rly in the day, that in order to compete with the
opposition, they must stay close to the polls.

"What shall we do? How divide our forces?" they asked.

Bailey Armstrong had just dropped into the coffee-room in the principal
ward.

"Well, something, and at once," he said. "Sam Watts is everywhere,
guiding his committees and buying up votes. Morgan and Jack Allingham,
too, are getting down to business."

"Then Mr. Allingham is able to be out?" inquired Gertrude, at Bailey's
side.

"He is out, able or unable," returned Bailey. "And they are leaving no
stone unturned to get votes. I guess you'll have to come and turn a few
cobblestones yourself--"

"Yes, Gertrude," said Mrs. Bateman, "you'll have to. I'll go the rounds
with you."

"Mrs. Stillman and I will go over to ward seven," said Mrs. Jewett.
"Mrs. Mason and Mrs. Turner to ward three, and Mrs. Wentworth and Grace
Tolman to ward two. And we'll get out some others. You couldn't go,
could you, Miss Snow?"

"I am writing up the woman's part of today's battle," returned Mary
Snow. "I shall go to every ward, and will help what I can,--but I cannot
neglect my paper. _The Atlas_ is going to give us all the space we can
fill tonight."

"_The Atlas_ has been good to us all through," said Gertrude. "We have
one paper--and a decent one--we can depend upon."

It was arranged that the women should divide themselves into committees
of two at each voting booth, these couples to shift every hour or two,
so that Gertrude Van Deusen might be seen at every booth.

"One would think I had been on view long enough so that every man, woman
and child should be familiar with my features by this time," she
laughed, remembering her constant appearance on the platform during the
campaign. "Yet they are saying in some of the lower wards, that the
voters have never laid eyes on me. Well, they shall have the chance."

Had it not been that the love of battle and of conquest had been born
and bred in the old Senator's daughter, Gertrude would have sickened
already of politics and politicians and the mass of feeble humanity that
was like clay in the hands of the potter. For in spite of the real
interest of the more intelligent citizens, there were the usual
hangers-on and heelers,--men who had no civic sense, no idea of public
duty, no moral stamina; men who sold their votes openly and as a matter
of course.

"What'll you women give me?" asked one of these derelicts of Mrs.
Bateman.