ld enjoy it himself, and he had known for a long time
that Ida was that woman.

His face lifted to the stars as he implored their aid in a vast and
dangerous enterprise. It meant all or nothing to him. He was in the
mood to risk all his life and plans that night if she had been with
him. The strangeness of the city had exalted him to the mood where his
timidity was gone.

When he came to the house, he found it all dark save a dim light in the
rear, and it made him shiver with a premonition of failure. A servant
girl answered his ring. He had the hope that this was the wrong house
after all.

"Can you tell me if Miss Wilbur lives here?"

"Yassir, but she nat haar," answered the girl, with the Norwegian
accent.

"Where is she?"

"Ay nat know. Ay tank she ees good ways off; her moder she ees gawn to
churtz."

Bradley no longer looked at the stars as he walked along the street.
All his doubts and fears and his timidity and his reticence came back
upon him, and something warm and sweet seemed to go out of the far
vista of his life. He felt that he had lost her.

XIX.

CARGILL TAKES BRADLEY IN HAND.

Cargill was not at the table the next morning, but he came in later,
and greeted Bradley brusquely, as he flung his rag of a hat on the
floor.

"Well, legislator, what is on the tapis this morning? Anything I can do
for you?"

"No, I guess not. I am going to look up a new boarding-house."

"What's the matter with this?"

"Too rich for my blood."

"Just repeat that, please."

"Can't stand the expense."

Cargill poured the cream on his oatmeal before he replied: "But, dear
sir, nothing is too good for a representative. Young man, you don't
seem to know how to farm yourself out."

All day Saturday the Windom rotunda was crowded with men. The
speakerships, the house offices, were being contested for here; the
real battle was being fought here, and under Cargill's cynical comment
the scene assumed great significance to Bradley's uninitiated eyes.
They took seats on the balcony which ran around the "bear pit," as he
called it. Around them, flitting to and fro, were dozens of bright,
rather self-sufficient young women.

"This is one of the most dangerous and demoralizing features of each
legislature," he said to Bradley. "These girls come down here from
every part of the State to cajole and flatter their way into a State
House office. You see them down there buttonholing every man they can
get an int