m."

He wrote the notes and gave them into Dudley's hands. "If they don't get
in to-morrow's issue, they must wait over till election day. It's a pity
this is Saturday--but you'll have them in, I dare say."

"Yes; I'll take them down," said Dudley. He descended in the elevator,
walking rapidly when he reached the pavement. Diggs's parting words came
back to him and he repeated them as he went. Tomorrow's was the last
paper before election day. If the speech were reported in the morning
issue and Burr's friends made no denial, there would be, as far as the
country voters were concerned, a silence of two days. The contest was
not yet decided, this he knew--it would be a close one, and a straw's
weight might turn the scales of public favour. Rann realised this too,
for he did not fling slime at men for nothing--there was a serious
purpose underneath the last act of his play. He was doing it for the
sake of those Democrats whose constituents were divided against
themselves, and he was trusting to himself to hold the votes that came
his way when the cloud should have passed from Burr again. It was all so
evident that Dudley held his breath for one brief instant. The whole
scheme lay bare before him--he had but to drop these letters into the
nearest box, and Rann's purpose would be fulfilled. In the howl of
reprobation that followed the hounding of Burr his own hour would come.
And granted that the governor was cleared before the meeting of the
caucus--well, men are easier to keep than to win--and he might not be
cleared after all.

A clock near at hand struck the hour. He raised his head and saw the
"Standard" office across the street--and the temptation passed as
swiftly as it had come. The instinct of generations was stronger than
the appeal of the moment--he might sin a great sin, but he could never
commit a meanness.

With sudden energy he crossed the street and ran up the stairs.

V

Again he was returning to Kingsborough. The familiar landscape rushed by
him on either side--green meadow and russet woodland, gray swamp and
dwarfed brown hill, unploughed common and sun-ripened field of corn. It
was like the remembered features of a friend, when the change that
startles the unaccustomed eye seems to exist less in the well-known face
than in the image we have carried in our thoughts.

It was all there as it had been in his youth--the same and yet not the
same. The old fields were tilled, the old lands ran w