things certain, his criminal hopes might
not have soared so high! Had he known how his every step was shadowed by
the sleepless Inspector Val, and that what the latter did not surmise
was invariably told him by Steamboat Dan, his horrid confidence would
have been less insolent in its anticipations!

Mayhap there be those among you who have "punched" the casual cow, and
whose beef-wanderings included the drear wide-stretching waste yclept
the Texas Panhandle. If so you have noted, studded hither and yon about
the scene, certain conical hillocks or mountainettes of sand. Those
dwarf sand-mountains were born of the labor of the winds, which in those
distant regions are famous for persistent, not to say pernicious
industry. Given a right direction, the wind in its sand-drifting will
build you one of those sand-cones almost while you wait. The sand-cone
will grow as a stocking grows beneath the clicking needles of some
ancient dame. Again, the wind, reversing in the dance, will unravel the
sand-cone and carry it off to powder it about the plain. The sand-cone
will vanish in a night, as it came in a night, and what was its site
will be swept as flatly clean as any threshing floor.

Thus was it with Senator Hanway on a certain fateful day in May, and
less than a fortnight before the coming together of the convention which
should pass on the business of a Presidential candidate. Compared with
that other sand-cone of politics, to wit, Governor Obstinate, Senator
Hanway outtopped him as a tree outtops a shrub. In a moment the
situation, so flattering to Senator Hanway, was changed disastrously.
Those winds which builded him into the most imposing sand-cone of all
that dotted the plains of party had shifted, and with mournful effect.
Senator Hanway, beneath their erosive influence, shrunk from a certainty
to a probability, from a probability to a possibility, and then wholly
disappeared. And this disheartening miracle was worked before the eyes
of Senator Hanway, and before the eyes of his friends; and yet no one
might stay the calamity in its fulfillment. The amazing story, avoiding
simile and figure, may be laid open in a handful of sentences.

On that dread day, which you are to keep in memory, nothing could have
been brighter than the prospects of Senator Hanway. The national
delegates, some nine hundred odd, had been selected--each State naming
its quota--and waited only the appointed hour to come together and frame
the par