here were several
anterooms. He appropriated an empty one, hanging his hat on a hook.

"Not an elaborate lay-out for a candidate, Thelismer," he remarked,
pleasantly, "but headquarters to-day is where we hang up our hat."

"Vard, you don't mean to tell me--seriously, at this hour--that you mean
to be a candidate?" Thornton had put aside his anger. That had been
bitter and quick ire, because his grandson had seemed so blind to his
own personal interests. There was solicitude now in the old man's air.

"I got you into this myself," he went on. "I coaxed you in, for the
situation was right and ripe. You kicked it over yourself. I haven't any
compunctions, Vard. I stayed with you just as long as I could stay. But
I'll be dod-jimmed if I'll shove a Governor onto my party that's a
hybrid of Socialist and angel. Now you can't swing this thing. Everett's
got it buttoned. I tell you he has! You're too big a man, to-day, to get
before that convention and be thrown down. I've got a better line on the
situation than you have. Vard, let's not have this come up between us at
our time of life. It's bad--it's bad!"

"It _is_ bad," returned the General, quietly; "but not for me! And it's
too late to stop. I'm going through with it, Thelismer."

There was dignity--a finality of decision--that checked further
argument. Thornton shifted gaze from Waymouth to his grandson, started
to say more, snapped his jaws shut, and walked away.

The door of the anteroom afforded a view across the stage. The hour had
arrived. The secretary of the State Committee appeared from the wings
and waited until the delegates were in their seats and quiet. He read
the call, and then the temporary organization was promptly effected, the
tagged delegates popping up here and there and making the motions that
had been entrusted to them.

A clergyman invoked Divine blessing, praying fulsomely and long,
beseeching that the delegates would be guided by the higher will in
their deliberations.

"It's the only prayer I ever find amusing--God pardon me!" whispered the
General at Harlan's side, watching the preliminaries. "To call a State
convention, as the machine runs it, a deliberative body is a sad jest of
some magnitude. The managers intend to hold the real convention the
night before in the State Committee's headquarters at the hotel. But
to-day I hope that prayer proves prophetic."

He studied the faces on the platform. The United States Senator, smug
and no