambling across the office, tapping his little cane on the floor, as a blind man might, though he did it meditatively, as if he were striking at the crawling flies instead of the cockroaches from which he was separated. Garwood stiffened at the sight of this old enemy. His breath came fast, his cold sweat was succeeded by a flush of heat, and then:

“Oh, Pusey!” he called.

The editor turned. His quick eye caught the congressman on the stairs.

“Heh?” he said.

Garwood descended, with dignity now, for he was emerging into public view again. The editor drew slowly toward the staircase. They met.

“I’m going for a little walk—thought maybe the night air might refresh me. Care to go along?”

“Don’t care if I do,” said Pusey.

The office was deserted by all save the landlord who snoozed behind his counter, the insects that buzzed around the lamps, and the flies that walked like somnambulists across the ceiling, and on the walls. The two men sauntered carelessly toward the side door.

Once outside Garwood sniffed in eagerly the night air that bathed his brow.

“Isn’t it a bit cooler?” he said.

“Don’t know but it is,” acquiesced Pusey. “Heat don’t bother me much, though.”

The sky was black overhead, not a star was to be seen. In the west, now and then, a glare of heat lightning trembled over all the sky, photographing for them instantly the strange roofs, the strange chimneys, the black outline of strange trees, beginning to lurch slowly like elephants, in the little wind that stirred.

“I believe there’s a breeze,” Garwood said. He was still sniffing the night air like an animal. “Rain, too, in that air, eh?”

Pusey tapped along on the old brick sidewalk with his little stick and said nothing.

“Have a cigar?” said Garwood presently.

“Don’t care if I do,” said Pusey, throwing away the one he was smoking. They paused, a match scratched on a heel threw the ruddier lightning of its own tiny flame upon their faces and then their cigars glowed in the darkness, and left behind them a fragrance that no other cigar in Pekin could exhale, nor any perhaps, outside a certain cigar store in Pennsylvania Avenue, where Garwood owed a bill.

“Let’s go toward the river, Pusey,” said Garwood. “I fancy it’ll be cooler there.”

“Don’t care if I do,” said Pusey.

The storm had come at last; the long heat was broken. Overhead the thunder pealed up and down its whole wide diapason, booming now and then with new explosions, then rolling away in awful melody into some distant quarter of the broken heavens. The lightning crackled in long streams of fire that zigzagged down the black sky, reaching from heaven to earth, and in its after-glare the clouds that flew so low showed their gray scud. The rain fell with a dead incessant drumming on the earth, warm as new milk, and all green things stirred rapturously as they drank it in.

Down on the banks of the Illinois River Garwood stood and looked on the dark waters. In the constant play of the lightning he saw the trees on the other shore bending their round heads to the wind; he could see even their green leaves distinct in the dazzling white light. He saw once some warm, earthly gleam shining in some window he would never know. He caught now and then the outline of some house-boat, rude dwelling of the river-people, stirring uneasily at its moorings. Once he saw the wild sails of one of the wind mills erected by the German settlers of that region, brought with them, as it were, from their home far across the seas, and once again in a glare more lasting and vivid than any other, he saw a telegraph pole lifting itself for an instant to his vision, spreading its arms, and it reminded him of a cross on a hill, some new Golgotha. He closed his eyes and looked that way no more.

Behind him a crazy street that scrambled up from the water’s edge led back to the heart of the town. The small houses showed cheerful lights, now and then a laugh was borne to him from some person humanly glad of the relief the rain had brought. Then, in a fresh illumination, he saw the court house where the fates were playing with him. The storm raged, the lightning raced in sheets of flame along the river, and though the winds lashed the rain up and down its bosom like a broom, the drops fell so heavily that the surface of the waters was smooth and placid as on a summer afternoon, only dimpled with the infinite drops. The congressman stood in the lush wet grass, the water running off his broad hat in little rivulets, but he soaked himself to the skin, and drank in the rain, like all other life about him. He stood there long, as though defying the storm. He folded his arms in tragic attitudes. His thoughts flashed here and there over his whole life, illuminating for him scenes that stood vivid in memory just as the lightning showed him the court house, the trees across the river, the shanty boat, the wind mill, the Golgotha of the telegraph pole. He thought of his first convention, of the day he waited in the Harkness drawing-room and saw old Jasper working in the yard; of that election night in Chicago, of his place in the House at Washington; he thought of Rankin, of his mother, of Emily, of his boy—ah, the boy!

The lightning glared. His eye caught the telegraph pole again, he saw the cross, leaning at an awful angle on the hill; he shuddered and pulled down the brim of his hat and went away.

