vel," the genial Sullivan said at the close
of his visit, "but your training has prepared you for it, and we all
hope you will walk it honorably to the end. Remember we all take an
interest in you, and what happens to you for good or ill will be felt in
this parish."

Then the moment of parting came, and Arthur thought less of his own
grief than of the revelation it contained for him. Was this the feeling
which prompted the tears of his mother, and the tender, speechless
embrace of his dear father in the far-off days when he set out for
school? Was this the grief which made the parting moment terrible? Then
he had thought it nothing that for months of the year they should be
without his beloved presence! He shivered at the last embraces of Mary
and Mona, at the tears of the children; he saw behind the father's mask
of calmness; he wondered no more at himself as he stood looking after
the train which bore the boy away. The city seemed as vacant all at once
as if turned into a desert. The room in the attic, with its bed, its
desk, and its altar, suddenly became a terrible place, like a body from
which the soul has fled. Every feature of it gave him pain, and he
hurried back with Mona to the frivolity of Anne in her villa by the
sea.

CHAPTER X.

THE HUMORS OF ELECTION.

When the villa closed the Senator was hopelessly enmeshed in the golden
net which had been so skilfully and genially woven by Anne during the
summer. He believed himself to be the coming man, all his natural
shrewdness and rich experience going for naught before the witchery of
his sister's imagination. In her mind the climax of the drama was a
Dillon at the top of the heap in the City Hall. Alas, the very first
orders of the chief to his secretary swept away the fine-spun dreams of
the Dillons, as the broom brushes into obscure dirt the wondrous cobweb.
The Hon. John Sullivan spoke in short sentences, used each man according
to that man's nature, stood above and ahead of his cleverest
lieutenants, had few prejudices, and these noble, and was truly a hero
on the battle-ground of social forces, where no artillery roars, no
uniforms glare, and no trumpets sound for the poets. The time having
come for action he gave Arthur his orders on the supposition that he
understood the political situation, which he did in some degree, but not
seriously. The Endicotts looked upon elections as the concern of the
rabble, and this Endicott thought it perhaps an