She knew that the oration was being read by scores upon scores of thousands, for her father had told her of its enormous circulation and of its effect upon thinking people throughout the North. Her hand trembled as she laid it down and went out upon the veranda. She tried to form in her mind some idea of all those masses of people moved as she was feeling herself moved at that moment by the orator’s inspiring sentences and stirred as she was stirred by the desire to go forth as to a crusade and with mind and heart and hand work for the success of the party that would put an end to the extension of slavery. “Oh, he will surely be elected--he must be elected!” she whispered, nervously clasping her hands. Then she wondered, if Frémont should be successful, would there follow secession and war--the war which her father believed to be the only means for the cutting of the Gordian knot into which North and South had tangled themselves. And then came quickly apprehensive thought of that ardent and determined lover, on the other side of the fateful river. She shivered a little and told herself that the nights were already growing much cooler. Presently she would go upstairs, she thought, and, perhaps, she would read again the letter that had come two days before from Jefferson Delavan. She went back to her reading and looked through some recent newspapers. In the New York “Times” she read an account of a great meeting in Wall Street, where, from the steps of the Merchants’ Exchange, Speaker Banks, of the House of Representatives, had addressed a mighty assemblage of twenty thousand earnest men. In Pittsburg had been held a monster mass-meeting of a hundred thousand. Everywhere there had been meetings, speeches, torchlight processions, bands, cheers, enthusiasm. Rhoda had herself joined in that staccato cry of the campaign, “Free speech, free soil and Frémont!” only a few nights before when she and Marcia Kimball and Mrs. Hardaker and others of her friends had leaned from the windows of Horace Hardaker’s office and with waving handkerchiefs and responding cheers had added to the enthusiasm of the Republican procession sweeping down the street. Her father, heading one division and Horace leading another, had saluted them with waving torches and louder cheers. Her mother and sister had stayed at home that night and neither of them, by word or look, had shown afterwards that they knew a torchlight procession had taken place. But when the Democrats had had their meeting and procession a week earlier Mrs. Ware and Charlotte had gone under the escort of Billy Saunders.