When he entered the hotel, the new life brought by the rain was apparent in the new energy displayed by the politicians. They had gathered indoors. Garwood heard them joking, he heard them laughing. There was industry everywhere. The headquarters were full. In his own room, the poker game was in progress. The chips clicked merrily. Even Rankin had succumbed and sat at the table, a pile of the red and blue disks before him. His coat and waistcoat and collar, even his shoes, were off; his suspenders hung at his hips, his great body was all relaxed. The windows were open, the dirty curtains streamed on the wind that blew in, and the floor was wet where the rain had sprinkled it unrestrained. Rankin was laughing, joying in the rain.

“Ain’t it great?” he said in his bass voice. And he shook himself to relish the sensation of coolness after all the week of insufferable heat.

The Singed Cat sat on a hard, rigid chair, his coat still on, impervious as ever to the little discomforts of life.

“This game,” he drawled, raising an eye to Garwood, “seems to be—for the purpose—of determining—whether—these fellows—get my money—or I get their—I O U’s.”

And the room rang loudly with the laughter.

Garwood stood, dripping with water, and looked at them in wonderment.

“Heat spell’s broken,” Rankin said presently. “Wisht the deadlock was. Maybe, though, the rain ’ill fetch us luck. What d’ye think, Jerry?”

Garwood looked at him as if he did not know what the man had said.

XV

THE storm ceased just before daybreak and the light that slowly spread over the prairie to the eastward suffused a new world. The water dripped musically from the trees, the robins sang, the frogs croaked comfortably along the wet banks of the river, and the morning poured down its green valley an air that sparkled like champagne. The convention met again at nine o’clock, but it seemed another convention. The delegates arrived early, and they, too, seemed to have been made over like the world, for they entered, even the eldest of them, with a new spring in their steps, and it was to be noticed that they had been shaved and wore clean linen.

The court room had been swept of all its litter, and the floor was still damp with the fancy scrolls the janitor had written with water from his sprinkling-can, as if it had been some new kind of fountain pen. The chairs were set in a fine amphitheater, so orderly that the delegates sat down in them carefully, as if, possessed by a new sense of harmony, they feared to destroy the pleasing arrangement of things. Even the cigars they puffed, sending their white smoke gracefully up into the lively air, had gained a fragrance. The delegates had forgotten the animosities of the past few days, and they joked each other as they met again on the old brotherly footing.

Rankin was there with an enormous fresh collar lying down about his neck. He had left off his waistcoat, and the white shirt his wife had packed in his little traveling-bag when he started from home was now at last donned in obedience to her parting mandate, and unhidden as it was, gave to the world a broad and convincing proof of his domestic discipline. Randolph, too, was immaculate, while young Knowlton was almost senatorial in freshly brushed black clothes and linen that had the metallic gloss of the laundry machine on it.

“Well, Jim,” Randolph called across the room, “going to withdraw your candidate this morning, ain’t you?”

“No, I’m goin’ to withdraw yourn.”

“What do you say to withdrawing them all and uniting on you? You’d make a noble congressman.”

“You bet I would,” Rankin responded, “but I couldn’t afford to give the job all my time fer the money the’s in it.”

“Of course not,” Randolph flung back at him, “but you might sublet it to me.”

“Well, I might git you a job shovelin’ wind off the Capitol, only I reckon you wouldn’t da’st leave that lucrative law practice o’ yourn, heh?”

The delegates around laughed at the old, old jokes with which they chaffed each other.

“What do you say to unitin’ on Grant here? That speech o’ his t’other day ’uld tease the whole surplus out o’ the treasury.”

Knowlton blushed. Perhaps his heart swelled for a second at the mere thought, for, like all young lawyers, he had his ambitions, with the dome of the Capitol at Washington in the perspective of his dreams.

But the Singed Cat was leaning over the judge’s desk again and his little eyes, out of his thin serious face, swept the circle of chairs before him. His gavel fell.

“The convention—will be—in order,” he said in his penetrating voice. And then he paused and looked solemnly about. “The chair—desires to remind—the convention—” he continued, and the delegates looked up in alarm, “that the administration—at Washington—has redeemed—its promise—of prosperity—to the farmer—by sending—the former—and latter rain—upon the earth—in due season, which shows—what the party—can do—in the way—of keeping promises—when it gets—its hand in.”

The convention laughed. Men were one with all nature in being glad that morning. Then the chairman continued gravely as before:

“Proceeding upon—the regular order—another ballot—for nomination—of a representative—in Congress—will be taken. Gentlemen—will prepare—their ballots, and the secretary—will call—the roll.”

