f every loyal citizen of Warwick as the true umbilicus of
the visible universe.

In the eyes of Llewellyn Leigh, however, the place had no such mystic
significance. On the afternoon following the visit of Miss Wycliffe to
the tower, he had walked hither from the college, down the long,
winding street on whose well-worn pavements the yellowing leaves of the
elms threw a sheen like gold. He had noted many a colonial house built
close to the sidewalk in the original New England fashion; he had seen
glimpses of deep back gardens; but his appreciative attitude of the
previous afternoon was gone, giving way to mild melancholy, such a mood
as is sometimes induced by the perusal of an old romance dear to the
youth of one's grandparents. The experience of the previous night had
some hand in this disillusion. Some of the dissatisfaction with which
it had left him still hung about his spirit, and drove him on in a
vague search for diversion. He stood in front of the City Hall and
watched the open cars go by, then took one, almost at random, that bore
the label of Evergreen Park. As soon as he had swung himself aboard,
he found that he was sitting beside Emmet, and the meeting was not
altogether welcome in his present self-absorption. Emmet also seemed
somewhat subdued as he asked him his destination, but he suspected that
this impression might be merely a reflection of himself.

"I 'm going wherever this car goes," he answered. "Evergreen Park, is
n't it? I 'm gradually exploring the surrounding country, and one
direction will do as well as another. But where are you bound for?"

"Politics," Emmet said briefly. Whether he had left the tower the
previous evening with a sore heart and was inclined to identify his new
friend with his old enemy, or whether he was merely occupied with his
own thoughts, Leigh now felt that his manner really exhibited some
constraint. He was a man of keen intuitions, and divined a
sensitiveness on his companion's part in regard to the rather
inglorious figure he had cut, in spite of Miss Wycliffe's openly
expressed interest. After all, might not this interest of hers savour
of ostentatious patronage? At this thought he experienced a kind of
fellow-feeling for the candidate, a change of emotion which his manner
was quick to register. His interest in politics was the academic
interest of the typical Mugwump he had confessed himself to be, and too
much confined to an occasional vote of prot