disused track leading out to the abandoned Shoshone mine workings. There
were autos to meet it at the mine, and by this time Mr. McVickar is
probably toasting his feet before an open wood-fire in the Shonoho Inn."

Mrs. Honoria leaned her two round arms on the mezzanine rail, and looked
long and earnestly down upon the caucussing lobby throng. When she
looked up it was to say: "There are wires?"

"A full set of cut-ins. You can trust the big boss for that. He is in
touch with every corner of the State, just the same as he would be if he
were here in his usual election headquarters in the hotel."

The small plotter became silent again, and when she spoke she was
smiling brightly.

"You are a good boy, Richard, and you shall have your reward. And it is
going to be something that will make you happy, this time. Run away,
now, and let me have a little solitude. I want to think."

It was a full hour after Gantry's disappearance that the senator came
up-stairs, and Mrs. Honoria beckoned to the pair on the opposite side of
the gallery.

"It's bedtime," she said, when they came around to her divan. And then,
with a malicious little grimace for Evan: "I've been counting, and I've
seen Patricia stifle three distinct and separate yawns in the last five
minutes. She has been up every night since we came to town, and--"

Left to himself, Blount sat watching the crowd for a time, and then went
to his room to read himself to sleep. One of the two crucial days of
suspense was outworn, but there was another coming; and after he had
read for an hour he went to bed, resolutely determined to get the rest
necessary to carry him through the dreaded Saturday. Sleep came quickly
when he had turned off the lights, but it was merely a transition to a
troubled dreamland in which Patricia, Mrs. Honoria, Gryson, and Gantry
were weirdly confused. In the thick of it he seemed to see the
ward-heeler standing at his bedside and beating furiously upon a huge
Chinese gong. When he sprang up and began to rub his eyes, the room was
lighted by a red glare, and the dream-noise was translated into the
rattling of wheels and the clanging of alarm-gongs and cries of "Fire!"
in the avenue below.

As a city dweller, Blount should have felt the wall of the room, and,
finding it still cool, should have turned over and gone to sleep again.
Instead, he slipped out of bed and went to the window. One glance showed
him that the fire was in the business distric