And Hale, for the twelve hundred and sixty-first time, began his monotonous repetition.

“DeWitt?”

“Sprague, eighteen.”

The chairmen long ago had ceased to poll their delegations or to make the formal announcements they had found so pleasant when they first began. They had long been answering the roll-call in a fixed perfunctory manner, as a bailiff opens court by a formula that has grown meaningless, and will know no change as long as institutions last.

“Logan?”

“Twenty-four for Barrett.”

“Mason?”

“Garwood, eighteen.”

Some of the delegates had strolled to the open windows and stood leaning idly on the sills, looking out on the wonderful morning.

“Moultrie?”

“Fifteen, Sprague.”

“Piatt?”

“Sprague, fifteen.”

“Polk?”

Pusey arose.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said in his weak voice. Delegates near him looked up, Randolph crouched like a lynx, then rose on bent knees, with an alert inquiry in his eyes.

“On behalf of the delegation from Polk County,” Pusey continued, “I cast the solid forty-five votes for Jerome B. Garwood.”

Hale, leaning listlessly on an elbow, his head in his hand, gazing away like an abstracted schoolboy through the open windows as if the woods and fields beckoned him from irksome routine tasks, had been calling the roll from memory, and keeping no tally, for he knew the formula perfectly by this time. But he looked up, startled. Rankin tilted back in his chair, let it come down suddenly, its legs striking the floor with a bang; his jaw fell. Knowlton sprang to his feet, his face written all over with surprise, and Randolph, his eyes ablaze, quickly straightening his legs and raising himself on his toes broke the startled stillness by crying excitedly:

“Mr. Chairman!”

There was a scraping of chairs, a hum of voices, that ascended immediately to a roar, and then a score of men began to shout crazily:

“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!”

Pusey had seated himself, he was as indifferent as ever. And Rankin could only stare at him in stupefaction.

The Singed Cat alone was unmoved by the startling climax to all those withering days of heat and suspense. He hammered the desk with his gavel and said:

“The convention—again—will be—in order. Let the roll-call proceed.”

And Hale called loudly amid the din that would not subside:

“Tazewell?”

The chairman of that delegation shouted:

“Thirty votes for Garwood!”

The staid old court room with all its traditions of the dignity of judicial proceedings was in an uproar. The whole convention was on its feet, everybody was calling: “Mr. Chairman.” From without, men to whom had been borne by some occult transmission of intelligence the news of that, the final moment, crowded breathlessly into the room. The belief that the morning was cool had been a delusion. Now that the peace induced by universal harmony had been marred, men began to perspire, to grow red in the face; the atmosphere in an instant had become stifling. The Garwood men had begun to cheer. The Sprague men and perhaps the little group of Barrett’s supporters, foiled in whatever their original purpose had been, realized that they were defeated, and they raged impotently. Hale was hurriedly casting up his easy sum, and when he handed the slip to Bailey his heart leaped with the thought that at last the Pekin post-office was his.

The Singed Cat deliberately studied his figures, and his deliberation, with the power of the definite announcement that was pending, compelled a sudden quiet his gavel had theretofore been unable to invoke. And at last, in the suspense which was all fictitious, the product of the Anglo-Saxon mania for legal forms, he said:

“Upon this ballot. General William M. Barrett—has received—twenty-four votes,” it was seen that he was reversing the order for its effect, “Conrad Sprague—forty-eight, and Jerome B. Garwood—ninety-three. Mr. Garwood—having received—the necessary number—and a majority—of all—the votes—cast—is therefore—declared—to be—the nominee—of the convention—for Representative—in Congress—for the Thirteenth District—of Illinois—for the term—beginning—the fourth day—of March—ensuing.”

The strain was over, the long pent-up emotions of the seventy men who had stood solidly for Jerry Garwood, and now had won victory at last, broke forth, and they flung their hats into the air, tore off their coats to wave aloft, brandished chairs, and pounded one another on the back, yelling all the time. The followers of Sprague yelled no less excitedly, though their rage was that of defeat. Randolph strode to where Hale was sitting, his mouth stretched wide in a demented yell, and pounded the table with his fist, crying unceasingly:

“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!”

The Singed Cat stood leaning as he had leaned for days, with his eyes upon the desk he had scarred with his gavel. For ten minutes, and it seemed an hour, the men howled, until exhausted by the exertion and the excitement, their voices failed, and they collapsed into their chairs. But Randolph, in the approximate order which the exhaustion brought about, continued to cry, until at last the Singed Cat’s voice pierced to all the corners of the court house.

