wife stayed quietly in their
rooms at the hotel.

Harley had believed this evening that the nomination of Grayson was at
hand. It was an intuitive sense, a sort of premonition that the
battalions were closing in for the final conflict, and he did not doubt
the result. He had just returned from a war on the other side of the
world, where he had been present as the correspondent of a great New
York journal on many battle-fields, and he often noticed this strained,
breathless feeling that the moment had come, just before the combat was
joined. Now this convention-hall was none the less a battle-field though
the weapons were ballots, not bullets, and Harley believed in his
intuition. At midnight the flood-tide swept in, bearing Grayson on its
crest, and, when they saw that he was the man, everybody flocked to him,
making the nomination unanimous by a rising vote.

Harley now stood a moment at the door, listening to the cheers as they
swelled again, then he stepped out and ran swiftly down the street. A
fat policeman, taking him for a fleeing pickpocket, shouted to him to
stop, but he flitted by and was gone.

It was only two or three blocks to the hotel, where Mr. Grayson sat
quietly in his room, and Harley was running swiftly, but in the minute
or two that elapsed much passed through his mind. After his long stay
abroad he had returned with a renewed sense, not alone of the power and
might of his own country, but also of its goodness; it was here, and
here alone, that all careers were open to all; nowhere else in the world
could a relatively obscure young lawyer have been put forward, and
peacefully, too, for the headship of ninety million people. It was this
thought that thrilled him, and it was why he wished to be the first who
should tell the young lawyer of it. He had made the acquaintance of
Jimmy Grayson the day before; the two had talked for a while about
public questions, and each had felt that it was the beginning of a
friendship, so he had no hesitation now in making himself an unannounced
herald.

He ran into the hotel, darted up the stairway--Jimmy Grayson's rooms
were on the first floor--and knocked at the door of the nominee. A light
shone from the transom, and he heard a quick, strong step approaching.
Then the door was thrown open by Mr. Grayson himself, and Mrs. Grayson,
who stood in the centre of the room, looked with inquiry at the
correspondent.

"Why, Mr. Harley, I'm glad to see you," said Mr. Gr