The air was crisp and blowy, and the earth, new-washed by the rain, took on some of the tints of spring green, despite the lateness of the season. Harley, relaxed from the tension of the night before, leaned back in his seat and enjoyed the tonic breeze. No one of the three had much to say; all were in meditation, and the quiet and loneliness of the morning seemed to promote musing. They drove some miles across the rolling prairie without seeing a single house, but at last the driver pointed to a flickering patch of gold on the western horizon.

 

"That," said he, "is the weather-vane on the cupola of the new court-house, and in another hour we'll be in town. I guess your people will be glad to see you, Mr. Grayson."

 

"And I shall be glad to see them," said the candidate. A few minutes later he turned to the correspondent.

 

"Harley," he asked, "will you send anything to your paper about last night?"

 

"I have to do so," replied Harley, with a slight note of apology in his tone--this had not been his personal doing. "For a presidential candidate to get lost on the prairie in the dark and the storm, and then spend the night in a house in which only his presence of mind and eloquence prevent a murder, that is news--news of the first importance and the deepest interest. I am bound not only to send a despatch about it, but the despatch must be very long and full. And I suppose, too, that I shall have to tell it to the other fellows when we reach the town."

 

The candidate sighed.

 

"I know you are right," he said, "but I wish you did not have to do it. The story puts me in a sensational light. It seems as if I were turning aside from the great issues of a campaign for personal adventure."

 

"It was forced upon you."

 

"So it was, but that fact does not take from it the sensational look."

 

Harley was silent. He knew that Mr. Grayson's point was well made, but he knew also that he must send the despatch.

 

The candidate made no further reference to the subject, and five minutes later they saw horsemen rise out of the plain and gallop towards them. As Harley had said, a presidential nominee was not lost in the dark and the storm every night, and this little Western town was mightily perturbed when Mr. Grayson failed to arrive. The others had come in safely, but already all the morning newspapers of the country had published the fact that the candidate was lost, swallowed up somewhere on the dark prairie. And Mr. Grayson's instinct was correct, too, because mingled with the wonder and speculation was much criticism. It was boldly said in certain supercilious circles that he had probably turned aside on an impulse to look after some minor matter, perhaps something that was purely personal that had nothing to do with the campaign. Churchill, late the night before, had sent to the _Monitor_ a despatch written in his most censorious manner, in that vein of reluctant condemnation that so well suited his sense of superiority. He was loath to admit that the candidate was proving inadequate to his high position, but the circumstances indicated it, and the proof was becoming cumulative. He also sent a telegram to the Honorable Mr. Goodnight, in New York, and the burden of it was the need of a restraining force, a force near at hand, and able to meet every evil with instant cure.

 

But the Western horsemen who met Jimmy Grayson--they clung to their affectionate "Jimmy"--were swayed by no such emotions. They repeated a shout of welcome, and wanted to know how and where he had passed the night, to all of which questions the candidate, with easy humor, returned ready and truthful replies, although he did not say anything for the present about the adventure of the old man and of the young one who was now the old one's son-in-law.

 

The driver took them straight towards a large and attractive hotel, and it seemed to Harley that half the population of the town was out to see the triumphant entry of the candidate. With all the attention of the crowd centred upon one man, Harley was able to slip quietly through the dense ranks and enter the hotel, where he fell at once into the hands of Sylvia Morgan. She came forward to meet him, impulsively holding out her hands, the light of welcome sparkling in her eyes.

 

"We did not know what had become of you," she exclaimed. "We feared that you had got lost in the quicksands of the river." And then, with a sudden flush, she added, somewhat lamely, "We are all so glad that Uncle James has got back safely."

 

Harley had read undeniable relief and welcome in her eyes, and it gave him a peculiar thrill, a thrill at first of absolute and unthinking joy, followed at once by a little catch. Before him rose the square and massive vision of "King" Plummer, and he had an undefined sense of doing wrong.

 

"We've brought him back safely," he said, after slight hesitation. "We spent the night very comfortably in a farm-house on the prairie."

 

She noticed his hesitation, and her eyes became eager.

 

"I do believe that you have had an adventure," she exclaimed. "I know that you have; I know by your look. You must tell it to me at once."

 

"We have had an adventure," admitted Harley, "and there is no reason why I shouldn't tell you of it, as in a few hours a long account of it written by me will be going eastward."

 

"I am waiting."

 

Harley began at once with his narrative, and they became absorbed in it, he in the telling and she in the hearing. While he talked and she listened "King" Plummer approached. Now the "King" in these later few days had begun to study the ways of women, in so far as his limited experience enabled him to do so, a task to which he had never turned his attention before in his life. But the words of Mrs. Grayson rankled; they kept him unhappy, they disturbed his self-satisfaction, and made him apprehensive for the future. He had been in the crowd that welcomed Jimmy Grayson, he had shaken the candidate's hand effusively, and now, when he entered the hotel, he found Sylvia Morgan welcoming John Harley.

 

"King" Plummer did not like what he saw; it gave him his second shock, and he paused to examine the two with a yellow eye, and a mind reluctant to admit certain facts, among them the most obvious one, that they were a handsome couple, and of an age. And this was a fact that did not give the "King" pleasure. He did not dislike Harley; instead, he appreciated his good qualities, but just then he regarded him with an unfriendly glance; that reality of youth annoyed him. There was a glass on the other side of the room, and the "King" looked at his own reflection. He saw a large, powerful head and broad, strong features, the whole expressing a man at the height of his powers, at the very flood-tide of his strength. But it was not young. The hair was iron-gray, and there were many deep lines in the face--not unhandsome lines, yet they were lines.

 

"With all his shameless youth," were the "King's" unuttered thoughts, "I could beat him at anything, except, perhaps, scribbling. I could live and prosper where he would starve to death." And surging upon the "King" came the memories of his long, triumphant, and joyous struggle with wild nature. Then he approached the couple, and greeted Harley with the good-nature that was really a part of him. Sylvia, with shining eyes, told at second hand, though not with diminished effect, the story of the night, and "King" Plummer was loud in his ap............