“The convention—will be—in order! The convention—has not—yet adjourned. There is—still—work—to be done.”

But Randolph continued to cry.

“Gentlemen—will resume—their seats,” Bailey said, “before—they can—be recognized.”

Randolph hesitated, though still he cried:

“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!”

But Bailey’s eye forced him backward to his place, and when he had retreated to the midst of the Moultrie County delegation the chairman said:

“The gentleman—from Moultrie.”

“Mr. Chairman,” Randolph said, and the convention, supposing he was about to observe custom and move to make the nomination unanimous, listened. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I challenge the vote of the Polk County delegation.”

“The gentleman—from Moultrie—is out—of order,” the Singed Cat promptly ruled. “None—but a member—of the Polk County delegation—can challenge—its vote.”

The Sprague men seemed about to gather themselves for another noisy protest, but interest had suddenly veered to the Logan County delegation. There a consultation was in progress, hurried and eager, and out of it Knowlton arose, and his splendid bass voice boomed:

“Mr. Chairman!”

“The gentleman—from Logan.”

“Mr. Chairman, I move you, sir, that the nomination of Jerome B. Garwood be made unanimous.”

He had seized the only little chance that remained of identifying his delegation with the success of the nominee. The band wagon had taken them by surprise and rolled by too swiftly for them to climb in.

“The gentleman—from—Logan—moves—to make—the nomination—of the Honorable—Jerome B. Garwood—for candidate—for the office—of Representative—in Congress—unanimous,” said the Singed Cat, yielding not a word of all his formula. “Those in favor—will say—‘Aye.’”

The motion carried, of course, though not without a great shout of “Noes” from the little band of Sprague men, who had gathered about their leader, looking defiance out of their defeat. The Garwood men had wrung the moist hand of Pusey, but it was Rankin whom they selected for the center of their celebration. As they crowded about him, they pommeled him, pulled him, screamed in his ears; they would have liked to toss him to their shoulders, but he was too big to be moved. He could only sit in the midst of all their clamor, and stare in wonder and amaze at Pusey. He, to whom all the credit for the victory was ascribed could not understand it, that was all. But presently when he heard his name mentioned officially, he stirred. Knowlton had moved that a committee be appointed to wait on Garwood and inform him of his nomination, and what Rankin heard was the voice of Bailey saying:

“And the chair—appoints—as members—of the committee—Messrs. Knowlton of Logan—Randolph of Moultrie—and Rankin of Polk.”

The committee found their nominee in his room at the hotel. He was sitting calmly by his open window looking into the green boughs of the elm trees that grew along that side of the old hostelry. An open book lay on his knee, and having calmly called “Come in!” in answer to the knock at the door, he looked up as they entered, as if they had interrupted the meditations of a statesman.

“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, rising.

He laid his book aside and stepped softly toward them. Rankin saw at once the change that was on him. His hair was combed, his face shaven, his long coat brushed, and he had donned a fresh white waistcoat. As Rankin noted these details, a pain pinched his heart, for he deduced from them that there was no surprise in store for Garwood. Ordinarily he would have been the first to speak, he would have rushed forward, and seized the hand of his candidate, and exulted in his frank and open way, but now the words he had were checked on his lips, and he remained dumb, growing formal as the sensitive will. Thus it was left for Knowlton, for Randolph had no stomach for the job, to say, as he held forth his hand:

“Mr. Garwood, let me be the first to congratulate you on your nomination.”

Garwood smiled, and took Knowlton’s hand.

“Gentlemen, I thank you,” he said. He gave his hand to Randolph, and last of all to Rankin.

“Ah, Jim, old fellow,” he said.

But he did not meet Rankin’s eye.

“The convention is waiting for you, Mr. Garwood,” said Knowlton, and the nominee answered:

“Ah, indeed? I shall be glad to accompany you.”

The citizens at the door of the court room for whom a representative in Congress had just been chosen, parted to let them pass, but they did not cheer. They accepted their character of mere spectators, and seemed to feel that they had no right to disturb the proceedings by any demonstration of their own. But the slight commotion they made had its effect within, and the waiting delegates turned their heads to catch a glimpse of their coming congressman. He walked down the aisle on the right arm of Knowlton; Randolph and Rankin came marching behind. The Garwood men began to clap their hands, they stamped their feet, and at last they lifted up a shout, and so, marching erect among them, his face white, his brows intent and his fixed eyes brilliant with excitement, Garwood walked the short way to the front. The Singed Cat met him at the steps of the rostrum, and having taken his hand, raised him to the judge’s place, and said:

“Gentlemen of the convention, I have the honor—to present to you—your nominee—and next congressman—the Honorable—Jerome B. Garwood.”

