With faster beating heart and breath that came more irregularly she was drawn irresistibly along. It was an answer to her soul’s cry for a word; and whether true or false, welcome or unwelcome, she could not but listen to that answer with quickening pulse as it ran hurriedly under her eyes. Long before she reached the end her anger was ablaze and her fears a-tremble, but she could not throw the speech from her unfinished. Almost in a frenzy of excitement and resentment she rushed along to the very last word: and with a gasping cry of horror and wrath grabbed at the desk-drawer with the intention to hurl the pamphlet viciously back into it. She caught the slide instead, and pulled that out with a jerk. Lying on the slide was a telegraph envelope which her violence threw on the floor. With another impatient trial she slammed the pamphlet into the drawer, and mechanically picked up the telegram. It was addressed to "The President, Hill-Top." Turning it over to take out the message, she found it sealed. Instinctively she hesitated a moment, long enough for the question to come, "Why is it unopened?" Then she tore the end off the envelope. The message read, "We are moving heaven and earth but the forces of evil are too many for us. First ballot to-morrow," and was signed by Mr. Mackenzie. She read it over and over, stupidly at first, for her mind was excited by other things. Then the meaning of it began to be appreciated, and her heart sank. Confirmation of the newspaper story! The telegram _had_ been sent! And her father _had_ been defeated, and death alone had saved him from the damning ballot! Defeated, yes, really defeated!—and she had contributed, if only a mite, to that defeat which broke his heart! Guilty—_guilty_! She bowed her head in grief and agonized self-condemnation.... But no:—she started up—the telegram! He had not read it! Had he read it?—she caught up the envelope and examined it feverishly.... It could not have been opened—it had not been opened! He had not read it—he did not know! He had not known of his defeat—he had not died of his defeat—and she had not helped to send him to his death! Oh the joy of this acquittal!—and she held the envelope as one under sentence might clasp a reprieve, and almost caressed it as she made sure of its testimony in her behalf. When she had assured herself that the envelope had not been opened, the burden upon her heart would have been lifted entirely if the telegram had not confirmed the fact of his defeat. He had not died because of defeat, and she was acquitted therefore of his death, yet she was acutely sensible of the fact that he had gone to his grave in the shadow of defeat, and that death alone had saved him from the shameful actuality.