The motion prevailed. The sun was a red ball, hanging low beyond the river. It seemed that the hour was the hottest of the afternoon. Pusey was sitting there moving his wrinkled jaws and puckered lips over his tobacco, as inscrutably as the Singed Cat himself might have done, had he chewed tobacco. It would take a night to find the bearings that had been lost that afternoon. XIII General Barrett, hearing from Pekin that his county's delegation had taken pardonable liberties with his name at the convention, arrived on an evening train, and though his quiescent absence would have suited his supporters better, they welcomed him at the old station with as much enthusiasm as they could generate on so short a notice. The general drove to the hotel in a carriage, and when he entered the office bowed seriously, playing well the part of the distinguished and respectable leader whom the voice of the people had summoned. To Cowley, who interviewed him when his headquarters had been opened, he said solemnly that he was in the hands of his friends, that he considered this a fair field and an open contest, and esteemed his own opportunities to be as favorable as those of either of the other distinguished and able candidates. All through the hot night the rooms of the three candidates blazed. Delegates hung about them as the nocturnal bugs wheeling in on heavy wing from the darkness outside fluttered around the coal oil lights, though not all of them stuck as closely to the flame that had brought them thither as did those hapless insects whose tragic fate matted their wings at last to the oily glass bowls of the lamps. The general remained in his room, democratically, where all could see him and grasp his hand, and doubtless derived as much satisfaction from these little levees as if he were holding larger and more significant ones. Both Sprague and Garwood had other rooms opening off those where the public were invited to gather and participate freely in the distribution of campaign cigars that stood in boxes on the center tables.