Bailey faded into the judge’s chair, and Garwood, slowly buttoning his coat, stood and looked over the body of delegates. He began to bow. It was Hale now who led the applause, not Rankin, and he kept them at it by sheer force of the persistence with which he clapped his own hands, not giving in until he felt that the enthusiasm did justice to the candidate, to his victory, and to the occasion. The Sprague men sat silent, no sound came from their quarter.

Garwood bowed in his stateliest way to the Singed Cat as he said: “Mr. Chairman,” and he bowed again to his audience as he added, “and gentlemen of the convention.” And then he made his speech.

He would not detain them long at that time, he said, as if, at some future day, they might expect to be held indefinitely. But he detained them long enough to assure them how impossible it was for him to find words in which to express his thanks for the confidence they had reposed in him, and his warm appreciation of the honor they had conferred upon him. He referred to his past services in their behalf, and in behalf of the party, and he put the responsibility for his success upon them by saying that future victories could only come through their united efforts, as if he were making a sacrifice for their sake in consenting to be their candidate at all.

He spoke with the customary assumption that his nomination had come entirely unsought, but he made them feel his devotion by the willingness with which he assured them he would bear their banner that fall, and he graciously promised to give his entire time from then until November to the election of the whole ticket. Then in briefly reviewing the services and the sacrifices of the late Congress, he repeated, though with a fine extemporaneous effect, the best sentences of his speech at Washington, and quoted readily for them the most impressive statistics of imports and exports, which they did not at all understand, and as if these figures had fully vindicated the wisdom of their party’s policy on the tariff question, he predicted that the scepter of commercial empire was even then passing into the hands of the United States.

He did not forget the old soldiers, nor their pensions, neither did he neglect to pay most generous tributes to the distinguished gentlemen whose names had been mentioned in connection with the high office to which he had been nominated. He seemed almost to regret that they had not been chosen in his place, such were their superior merits and nobler virtues. And thus by an easy oratorical circuit, he came around to where he had begun, and thanking his fellow countrymen again, bowed and smiled, and turned to receive the congratulatory hand of the Singed Cat.

When the applause which Hale had loyally started had ended, there were cries for Sprague, but as Sprague was not there, an awkward pause was prevented by a prompt change in the burden of the cry, which now became a demand for Barrett. From some immediate vantage point the general was conjured forth, and made his speech, thanking his friends, congratulating his opponents, and extolling the party they unitedly represented, as if he were as well satisfied with defeat as he would have been with victory. He smiled complacently behind his white beard, and he left the rostrum with his dignity and respectability unimpaired.

And the convention was over.

XVI

SATURDAY evening Emily had a telegram from Garwood announcing his nomination. The message might have come to her Saturday noon, but Garwood had found the delegates for the most part in mood for celebration, while he himself in the reaction of his spirit, was not disinclined that way. He held a levee in his rooms reveling in felicitations and when this was done, he suddenly thought of the Sprague men, smarting under defeat. They must not be allowed to depart for home nursing their sores, and Garwood made it a point to see them, or to have Rankin see them, and check in its incipiency a contagion that might plague him in the fall. So it was evening before he thought to wire his wife, and it was late in the night before he took the train for Lincoln, where he was to change cars for home, leaving the little old German town to settle to its normal quiet for Sunday morning.

Emily, with the knowledge of politics that politicians’ wives acquire, had watched from day to day the development of the contest at Pekin. Jerome had not written at all, but Emily chose to consider his failure as an exercise of one of the privileges of matrimony to which lovers look forward as they labor over their love letters. But she added a second reason which betrayed the specious quality of the first, when she explained to her father that in these days of newspapers, letter writing had become a lost art, belonging to a lavender scented past like the embroidery of tapestries. She told her baby, as she rolled his round little body in her lap, that she was jealous of politics, and promised him that when the convention was over, his father would be—and here she gasped and dropped the pretense that the child could understand. She could not bear to voice, even to herself, the feeling that her husband was any less the lover that he once had been. She realized to the utmost his position, she had felt it in little sacrifices she had been compelled to make, and she knew of his utter dependence on reëlection. Here, too, was another fact that she could hardly face squarely and honestly. She clung to her old ideal of her husband as a statesman no less ardently than she clung to her old ideal of him as a lover, and she disliked to feel that he was in Congress merely as a means of livelihood. A vague discontent floated nebulously within her, but with all the adroitness of her mind she would not allow it to concrete.

“When he comes home!” she cooed to the baby, “when he comes home!”

