were at length to be
made final. The conventions had met, the nominations were complete, and
the clans of four parties and fractions of parties were "meeting," and
"rallying," and "uprising," and "outpouring."

All life was strung to one high pitch. This contest was
everything,--nay, everybody,--men, women, and children. They were all
for the Constitution; they were all for the Union; and each, even
Richling, for the enforcement of--his own ideas. On every bosom, "no
matteh the sex," and no matter the age, hung one of those little round,
ribbanded medals, with a presidential candidate on one side and his
vice-presidential man Friday on the other. Needless to say that
Ristofalo's Kate, instructed by her husband, imported the earliest and
many a later invoice of them, and distributing her peddlers at choice
thronging-places, "everlastin'ly," as she laughingly and confidentially
informed Dr. Sevier, "raked in the sponjewlicks." They were exposed for
sale on little stalls on populous sidewalks and places of much entry and
exit.

The post-office in those days was still on Royal street, in the old
Merchants' Exchange. The small hand-holes of the box-delivery were in
the wide tessellated passage that still runs through the building from
Royal street to Exchange alley. A keeper of one of these little stalls
established himself against a pillar just where men turned into and out
of Royal street, out of or into this passage. One day, in this place,
just as Richling turned from a delivery window to tear the envelope of a
letter bearing the Milwaukee stamp, his attention was arrested by a man
running by him toward Exchange alley, pale as death, and followed by a
crowd that suddenly broke into a cry, a howl, a roar: "Hang him! Hang
him!"

"Come!" said a small, strong man, seizing Richling's arm and turning him
in the common direction. If the word was lost on Richling's defective
hearing, not so the touch; for the speaker was Ristofalo. The two
friends ran with all their speed through the passage and out into the
alley. A few rods away the chased wretch had been overtaken, and was
made to face his pursuers. When Richling and Ristofalo reached him there
was already a rope about his neck.

The Italian's leap, as he closed in upon the group around the victim,
was like a tiger's. The men he touched did not fall; they were rather
hurled, driving backward those whom they were hurled against. A man
levelled a revolver at him; Richling