It was all over in a minute. There was a faint yell, quickly and violently muffled. Then the carriage door banged, leaving nobody on the sidewalk, and the horses, responding to an acutely painful lash from the strong arm on the box, sprang forward at the gallop. Varney stood in the dark alley, looking after the vanishing carriage with mingled admiration and amazement. Swift footsteps sounded near him; and the next moment a strong hand seized him and pulled him back into the shadow of the wall. "_Sh-h! It's me_! Anybody see it?" "_Hello!_ Not a soul but me." Peter leaned against the wall and drew a deep breath. "He can never prove it on me--not to save his soul!--_and I hold his meeting in the hollow of my hand_. Do you see that lighted window at the back there? That's my last bridge. Waiting in there are the chairman of the meeting and the mayor, who's the orator of the evening. I'm going in and make 'em take me on as one of the platform speakers. I'll pass out a few remarks and call on Hare--" "But how will you make them--" "They daren't refuse me anything," said Peter swiftly, and tapped his breast-pocket. "I've papers here that mean stripes for them both. Mind your eye, Larry, and be good!" He disappeared through the little gate toward the dressing-room, where the officials of the meeting waited vainly for last instructions from their lord. Varney looked after him with a sigh. In Hunston only twenty-four hours and already to be running the town! He emerged from the alley feeling rather gloomy, and halted on the sidewalk in front of the theatre, idly watching the people as they poured in. The spectacle of this steady stream made a fitting background for his meditations; for he was thinking, absently, of the extreme boldness of Peter's course. Certainly, there was little here to suggest the quiet onlooker. But all at once something happened which checked the current of his thought as effectually as a slap upon the cheek. In that shifting, waste of strange faces, his vagrant eye suddenly fell upon a familiar one--two, three familiar ones--and his flagging interest sprang to life. There approached, side by side, J. Pinkney Hare, who, though few knew it, might prove the brilliant hero of the night's proceedings; the child, little Jenny Something, who had spent yesterday at the Carstairs house, leading strangers to think that she was somebody else; and Miss Carstairs herself, a fair flower in that moving tangle of weeds. Hare saw Varney and bowed in his stiff affected way. But Varney's eyes had already gone on to Miss Carstairs, and he did not return that greeting. Seeing the little candidate lift his hat, her look followed his, and so her eye met Varney's.