By Saturday, the strain upon her nerves had increased, like all anxieties, in a ratio equal to the square of the distance from its moving cause. All day long she waited for news, hoping for the best, but fortifying herself by trying to believe that if the worst came, it might in the end be beneficial, because it must in time, at least, force them to some more secure temporal foundation, where they could not be disturbed by every whim of politics. She remembered that Jerome had often reminded her, though that was in moments of security and elation, that all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Her father himself suffered a sympathetic suspense and in the afternoon he journeyed down town to see if he could learn anything of what was going on at Pekin. Late in the day the Citizen hung out a bulletin saying that Garwood had been nominated on the twelve hundred and sixty-first ballot, and he hastened home, with the importance of an idle old man, longing to be the first to announce to Emily the news. But she waved her telegram gaily at him from the veranda as he hurried up the walk, and cried:

“He’s won, father! He’s won! He’s just been nominated!”

The old man, cheated of a herald’s distinction, could not resist the impulse to say:

“Why, he was nominated this morning!”

She felt a pang at these tidings of her husband’s tardiness, but she put that away in the habit she had acquired, and said:

“Oh, I know—but these telegraph companies are so slow!”

She was happy all that evening, though she denied that her own relief as to their position had aught to do with that happiness.

“He will be much more useful this term than he was before,” she told her father at supper. “Jerome always said, you know, that it took one term for a congressman to learn the ropes at Washington.”

Garwood reached home Sunday morning, and when he saw Emily waiting in the doorway something like pity for her smote him, and out of the flush of his new success he yearned toward her, so that, there in the old darkened hallway where the tender scene had been enacted so many times in other days, he folded her in his arms, and kissed her lips and her brow and her hair, and called her once more “Sweetheart.” And the happy little woman purred in his embrace, and as she hid her face against his breast, she said:

“My Jerome—my big Jerome!”

And it was all as it had been two years before. Only now, lifting her eyes to his, her face reddened with a blush as she said:

“You must come up and tell baby—he is dying to hear all about it.”

Emily vowed to Garwood that now the convention was over he must take a rest, and he was content for days to loll at home. He slept late in the morning and she bore his breakfast to him with his mail, or he stretched himself on the divan in the parlor in the afternoon while she read the newspapers to him until he would sink into slumber with the assurance that the room would be darkened and the house hushed until he chose to wake.

Pusey had nailed the party banner to his masthead as it were, and Emily read to Garwood with a laugh that could not conceal her pride the big types at the head of his editorial page:

“For Congress, Jerome B. Garwood.”

There day after day it remained, and she read it over and over, finding a certain joy in it. Pusey had printed a long editorial announcing his determination to support Garwood, and explaining with the conviction of the editorial page—where the argument is all one way, with no chance for rejoinder—his own action in voting for the candidate he had originally opposed.

“He isn’t really consistent, is he, Jerome?” Emily said after she had read the editorial aloud to her husband.

“Oh, well,” he laughed, knocking the ashes from the cigarette he was smoking, in a security he could find nowhere else in Grand Prairie, for he did not wish the town to know that he smoked cigarettes, “you know what Emerson says: ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.’”

“Yes, I remember,” the wife replied. “We used to read Emerson, didn’t we?” Her words breathed regret. “We never read any more. We seem to have no time for anything but newspapers.” And she looked askance at the disordered pile of them on the floor, and out of a sense of guilt reduced them to smaller compass.

“I wonder how Mr. Rankin did it?” she mused a moment after.

“Did what?”

“Why, induced Mr. Pusey to vote for you.”

“Rankin?” said Garwood.

“Why, yes. He did, didn’t he? I thought he did everything for you.”

Garwood sneered.

“Rankin did nothing!” he said, “Rankin’s what the boys in Chicago call a selling plater.”

“Why, I thought he did everything!” Emily repeated. “Who did then?”

“I reckon I had as much as anybody to do with it.”

“You?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“But how?”

“Oh—I took him for a walk one night—the night it stormed. Did it storm here?”

“Oh, fearfully; in the early morning—awfully! But tell me—how did you do it?”

Garwood laughed.

“Oh, I just talked to him.”

“Did you persuade him—convince him?”

“Evidently.”

Emily was silent for a moment, and her brows were knit.

“I hope—” she began, but checked herself. “I’ve often thought,” she said, beginning over, “that we ought to have Mr. Rankin and his poor little wife here to dinner. I feel guilty about them. You—we—will be good to them, won’t we?”

Garwood laughed again.

“You needn’t worry about Jim Rankin,” he said, “though I don’t know that I owe him much after his letting the delegation here in Polk get away from me. I had a hard time licking it back into line.”

It was several days after that Cowley published an article in the Chicago Courier which told of the tremendous promises that had been made at Pekin in exchange for votes. He said that Garwood had shown himself a clever politician, for he had not only been able to hold up most of the appointments in his district until after his second nomination, but he had had the help of the administration’s influence at Pekin. Cowley then proceeded to schedule the distribution of patronage that would be made; Hale for the post-office at Pekin, Bailey for Speaker of the House, and Rankin, of course, for the post-office at Grand Prairie. He could not dispose of Pusey as definitely, but it was not to be supposed that Pusey had gone to Garwood and saved him from political oblivion for nothing at all.

Emily read the article aloud to Jerome. He knew by her silence when she had finished that questions were forming in her mind. She set her lips and began shaking her head, until she produced a low “No, I don’t like that.”

“That New England conscience of yours troubling you again?” asked Garwood.

“I wish we had more New England conscience in our politics!” she replied with a wife’s severity.

“We’ve got enough of New England in our politics now!” Garwood said, with a flare of the western animosity to New England’s long domination of public affairs.

“Well,” she persisted, and he saw that her lips were growing rigid, “I think we need conscience in our politics, whether it’s New England or not.”

Garwood laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t win. A conscience, Emily, is about as great an impediment to a practical politician in these days as it is to a successful lawyer.”

“Don’t be cynical, Jerome,” she pleaded. And she thought again.

“Did you promise Hale the post-office for getting you those Tazewell County votes?”

“Of course I did,” said Garwood, “what of it?”

“I don’t like it,” said Emily.

“You don’t?”

“No, dear, I don’t.”

“What would you have me do? Give it to some fellow over there who was against me?”

“N-n-n-no,” she said, “but—”

“But what?” he went on. “You liked it when I told you I was going to—take care of Rankin, didn’t you?”

“That’s different,” she said.

“Oh, a woman’s logic!” he laughed.

“You don’t believe in buying votes, do you, Jerome?” she asked, with her lips still tense so that they showed a little line of white at the edges of their red.

“No.”

“But you do believe in buying them with offices. What’s the post-office at Pekin worth?”

“Oh, eighteen hundred, I reckon.”

“Eighteen hundred—for four years; let’s see—four eights—thirty-two; hum-m-m, four ones—three—seven; seven—thousand, isn’t it?”

“Well, you’re not very good at figures, but you’ve nearly hit it—within two hundred.”

“I never could multiply in my mind,” Emily confessed. “But you wouldn’t think it right to give a man seven thousand dollars in money for a delegation from the county, would you?”

“No,” Garwood answered, “that’s too high. You’re getting into senatorial figures now.” He laughed again.

“Do be serious, Jerome. I don’t see the difference myself.”

“No, a woman couldn’t—women never could understand politics, anyhow.”

“Well, I understand this—that I have learned a good deal about politics, and my ideas have been changed. I used to think that in this country the people arose and elected their best man to represent them, but it seems that the representative elects himself, and then the people—”

“Don’t you think the people out here elected their best man when I went in?” Garwood asked, with an honest laugh in his eyes.

She bent over impulsively and kissed him.

“Yes, I do,” she said, “but I’m speaking generally now.”

“No, you’re not,” Garwood insisted, “women can’t speak generally. It’s always a personal, concrete question with them.”

“Well, you know, Jerome, I’ve had my ideals—in politics, too, since you interested me in politics.”

“You weren’t interested in politics, you were interested in one politician, and that politician was—me.”

“Well, you—you were my ideal, and I thought of you as I thought of Patrick Henry, in the old Virginia House of Burgesses, and—”

“Oh, you haven’t thought deeply enough, my dear. Patrick had his own troubles, believe me, though they didn’t get into history. Did you ever stop to inquire how Patrick got to the House of Burgesses? It was easy enough to make speeches after he was there—that was the easiest part of it—but the getting there, it wasn’t all plain sailing then. First he had the devil’s own time getting on the delegation himself, then after he’d made himself solid, by supporting other men awhile, he had another time rounding up delegations that would support him, and there was many a man in Virginia that day, whose name is lost in darkness, who was ag’in him, and many another who went out and saw the boys and set up the pins and got the right ones on the delegation, who was thinking of some fat job in that same House of Burgesses. And take any other of the white statuesque figures of those heroic times—”

“Oh, no, Jerome, don’t—you’re too much of an iconoclast. Leave me my ideals. There’s the baby!”

She arose at the premonitory whimper that a mother’s ear detected.

