f together, and quietly, remarked:

"I am Henry Packard."

The city's mayor! and not only that, the running candidate for governor.
I knew him well by name, even if I did not know, or rather had not
recognized his face.

"I beg pardon," I somewhat tremulously began, but he waved the coming
apology aside as easily, as he had my first attempt at ingratiation.
In fact, he appeared to be impatient of every unnecessary word. This
I could, in a dim sort of way, understand. He was at the crisis of his
fate, and so was his party. For several years a struggle had gone on
between the two nearly matched elements in this western city, which, so
far, had resulted in securing him two terms of office--possibly because
his character appealed to men of all grades and varying convictions. But
the opposite party was strong in the state, and the question whether
he could carry his ticket against such odds, and thus give hope to his
party in the coming presidential election, was one yet to be tested.
Forceful as a speaker, he was expected to reap hundreds of votes from
the mixed elements that invariably thronged to hear him, and, ignorant
as I necessarily was of the exigencies of such a campaign, I knew that
not only his own ambition, but the hopes of his party, depended on the
speeches he had been booked to make in all parts of the state. And now,
three weeks before election, while every opposing force was coming to
the surface, this trouble had come upon him. A mystery in his home and
threatened death in his heart! For he loved his wife--that was apparent
to me from the first; loved her to idolatry, as such men sometimes do
love,--often to their own undoing.

All this, the thought of an instant. Meanwhile he had been studying me
well.

"You understand my position," he commented. "Wednesday night I speak in
C---, Thursday, in R---, while she--" With an effort he pulled himself
together. "Miss--"

"Saunders," I put in.

"Miss Saunders, I can not leave her alone in the house. Some one must be
there to guard and watch--"

"Has she no mother?" I suggested in the pause he made.

"She has no living relatives, and mine are uncongenial to her."

This to save another question. I understood him perfectly.

"I can not ask any of them to stay with her," he pursued decisively.
"She would not consent to it. Nor can I ask any of her friends. That
she does not wish, either. But I can hire a companion. To that she
has already consented. That