With such manoeuvering the night wore away. Garwood could reach no agreement with the Barrett men. Bailey saw Pusey, but the little editor was wily, he was playing some strange game of his own, and he sent word that if Garwood wished to see him, to come himself. What his game was none of them could find out; they did not think him at all sincere in his support of Barrett, and hourly feared that he might draw Barrett's forces into the Sprague column. Meanwhile, Pusey's political attitude was that of one who had simply taken refuge in the peaceful eddy that swam in the wake of Barrett's utter respectability and availability, until some definite turn should be taken by the current. Towards morning some of the tired delegates declared truces, and arranged poker games. Their clicking chips could be heard on all that second floor of the hotel. And some of them went out under the purple sky of a summer night, a sky studded with brilliant stars. Leo was low in the west, the moon swam in a sea of silver along the horizon. They heard the calming voice of insects, they felt the breeze of the night on their brows. The morning came, with its brazen sky. Once more the white clouds mounted in the west as if trying again for rain, and the day wore on like the one before, without change. The sun blazed on high, seeming to shrink in its own fierce dazzling concentration as it flashed its rays into that hot court room where the convention sat and balloted, one ballot after another, until a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, had been taken, until the floor was strewn with paper and discolored by tobacco, the air heavy with smoke, the feculence of all their breathing, the acrid smell of perspiration. The sky darkened, and those tired men sighed for rain. The thunder rolled down the valley of the Illinois, and then ceased. The sky cleared, and the heat increased. And all the while the ballots which Hale announced were the same: Garwood Sprague Barrett DeWitt 18 Logan 24 Mason 18 Moultrie 15 Piatt 15 Polk 22 23 Tazewell 30 -- -- -- Totals 70 48 47 XIV Thursday came and another day with its oppressive heat and even more oppressive suspense wore away; and still another came and wore away like the one before it. The week was marching by, and the delegates were no nearer a choice than when they first began. The convention had taken twelve hundred and sixty ballots; more than had been taken at the Clinton convention two years before. Still the ballot was unchanged, Garwood seventy, Sprague forty-eight, Barrett forty-seven.