rawn to the drawing-room, and all the
correspondents were deep in their work, as it would be necessary to send
very long despatches to the great cities that day.

Harley wrote five or six thousand words full of fire and zeal. As usual,
he wrote from the "inside," and his was not a bare record of facts; one
reading it, though three thousand miles away, was upon the scene
himself; everything passed before him alive; he saw the heroic figure of
the candidate thundering forth his denunciation; he knew all that it
cost, the full penalty, and he shared the stern impulse which such a
speaker in such a situation must feel; he, too, saw the astonishment on
the faces of the committee, astonishment followed by fear and rage, and
he shared also the noble thrill that must come to a man who had lost all
save honor, but was proud in the losing. Harley was always a good
writer, but now as he wrote he saw every word burning before him, so
intense were his feelings, and even across the United States he
communicated the same thrill to those who read.

His despatch brought from his abrupt editor the one word "Splendid!" and
it attracted marked attention not only wherever the _Gazette_ went, but
where also went the numerous journals into which it was copied.
Everybody who read it said, "What a magnificent figure Jimmy Grayson
is!" and the impression was deepened and widened by other writers on the
train who were inferior in powers only to Harley. In this his day of
great disaster the candidate was to find that there were friends who
were truly bound to him with "hooks of steel." Nor was he ungrateful.
The moisture rose in his eyes when he first heard of their accounts,
and in privacy he confided to his wife that he did not know how to thank
them.

"If I were you I should not say anything," she advised. "They will like
it better if you don't."

And he did not.

Now the campaign took on a new phase. Even in the beginning it had
differed from any other ever waged in America, and since the Philipsburg
conference that difference, already great, increased. It was permeated
throughout by the personal element, party platforms sank into the
background, and in the foreground stood the titanic figure of Jimmy
Grayson fighting single-handed against a host of foes.

His hero appealed more powerfully than ever to Harley; every sympathy
within him was aroused by this lone figure who stood like Horatius at
the bridge--the old simile was always comin