Rhoda watched her father anxiously as he gazed into the fire. “No, not Frémont--heaven forbid!” he began slowly. “He has revealed his weakness. Governor Chase is with us, heart and soul, but I’m afraid he isn’t quite big enough. Seward?--Perhaps, if he hasn’t proved too conservative by that time. Well, we’ll have to work with all our might during the next four years and trust to God to raise up some man as a leader who’ll have the wisdom of Solomon and the backbone of a granite mountain!” CHAPTER XIV Almost as much heartened by the result of the presidential election as if it had been a victory, Dr. Ware and his friends and political co-workers in Hillside lost no time in renewing and extending the work of the campaign. “If we have polled such a tremendous vote as this,” they said, “when the party in many northern states was no more than a year old, what can we not do in the next four years?” The Rocky Mountain Club, through which they had carried on the Frémont propaganda, was reorganized and every member went zealously to work again to win converts to their faith and add to their membership. Joshua Giddings, ardent apostle of the anti-slavery cause, journeyed down from his home in the Western Reserve during a recess of Congress and made for them a stirring speech. To another meeting came Governor Chase with words of hope and encouragement and practical advice. And on one memorable night Henry Ward Beecher roused an overflowing hall to a pitch of enthusiastic resolution hardly equaled even during the campaign. Rhoda attended the meetings with her father and shared his zeal in the work the club was doing. She and Mrs. Hardaker, Horace’s mother, and Marcia Kimball organized an “Anti-Slavery Sewing Circle” which met at the houses of the members and made clothing for such of the refugees as reached the Hillside station ragged and shivering. Mrs. Ware knew only in a general way of her daughter’s interest and work in connection with this society, and of Rhoda’s connection with the Underground she knew nothing at all. Deeply grieved, but not yet despairing, over the girl’s refusal to marry the son of her old friend, she set herself to combat, in gentle, unobtrusive ways, what she believed to be the harmful influence exerted by her husband over their first-born. She talked much with Rhoda about the delightfulness of plantation life and she dwelt long and lovingly upon Jeff Delavan’s passionate devotion and upon his ambition and capacities which, she was sure, would result in a career of national renown. Rhoda hearkened with interest, saying but little in opposition, for her heart had begun to ache for her mother almost as much as it did for herself and she shrank from bringing the hurt look into those gentle eyes any oftener than she found necessary. But sometimes, when evasion was no longer possible, she would say, with caresses, and humble manner: