eliably informed, has less than forty inhabitants."

Jimmy Grayson showed no resentment, but smiled gravely.

"Of course Mr. Harley understands that all this is _sub rosa_," said Mr.
Goodnight, looking severely at the correspondent.

"Mr. Harley knows it, and he is to be trusted entirely," said Jimmy
Grayson. "Otherwise I should not have brought him with me. I vouch for
the fact that he will say nothing of this meeting until we give him
permission."

Mr. Grayson presently excused himself, on the plea that he needed sleep,
a plea which was admitted by everybody, and Harley also withdrew, while
the members of the committee went to their private car pleased with the
evening's work. Thus the Great Philipsburg Conference came to an end.

The candidate and Harley walked together to their rooms through a rather
dim hall, but it was not too dim to hide from Harley a singular
expression that passed over the face of the candidate. It was gone like
a flash, but it seemed to Harley to be a compound of anger and
anticipation. Wisely he kept silent, and Jimmy Grayson, stopping a
moment at his own door, said, in the grave but otherwise expressionless
tone that he had used throughout the discussion:

"Good-night, Harley; I don't think we shall forget this evening, shall
we?"

"No," replied Harley, and he tried to decipher a meaning in Jimmy
Grayson's tone, but he could not.

When Harley turned away, he found Hobart, Blaisdell, Churchill, and all
the other correspondents waiting for him at the end of the hall to get
the news of the conference.

"There is nothing, not a line," said Harley.

They looked at him incredulously.

"It is the truth, I assure you," continued Harley. "I am not sending a
word to my own paper. I am going straight to my bed."

"If you say so, Harley, I believe you," said Churchill. "Besides, it's
past one o'clock now, and that's past four o'clock in New York and past
three in Chicago; all the papers have gone to press, and we couldn't
send anything if we wanted to do so."

"There is nothing to tell you," said Harley, "except that Mr. Grayson
will allude to the tariff in his speech to-morrow, or, rather, this
morning, at Waterville. He has promised the committee not to do so
again--they were not very willing to grant him even so little--but it is
a sort of sop to Cerberus; later on, if any one twits him with avoiding
the revision, he can say, and say truthfully, that he has spoken on it."

"I see," s