s seat as if he did
not know what to do, but his apprehension did not last long.

The candidate appeared, coming forward with a steady step, his face pale
and apparently inexpressive; but Harley could see that the eyes, usually
so calm, were lighted up by a fire from within. Suddenly all his fear
for Grayson sank away; it came upon him with the finality of a lightning
flash that here was a man who would not fail, and by an unknown impulse
he looked from the candidate to the box in which Miss Morgan sat. She
seemed to have read his faith in his eyes, for a look of relief, even
joy, came over her face.

This intuition of the two was justified, as the candidate did not have
to conquer his audience. He held it in his spell from the opening
sentence; the golden and compelling oratory, afterwards so famous, was
here poured before the greater world for the first time. Harley listened
to the periods, smooth but powerful, and he could not throw off their
charm; some things were said of which he was not sure, and others with
which he positively disagreed, but for the time they all seemed true.
Jimmy Grayson believed them--there could be no doubt of it; every word
was tinged with the vivid hue of sincerity--that was why they held the
audience in a spell that it could not escape; these were convictions,
not arguments that he was speaking, and the people received them as
such. Moreover, he was always clear and direct, he had a Greek precision
of speech, and there was none in the audience who could not follow him.

Harley, no orator himself, had in the course of his profession heard
much oratory, some good, much bad, and even now he struggled against the
charm of Grayson's voice and manner, and sought to see what lay behind
them. Was there back of this golden veil any great originating or
executive power, or was he, like so many others who speak well, a voice
and nothing more? An orator might win the Presidency of the United
States, but his gift would not necessarily qualify him to administer the
office. It was a tribute to Harley's power of will or detachment that he
was able at such a time to ask himself such a question.

But he forgot these after-thoughts in the pleasurable sympathy that his
view of the candidate's wife and niece aroused. Their faces were
illumined with joy. Feeling his spell so strongly themselves, they knew
without looking that the audience felt it, too, and the evening could be
no fuller for them. Here he wa