over them. Jimmy Grayson must
feel that while he idled about his own home the ballots were falling in
the boxes off to the East and to the West by the hundred thousand, and
his own fate was being decided.

Harley and Sylvia, after the greetings and the casual talk, slipped away
from the others. There was a little glass-covered piazza at the back of
the house, and there they sat.

"Now you must tell me all that you have been doing since I left you."

"Nothing worth the telling. How could anything interesting happen after
you had gone? But I've been doing some fine thinking."

"Of what?"

"Of you!--always you! I've had to tear up the first page of many of my
despatches."

"Why?"

"Because I would address them to Sylvia instead of to the _Gazette_."

"John, I didn't know that you had imagination."

"It isn't imagination; I don't need imagination when I'm near you or
thinking of you, which is all the time."

"And you are going to marry a Western girl, after all?" irrelevantly.

"I wouldn't marry any other kind, and there is only one of them that I
would marry."

They did not speak again for a half-minute, but what they said was
relevant.

But the best of times must come to an end, even if it is merely to give
way to another good time, and Harley could not remain long at the
candidate's house, but strolled with Blaisdell and two or three others
through the city. He, too, had a sense of helplessness in regard to the
campaign. Like Jimmy Grayson, he was now condemned to a period of
inaction, and, strive as he might, he could not aid his friend a
particle. They went to the local headquarters of the party--two parlors
of the largest hotel in the city.

The rooms, which had been thrown together, were packed with men and
thick with tobacco-smoke, making the air heavy and hot. News there was
none, but clouds of rumor and gossip. The telegraph said bad weather,
cold and raw, with gusts of rain, prevailed all over the United States,
but that an enormous vote was being polled, nevertheless. In all the
booths in all the great cities long lines of people were waiting, and
reports of the same character were coming from the country districts.
But with the secret ballot there was nothing whatever to indicate which
way this vote was being cast, nor would there be until the polls were
closed and the official count was begun. It was said that in many of the
precincts of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia more than half the