atter came true, circumstances might give them
another appearance.

Churchill skirmished as delicately as he could about the subject of
Sylvia and the surmise that she was the key to the situation, which, if
true, would make one of the greatest stories told in a newspaper; but
here the candidate was impervious. Not only was he impervious, but he
seemed to be densely ignorant; all the hints of Churchill glided off him
like arrows from a steel breast-plate, all the most delicate and skilful
art of the interviewer failed. So far as concerned the subject of
politics, Sylvia was unknown to Mr. Grayson. Baffled upon this
interesting point, Churchill retired to write his interview; but as he
rested his pad upon the car-seat and sharpened his pencil he flung out a
feeler or two.

"I say, Hobart," he said to the mystery man, who sat just in front of
him, "I think there's something at the bottom of this Plummer revolt
that we haven't probed. Now, isn't it the truth that Miss Morgan has
thrown him over, and that he is taking his revenge on her uncle?"

Hobart glanced up the car, and noticed that Harley was not within
hearing. Then he replied, gravely:

"Churchill, I don't believe that Miss Morgan has broken her engagement
with the 'King'--she'll marry him yet if he says so--but I do believe
that she has some connection with this affair. What it is, I don't know,
and I'm mighty glad that I don't have to speak of it in my despatches;
it's too intangible."

But Churchill was not so scrupulous. Without giving any names, he wove
into his four-thousand-word despatch a very beautiful and touching
romance, in which Jimmy Grayson figured rather badly--in fact, somewhat
as an evil genius--and the _Monitor_, dealing in the fine vein of irony
which it considered its strongest card, wrote scornfully of a campaign
into which personal issues were obtruding to such an extent that they
were shattering it. The _Monitor_ still affected to see some good in Mr.
Grayson, but put the bad in such high relief that the good merely set it
off, like those little patches that ladies wear on their faces. And the
mystery of the Plummer bolt, involving a young and beautiful woman, just
hinted at in the despatches, heightened the effect of the story. "King"
Plummer himself appeared to the reading public as a martyr, and even to
many old partisans party rebellion seemed in this case honorable and
heroic.

For a day or so Harley scarcely spoke to any one, an