nce was a ghost of a chance, and his friends,
sons, and relatives, toiling headstrong by night and day, were brought
up at the verge of despair. To make the situation even more difficult,
St. John himself was prostrated with the gout, so that his telling
oratory and commanding personality could not be brought to bear.
Margaret was never far from her father's side, and she worked like a dog
for him, writing to dictation till her hands became almost useless, and
when the spasms of pain were great, leaving her work to kiss his old
brow.

It was at this time that people all over the State began to take up a
song with an inimitably catching tune. The words of this song held up
Mr. Bispham in so shrewdly true and farcically humorous a light that
even his own star began to titter and threatened to slip from its high
place in the heavens. The song fell so absolutely on the head of
the nail that Mr. Bispham, when he heard it for the first time, was
convulsed with anger and talked of horse-whips. The second time he heard
it, he drew himself up with dignity and pretended not to notice, and
the third time he broke into a cold sweat, for he began to be afraid of
those words and that tune. At a mass-meeting, while in the midst of a
voluble harangue, somebody in the back of the hall punctuated--an absurd
statement, which otherwise might have passed unnoticed, by whistling the
first bar of the song. Mr. Bispham faced the tittering like a man, and
endeavored to rehabilitate himself. But his hands had slipped on the
handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not
have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact
by the hostile and ready-witted whistler. Again Mr. Bispham absurded.
This time the tune broke out in all parts of the hall and was itself
punctuated by catcalls and sotto-voce insults delivered with terrific
shouts. Mr. Bispham's speech was hurriedly finished, and the peroration
came down as flat as a skater who tries a grape-vine for the first time.
He left the hall hurriedly, pale and nervous. The tune followed him down
the street and haunted him to his room. The alarming takingness of it
had gotten in at his ear, and as he was savagely undressing he caught
himself in the traitorous act of humming it to himself.

Among others to leave the hall was a tall, slim young man with freckles
across the bridge of his nose and very bright blue eyes. A party of
young men accompanied him, and