XVII

RANKIN returned to Grand Prairie, from the convention, in a state of mental numbness. The thing he had gone to Pekin to do had been done, and yet he did not know how it had been done. Every one greeted him as the author of Garwood’s fortunes; his latest with the rest, and he was forced to accept congratulations to which he did not feel himself entitled. As the days went by and he saw Garwood’s name at the head of Pusey’s editorial column, and read Pusey’s articles favoring Garwood’s election, he was more than ever at a loss to account for the anomalous situation in which he found himself. Sometimes he had his doubts, for he was old enough in political ways to have acquired the politician’s distrust, and what with the whisperings of friends and the articles he had read in other newspapers he suffered a torment of suspicions which were the more agonizing because of the wrong he subconsciously felt they did Garwood. At last he went to him.

With the small energy the morning could revive in him, Rankin mounted the stairs to Garwood’s office. Garwood was opening a congressman’s mail, always large, and he looked up from his pile of letters and greeted Rankin with a—

“Well, Jim?”

Rankin, as he sat down, was sensible of the change that had come over their relations, and he grieved for the old days when he had been able to enter this office with so much more assurance. But he was not the man to dally long in sentimentalities, and he said, when he had settled into the chair and mopped his brow:

“Jerry, I’ve come to have it out.”

Garwood unfolded the letter he had just taken from its envelope. His face reddened as he bent over to read it, and he did not turn around.

“Have what out, Jim?” he asked, quietly.

“Why,” Rankin went on, “this misunderstanding.”

“What misunderstanding? I don’t know what you mean. Explain yourself.” Garwood kept on tearing open his letters.

“Oh, well,” Rankin continued, “you know it hain’t all like it used to be, that’s all. I don’t know how to say it—I just feel it, but it’s there, an’, damn it, I don’t like it.”

Rankin paused, and then when Garwood did not reply, he went on:

“I reckon it’s ’cause o’ my fallin’ down in the county convention here ’t home, an’ that’s all right; I don’t blame you fer feelin’ sore. Course, it come out all right over at Pekin—I don’t know how it was done, an’ I don’t know as I want to know—I know I didn’t have nothin’ to do ’ith it, an’ I don’t claim none o’ the credit, ner want it. I ’as glad you won out, glad as you was. I’d ’a’ give my right arm clean up to the shoulder to’ve brought it ’bout fer you myself. I didn’t do nothin’, I know. I felt kind o’ paralyzed all the time over there, after losin’ the delegation here, an’ I seemed to myself jus’ to be standin’ roun’ like any other dub that ’as on the outside. I didn’t feel in it, somehow, an’ I don’t feel in it now, that’s what’s the matter. I’ve al’ays been with you, Jerry, an’ you know it, an’ I’m with you now, but they’re tellin’ strange stories ’roun’, an’ I don’t like ’em, an’—I jus’ want to know where I stand ’ith you, that’s all.”

Garwood wheeled about in his swivel chair. He looked at Rankin a moment and then he smiled. And when he had smiled, he leaned comfortably back in his chair and placed the tips of his fingers together over his white waistcoat, and then he spoke at last, in his softest voice:

“What is it, Jim, that worries you—the post-office?”

Rankin looked him straight in the eyes.

“No, Jerry,” he said, “it ain’t so much that. I want it, o’ course, you know how I need it, an’ I want it more’n ever jus’ now, but I ain’t worried so much about that. I’ve got your word, an’ I know you never went back on it yet, to a friend, though you know, Jerry, that if it ’uld help you any, you could have your promise back, an’ give the post-office where it ’uld do the mos’ good. You know all you’d have to do ’uld be to say the word, don’t you?”

Garwood smiled again and leaned forward in his chair and laid one of his white hands on Rankin’s fat knee.

“Why, my boy,” he said, “you’ve been giving yourself a great deal of unnecessary trouble. You know me, don’t you?”

“Why, sure,” assented Rankin.

“Well, you ought to,” added Garwood, still smiling blandly, and a slight reproach was in his tone. “You should have known, Jim, that I realized you had done all in your power. I never for an instant blamed you; believe me when I say that. It only occurred to me that I could handle the little affair over at Pekin better than you could. I knew that you could never come at Pusey; I knew that you two never could agree in a thousand years, so I just took hold of it myself—not with very much hope, I confess, but I thought it worth trying. And luckily it came about all right in the end.”

“It’s all right, it’s all right, Jerry,” Rankin protested, waving his hand assuringly toward Garwood. “I only wanted to know that you felt all right about it, that’s all.” His great red face smiled on Garwood like a forgiven boy’s. But suddenly it hardened again into the face of a man.