“I wonder was he the same chap that had all those devils cast out of him. I don’t just remember, but whoever it was that had ’em cast out, I’d like to ’a’ known him, for he was a _man_. Most folks’ natures ain’t big enough to hold a single half-size devil, let alone a whole crowd of ’em. If that Bible chap had all those it showed he was a man enough to hold ’em. And if only one of ’em had been cast out it’d ’a’ been a bigger thing he did than it would be for a dozen ordinary men to turn into saints. Maybe I’m a little bit like _that_ feller, too.” After which plunge into the theological exegesis—the first and last whereof he ever was guilty—Caleb Conover turned his thoughts to the morrow’s election, and thus communed with himself till dawn caught him open-eyed and unsleepy, his splendid strength and energy in nowise diminished by forty-eight hours of wakefulness. It was a tattered, desolate world that met the Railroader’s eyes as he gazed down from his window across the broad grounds and over the city that lay at their foot. The wind had fallen, and a pink-gray light was filling the clean-swept sky. Nature seemed ashamed to look on the results of her own violence, for the dawnlight crept timidly over the sleeping houses. Everywhere were strewn signs of the hurricane. Tree branches, toppled chimneys, unroofed shanties, swaths of telegraph and telephone wires, overturned fences; these and a thousand other proofs of the gale’s brief power lay broadcast throughout Granite’s streets. And, with the first glimmers in the east, the people of city and State were afoot, for history was to be made. Election Day had begun. Midnight had again come around. The election was long since over, yet the city did not ring with the uproar incident on such affairs. For the result was not yet known. The storm of the previous night had cut off telegraph and telephone communication in twenty parts of the Mountain State. Granite itself was isolated. Hundreds of mechanics were at work repairing the various lines of broken wire and replacing overthrown poles. But the work had not yet sufficiently progressed to allow the full transmission of election returns from the up-State counties. Train service remained unimpaired, save for an occasional broken trestle on one or two of the minor branches of the C. G. & X. And since nightfall some of the returns had been brought to Granite by rail, but these merely proved the closeness of the conflict, and gave no true hint as to the actual outcome. The Granite vote was all in, hours ago. From the slums and the dark places of the city’s underworld the long-trained servants of the Machine had swarmed to the polls, overwhelming all opposition from the smaller and more respectable element, and had carried Granite tumultuously for Conover.