Fortunately no such menace of secession and civil war was ever suffered to rise glowering on the horizon. Abe Beekman, the boss of Jay County, always managed to have Tyre designated by the District Committee, and the politicians from Dearborn and Adams amiably agreed to console themselves for the nuisances of the trip by getting as much fun out of it as was possible--which, reduced to details, meant bringing their own whiskey, sternly avoiding the dangerous local well-water, and throwing at each other during the dinner scramble such elements of the repast as failed to attract their metropolitan tastes. This procedure was not altogether to the liking of the Tyre landlords, who, however, compensated themselves for the diminution of the bar traffic and the havoc wrought in the dining room, by quadrupling their accustomed prices; and the invasion of boisterous aliens had its seamy side for the women of the place, who found it to the advantage of their dignity to stop indoors during the day which their husbands and fathers consecrated to the service of the Republic. But Tyre as a whole was proud and gratified. On the morning when the adjourned District Convention was to reassemble, political interest throbbed with feverish quickness in all the pulses of Tyre. The town could remember many a desperate and stirring combat on its well-worn battle-field, but never such a resolute, prolonged, and altogether delightful contest as this. The fight had its historic side, too. Every voter in Tyre could remember, or had been taught in all its details about, the famous struggle of the wet fall of ’34, when Hiram Chesney, the Warwick of Jay County then, locked horns with the elder Seth Fairchild of Dearborn, and, to pursue the local phraseology, they pawed up more earth in their fierce encounter than would dam the Nedahma creek. Poor Hiram had finally been worsted, falling ignobly on his native stamping ground, before the eyes of his own people. He had long since passed away, as Warwicks should when their king-making sinews have lost their strength. But another boss, perhaps in some ways a greater boss, had arisen in Jay County, in the person of Abram K. Beekman, and now, nearly half a century later, he was to try conclusions with a second Fairchild of Dearborn--a grandson of the hero of ’34. They had grappled once, a fortnight before, and had had to separate again, after an all-day tug, with a fall credited to neither. Now, in a few hours, they were to confront each other once more. What wonder that Tyre was excited!