ut poor Raoul Tegot could not be seen.

Where was he? The people waited and wondered, but he did not come.
Monsieur Baptiste Lacombe was greatly excited, and was wiping the
perspiration from his heated face. "Perhaps he was afraid to come,"
he ventured to remark to a man near him, at the same time looking
out of a window.

Several noticed his agitation; but they only said, "Ah, mon Dieu,
how he did play! No wonder that he is nervous."

The disquiet and confusion in the nave and aisles increased.

A messenger had been sent to look for the missing man; but he could
not be found.

What was to be done?

Finally, some friends of Monsieur Lacombe made bold to urge his
immediate election, declaring that he had far surpassed all
competitors; and they even hinted at cowardice on the part of Raoul
Tegot.

This insinuation was indignantly denied by Tegot's friends, who were
very numerous but helpless; they knew their friend too well to
believe him capable of such conduct. He was, they said, probably
detained somewhere by an accident.

But, wherever he was, he was _not_ present; and when a vote was
taken, hastily, by a showing of hands, Monsieur Baptiste Lacombe had
ten times as many ballots as any other person, and, of course, poor
Monsieur Tegot, not having competed, was not balloted for at all.

The people dispersed to their homes; some in vexation that their
favorite had not appeared, others in a little alarm at his strange
absence. Young Francois Tegot had not seen his father since early
morning, and could not conjecture where he might be.

The next day the missing organist did not appear, and his friends
began to inquire and to search for him; but they were wholly
unsuccessful. A little boy said that he had seen him go into the
church with Monsieur Lacombe early that morning; but Monsieur
Lacombe said, very distinctly and with some vehemence, that the
missing man had left the church an hour later to go to a cottage at
the edge of the town, where he was to give a lesson in singing.

So the affair lay wrapped in mystery. There were many surmises, but
nothing definite was known. A few expressed suspicion of the rival
candidate; but the suspicion was too great to be thrown rashly upon
anybody. Thus no progress in the inquiry was made. A human life did
not mean so much in those stormy days after the Revolution as
formerly; and the mysteri