h, Briscoe, Keating, and Mr. Bence of Gaines were swept ahead of
it. Before the train stopped they had rushed eagerly up the steps and
entered the car.

Harkless was on his feet and started to meet them. He stopped.

"What does it mean?" he said, and began to grow pale. "Is Halloway--did
McCune--have you----"

Warren Smith seized one of his hands and Briscoe the other. "What does
it mean?" cried Warren; "it means that you were nominated for Congress
at five minutes after one-o'clock this afternoon."

"On the second ballot," shouted the Judge, "just as young Fisbee planned
it, weeks ago."

It was one of the great crowds of Carlow's history. They had known since
morning that he was coming home, and the gentlemen of the Reception
Committee had some busy hours; but long before the train arrived,
everything was ready. Homer Tibbs had done his work well at Beaver, and
the gray-haired veterans of a battery Carlow had sent out in '61 had
placed their worn old gun in position to fire salutes. At one-o'clock,
immediately after the nomination had been made unanimous, the Harkless
Clubs of Carlow, Amo, and Gaines, secretly organized during the quiet
agitation preceding the convention, formed on parade in the court-house
yard, and, with the Plattville Band at their head, paraded the streets
to the station, to make sure of being on hand when the train arrived--it
was due in a couple of hours. There they were joined by an increasing
number of glad enthusiasts, all noisy, exhilarated, red-faced with
shouting, and patriotically happy. As Mr. Bence, himself the spoiled
child of another county, generously said, in a speech, which (with no
outrageous pressure) he was induced to make during the long wait:
"The favorite son of Carlow is returning to his Lares and Penates like
another Cincinnatus accepting the call of the people; and, for the first
time in sixteen years, Carlow shall have a representative to bear the
banner of this district and the flaming torch of Progress sweeping on to
Washington and triumph like a speedy galleon of old. And his friends are
here to take his hand and do him homage, and the number of his friends
is as the number given in the last census of the population of the
counties of this district!"

And, indeed, in this estimate the speaker seemed guilty of no great
exaggeration. A never intermittent procession of pedestrians and
vehicles made its way to the station; and every wagon, buckboard, buggy,
and cut