obacco-scented
room that Neil knew so well.

"Tell Everard to come," Ward's voice had said. "He's to come down here,
to Saxon's office. I'm there now. Theodore Burr has shot himself. Yes,
shot himself. He won't live through the night. Who's this talking to me?
Neil Donovan, it's you. What are you doing at Everard's? Never mind.
Come down here yourself. Come straight down. Theodore's conscious, and
talking, and he's been asking for you."

CHAPTER TWENTY

Green River was getting ready for the rally in Odd Fellows' Hall. It was
six o'clock on the evening of the seventeenth of September, and "Grand
rally, Odd Fellows' Hall, September Seventeenth at eight-thirty," had
been featured for weeks in the Green River _Record_, on the list that
with a somewhat arrogant suggestion of prophetic powers possessed by the
_Record_ was headed "Coming Events." It was always a scanty list,
especially in the fall, when ten, twenty, thirty companies began to play
larger centres, and church lawn parties and circuses could no longer
appear on it. Sometimes not more than six events were to come in a gray
and workaday world. But six were enough to announce. Even a true prophet
is not expected to see all the future, only to see clearly all that he
sees, and the _Record_ did that.

This rally was important enough to be listed all by itself, and it did
not need the adjective grand. It was The Rally.

It was Green River's own--a local, almost a family, affair. No
out-of-town celebrities were to be imported this time, to be listened
to with awe and then wined and dined by the Colonel safe from the
curious eyes of the town. This time old Joe Grant was to preside, as he
had done as a matter of course on all such occasions when he was the
acknowledged head of the town in political and financial matters, in the
old days of high-sounding oratory and simpler politics that were gone
forever, but were not very long ago. Judge Saxon, an old timer, too, and
better loved than the Honourable Joe, had declined the honour of
presiding, but had the authentic offer of it, his first distinction of
the kind for years.

It was a local but very important occasion. It was Colonel Everard's
first official appearance as candidate for mayor. It was to be a very
modest appearance. No more time was allotted for his speech than for
Luther Ward's. He was putting himself on a level with Luther and the
Judge and the Honourable Joe and identifying himself at last with