pon one's ease of manner.

He saw many of the people--it was a curious manifestation--reach out and
touch the candidate's sleeve lightly as he passed. But Mr. Grayson, if
he knew it, took no notice and marched straight ahead, all expression
discharged from his face. Harley saw that this was the disguise eminent
public men must assume upon occasions, and he was willing that they
should keep the task.

When the great iron gate leading to his train was closed behind him,
Harley felt a mighty sense of relief. It seemed to him that he had run a
gantlet not much inferior to that through which the Indians put the
captive backwoodsmen, and the dark-red walls of the car rose before him
a fortress of safety.

It was an ordinary Pullman, and Mr. and Mrs. Grayson had not secured the
drawing-room, but the usual berths like Harley's, and he joined them in
their seats. He felt now a certain pleasure in the situation. The
pressure of circumstances was making him, in a sense and for the time
being, a member of their family. He was glad that the other
correspondents would wait to join the candidate at his home, as it gave
him a greater chance to establish those personal relations needful on a
long campaign that must be made together.

The whistle blew, the train moved, and they passed through miles of
city, and then through suburbs growing thinner until they melted away
into the clean, green prairie, and Harley, opening the window, was glad
to breathe the unvexed air that came across a thousand miles of the
West. He leaned back in his seat and luxuriously watched the quietly
rolling country, tender with the breath of spring, as it spun past.
That mighty West of which he had thought so little seemed to reach out
with its arms and invite him, and he was glad to go.

Presently he was aware of an unusual movement of people down the aisles
of the car, accompanied by a certain slowing of the pace when they
passed the seats in which the Graysons and he sat. They were coming from
the other cars, too, and now and then the aisle would choke up a little,
but in a moment the shifting figures would relieve it, and the endless
procession of faces moved on.

The Graysons, following Harley's example, were gazing out of the window
at the cheerful country, but the correspondent knew that Mr. Grayson was
fully conscious of this human stream, and that he himself was the cause
of it. Yet he lost none of his good temper even when some, venturing
furthe