outh of visions unfulfilled and desire unquenched.
His Eugenia could never grow old--could never alter--could never leave
the eternal sunshine of dead autumns. In his nostrils was the keen
sweetness of old-fashioned flowers, but his thoughts were not of them,
and, turning presently, he went back as he had come. It was dark when at
last he reached the judge's house and sat down to supper.

He was with the judge until midnight, when, before going to his room, he
descended the stairs and went out upon the porch. He had been thinking
of the elections three days hence, and the outcome seemed to him more
hopeful than it had done when he first came forward as a candidate. The
uncertainty was almost as great, this he granted; but behind him he
believed to be the pressure of the people's will--which the schemes of
politicians had not turned. Tuesday would prove nothing--nor had the
conventions that had been held; when the meeting of the caucus came, he
would still be in ignorance--unaware of traps that had been laid or
surprises to be sprung. It was the mark to which his ambition had
aimed--the end to which his career had faced--that now rose before him,
and yet in his heart there was neither elation nor distrust. He had done
his best--he had fought fairly and well, and he awaited what the day
might bring forth.

Above him a full moon was rising, and across the green the crooked path
wound like a silver thread, leading to the glow of a night-lamp that
burned in a sick-room. The night, the air, the shuttered houses were as
silent as the churchyard, where the tombstones glimmered, row on row.
Only somewhere on the vacant green a hound bayed at the moon.

He looked out an instant longer, and was turning back, when his eye
caught a movement among the shadows in the distant lane. A quick thought
came to him, and he kept his gaze beneath the heavy maples, where the
moonshine fell in flecks. For a moment all was still, and then into the
light came the figure of a man. Another followed, another, and another,
passing again into the dark and then out into the brightness that led
into the little gully far beyond. There was no sound except the baying
of the dog; the figures went on, noiseless and orderly and grim, from
dark to light and from light again to dark. There were at most a dozen
men, and they might have been a band of belated workmen returning to
their homes or a line of revellers that had been sobered into silence.
They might h