to him excitedly.

"I should be ashamed not to," he answered; and dropped the cigarette and
began to sing "John Brown's Body" with all his strength. With that she
seized his hand, sprang up beside him, and over the swelling chorus her
full soprano rose, lifted with all the power in her.

The barouche rolled into the Square, and, as it passed, Harkless turned,
and bent a sudden gaze upon the group in the buckboard; but the western
sun was in his eyes, and he only caught a glimpse of a vague, bright
shape and a dazzle of gold, and he was borne along and out of view, down
the singing street.

"Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
As we go marching on!"

The barouche stopped in front of the courthouse, and he passed up a lane
they made for him to the steps. When he turned to them to speak, they
began to cheer again, and he had to wait for them to quiet down.

"We can't hear him from over here," said Briscoe, "we're too far off.
Mr. Meredith, suppose you take the ladies closer in, and I'll stay with
the horses. You want to hear his speech."

"He is a great man, isn't he?" Meredith said to Helen, gravely, as he
handed her out of the buckboard. "I've been trying to realize for the
last few minutes, that he is the same old fellow I've been treating so
familiarly all day long."

"Yes, he is a great man," she answered. "This is only the beginning."

"That's true," said Briscoe, who had overheard her. "He'll go pretty
far. A man that people know is steady and strong and level-headed can
get whatever he wants, because a public man can get anything, if people
know he's safe and honest and they can rely on him for _sense_. It
sounds like a simple matter; but only three or four public men in the
country have convinced us that they are like that. Hurry along, young
people."

Crossing the street, they met Miss Tibbs; she was wiping her streaming
eyes with the back of her left hand and still mechanically waving her
handkerchief with her right. "Isn't it beautiful?" she said, not ceasing
to flutter, unconsciously, the little square of cambric. "There was
such a throng that I grew faint and had to come away. I don't mind your
seeing me crying. Pretty near everybody cried when he walked up to the
steps and we saw that he was lame."

Standing on the outskirts of the crowd, they could hear the mellow ring
of Harkless's voice, but