Senator Maydew, always fertile in expedient, meant to ride to victory, as it were, on the providential high tide in Little River. Immediately on hearing what had happened, he divined how the mishap of the washed-out bridge and the flooded ford might be made to serve his ends and better his fortunes. He was keeping the plan secret for the moment; for it was a very precious plan. And this, in effect, was the word that his emissary brought to his wife just before the convention met. He could not bring it himself; custom forbade that a candidate show himself upon the floor in the early stages, but she was told to wait and watch for what would presently ensue, and meanwhile be of good cheer. Which, verily, she was. She did not have so very long to wait. The convention assembled on the hour--a block of ten vacant seats in the second aisle showing where the missing ten of Bryce should have been--and was called to order by the new district chairman. Up rose Judge Priest from his place in the middle of the house, flanking the centre aisle, and addressed the chair. He had just learned, he stated, that a considerable quota of the number of duly chosen delegates had not yet reached Marshallville. It appeared that the elements were in conspiracy against the extreme lower end of the district. In justice to the sovereign voters of the sovereign County of Bryce he moved that a recess of twenty-four hours be taken. The situation which had arisen was unforeseen and extraordinary, and time should be granted for considering it in all its aspects. And so on and so forth for five minutes or more, in Judge Priest's best ungrammatical style. The chairman, who, as will be recalled, was Maydew's man, ruled the motion out of order. I shall pass over as briefly as possible the proceedings of the next half hour. To go fully into those details would be to burden this narrative with technicalities and tiresomeness. For our purposes it is sufficient, I think, to say that the Maydew machine, operating after the fashion of a well-lubricated, well-steered and high-pow-ered steam roller, ran over all obstacles with the utmost despatch. These painful crunching operations began early and continued briskly. On the first roll call of the counties, as the County of Bryce--second on our list after Bland--was reached, one of those two lone delegates from the upper side of Little River stood up and, holding aloft his own credentials and the credentials of his team-mate, demanded the right to cast the votes of the whole Bryce County delegation--twelve in all.