rom sticking those little pins into him. Sylvia Morgan, despite
herself, drew him on, not the less because his first feeling towards her
had been one of hostility. She had a piquant touch, a manner full of
unconscious allurement--the radiation of a pure soul, though it
was--that he had never seen in any other woman, and the harder he fought
against it, the more surely it conquered him. He took from his valise a
copy of that old Chicago newspaper, with her picture on the front page,
and wondered how he could have intimated that she was the cause of its
being there. As he knew her better, he knew that she could not have done
it, and he knew, too, that she would have scornfully resented any
insinuation of having done so by refusing to deny it.

The "King" was unhappy, too, in his way, and that was very bad indeed
for him. He had tried an effusive gallantry, and it did not seem to
succeed any better than obedience to his own impulses--on the whole,
rather worse; and now, not knowing what else to do, he sulked. It was
not any sly sulking, but genuine, open sulking in his large, Western
way, thus leaving it apparent to all that the great "King" Plummer was
sad. And that meant much to the party, because in a sense it was now
personally conducted by him. In his joyous mood, which was his usual
mood until the present, he had a large and pervasive personality that
was a wonderful help to travel and social intercourse. They missed his
timely, if now and then a trifle rough, jests, his vast knowledge of the
mountains, which had some good story of every town to which they came,
and his infinite zest and humor, which also communicated more zest and
humor to every one with him. It was a grievous day for them all when
"King" Plummer began to mourn. More than one guessed the cause, but
wisely they refrained from any attempt to remove it. They could do
nothing but endure the gloom in silence, until the clouds passed, as
they hoped they would pass.

The candidate, too, was troubled, and sought the privacy of the special
car's drawing-room more than usual. Sylvia Morgan had given him a hint
that attacks upon him from a certain source were likely to be renewed,
and, moreover, would increase in virulence. He soon found that she was
right, as the copies of the _Monitor_ that they now obtained were
frankly cynical and unbelieving. All of its despatches from the West,
Churchill's as well as others, were depreciatory. The candidate was
invariab