say it's a tie--a tie!"

For the news was already bruited throughout the town--in a ferment of
excitement, because of the closeness of the contest--that the two
candidates, racing gallantly neck and neck, had come under the wire
together with not so much as the point of a nose to distinguish the
winner.

Walter stood still for a moment, his dark eyes dilated with eagerness
and anxiety. Suddenly he leaned back against the gate-post with a deep
sigh of relief and relaxation.

"Then it's all right," he exclaimed breathlessly. "The coroner's my
frien', ef I ain't got another in the worl'. Old Beckett will stan' by
me, _sure_!"

As the coroner held the election, the sheriff himself being a
candidate, it was his duty to give the casting vote. This
prolongation of the jeopardy of the result heightened the popular
interest, the more as the officer did not immediately decide upon his
action in the matter.

"I want a leetle time ter think it over--a leetle time fur the casting
vote," he said, as he gnawed at a plug of tobacco, then crossed his
ponderous legs while he leaned back in a splint-bottomed chair in the
register's office.

He was a tall, portly man, with a large, round imperious face,
thatched heavily with iron-gray hair. He wore no beard, and was
dressed in brown jeans, which imparted a certain sallowness to his
dark complexion. He had small gray eyes, at once shrewd and
good-natured, but his manner was bluff, imperative, and all the
judiciary of the State could hardly have compassed an expression of a
greater sense of importance.

He was observed with much interest by a number of men who lounged
about the room. A tense sub-current of curiosity underlay the suspense
natural to the occasion, for it was well known to the gossips about
the court-house that he and the sheriff had not been on the best of
terms; when their official functions had happened to bring them into
contact they had clashed smartly, and the county rang with their
feuds. His course was obvious to all--his hesitation only an
affectation, lest a too vehement animosity be imputed to him.

"Poor Quigley's cake is dough," observed one of the incumbent's
friends in an undertone, standing with his hands in his pockets, and
gazing through the long dark vista of the hall out of the door into
the sunlight's glow, as it fell upon the few houses and the great
stretch of arable land beyond. A horizontal shadow of a cloud lay at
its extremity, as definit