n' to talk to us."

The Honorable Heman faced the excited crowd. One hand was in the breast
of his frock coat; the other was clenched upon his hip. He stood calm,
benignant, dignified--the incarnation of wisdom and righteous worth. The
attitude had its effect; the applause began and grew to an ovation.
Men who had intended voting against his favored candidate forgot their
intention, in the magnetism of his presence, and cheered. He bowed and
bowed again.

"Fellow townsmen," he began, "far be it from me to influence your choice
in the matter of the school committee. Still further be it from me to
influence you against an old boyhood friend, a neighbor, one whom I
believe--er--had believed to be all that was sincere and true. But,
fellow townsmen, my esteemed friend, Captain Salters, has expressed a
wish to see Mr. Thomas, the father whose story you have heard to-day.
I happen to be in a position to gratify that wish. Mr. Thomas, will you
kindly come forward?"

Then from the rear of the hall Mr. Thomas came. But the drunken rowdy
of the night before had been transformed. Gone was the scrubby beard
and the shabby suit. Shorn was the unkempt mop of hair and vanished the
impudent swagger. He was dressed in clean linen and respectable black,
and his manner was modest and subdued. Only a discoloration of one eye
showed where Captain Cy's blow had left its mark.

He stepped upon the platform beside the congressman. The latter laid a
hand upon his shoulder.

"Gentlemen and friends," said Heman, "my name has been brought into
this controversy, by Mr. Simpson directly, and in insinuation
by--er--another. Therefore it is my right to make my position clear. Mr.
Thomas came to me last evening in distress, both of mind and body. He
told me his story--substantially the story which has just been told
to you by Mr. Simpson--and, gentlemen, I believe it. But if I did not
believe it, if I believed him to have been in the past all that his
opponent has said; even if I believed that, only last evening, spurned,
driven from his child, penniless and hopeless, he had yielded to the
weakness which has been his curse all his life--even if I believed that,
still I should demand that Henry Thomas, repentant and earnest as you
see him now, should be given his rightful opportunity to become a
man again. He is poor, but he is not--shall not be--friendless. No! a
thousand times, no! You may say, some of you, that the affair is not
my business. I