"Heat spell's broken," Rankin said presently. "Wisht the deadlock was. Maybe, though, the rain 'ill fetch us luck. What d'ye think, Jerry?" Garwood looked at him as if he did not know what the man had said. XV The storm ceased just before daybreak and the light that slowly spread over the prairie to the eastward suffused a new world. The water dripped musically from the trees, the robins sang, the frogs croaked comfortably along the wet banks of the river, and the morning poured down its green valley an air that sparkled like champagne. The convention met again at nine o'clock, but it seemed another convention. The delegates arrived early, and they, too, seemed to have been made over like the world, for they entered, even the eldest of them, with a new spring in their steps, and it was to be noticed that they had been shaved and wore clean linen. The court room had been swept of all its litter, and the floor was still damp with the fancy scrolls the janitor had written with water from his sprinkling-can, as if it had been some new kind of fountain pen. The chairs were set in a fine amphitheater, so orderly that the delegates sat down in them carefully, as if, possessed by a new sense of harmony, they feared to destroy the pleasing arrangement of things. Even the cigars they puffed, sending their white smoke gracefully up into the lively air, had gained a fragrance. The delegates had forgotten the animosities of the past few days, and they joked each other as they met again on the old brotherly footing. Rankin was there with an enormous fresh collar lying down about his neck. He had left off his waistcoat, and the white shirt his wife had packed in his little traveling-bag when he started from home was now at last donned in obedience to her parting mandate, and unhidden as it was, gave to the world a broad and convincing proof of his domestic discipline. Randolph, too, was immaculate, while young Knowlton was almost senatorial in freshly brushed black clothes and linen that had the metallic gloss of the laundry machine on it. "Well, Jim," Randolph called across the room, "going to withdraw your candidate this morning, ain't you?" "No, I'm goin' to withdraw yourn." "What do you say to withdrawing them all and uniting on you? You'd make a noble congressman." "You bet I would," Rankin responded, "but I couldn't afford to give the job all my time fer the money the's in it." "Of course not," Randolph flung back at him, "but you might sublet it to me." "Well, I might git you a job shovelin' wind off the Capitol, only I reckon you wouldn't da'st leave that lucrative law practice o' yourn, heh?" The delegates around laughed at the old, old jokes with which they chaffed each other. "What do you say to unitin' on Grant here? That speech o' his t'other day 'uld tease the whole surplus out o' the treasury."