equipped than
I for the place, and in a better situation to undertake it. I--I'm
much obliged to you. But I'll help. I've got to go," he added; "the
Honourable Hilary wants to see me."

He went into the entry and put on his overshoes and his coat, while
James Redbrook regarded him with a curious mingling of pain and
benevolence on his rugged face.

"I won't press you now, Austen," he said, "but think on it. For God's
sake, think on it."

Outside, Austen paused in the snow once more, his brain awhirl with a
strange exaltation the like of which he had never felt before. Although
eminently human, it was not the fact that honest men had asked him to be
their governor which uplifted him,--but that they believed him to be as
honest as themselves. In that hour he had tasted life as he had never
yet tasted it, he had lived as he might never live again. Not one of
them, he remembered suddenly, had uttered a sentence of the political
claptrap of which he had heard so much. They had spoken from the soul;
not bitterly, not passionately, but their words had rung with the
determination which had made their forefathers and his leave home,
toil, and kindred to fight and die at Bunker Hill and Gettysburg for a
principle. It had bean given him to look that eight into the heart of a
nation, and he was awed.

As he stood there under the winter moon, he gradually became conscious
of music, of an air that seemed the very expression of his mood. His
eyes, irresistibly drawn towards the Duncan house, were caught by the
fluttering of lace curtains at an open window. The notes were those of
a piano,--though the instrument mattered little,--that with which they
were charged for him set the night wind quivering. It was not simple
music, although it had in it a grand simplicity. At times it rose,
vibrant with inexpressible feeling, and fell again into gentler,
yearning cadences that wrung the soul with a longing that was world-old
and world-wide, that reached out towards the unattainable stare--and,
reaching, became immortal. Thus was the end of it, fainting as it
drifted heavenward.

Then the window was closed.

Austen walked on; whither, he knew not. After a certain time of which he
had no cognizance he found himself under the glaring arc-light that hung
over Main Street before the Pelican Hotel, in front of what was known
as the ladies' entrance. He slipped in there, avoiding the crowded lobby
with its shifting groups and its haze of smo