The children were in holiday attire and thrilled by excitement; they could not be suppressed. They were well aware what it was to be President of the United States, and they failed to understand how any one could vote against their father. "If he is beaten," thought Harley, "it is not Mr. Grayson nor Mrs. Grayson who will feel the most disappointment, but these little children." Neither the candidate nor his wife alluded to the Presidential race, seeming to enjoy this short respite after the long strain and before the crucial trial yet to come. They talked of the small affairs of the home, and she gave the news of their neighbors, as if they would make the most of this brief hour; yet it was not wholly natural, there was in it a note of suspense, and Harley knew that, despite the joy of reunion, the shadow of the coming night was already over them. Jimmy Grayson must feel that while he idled about his own home the ballots were falling in the boxes off to the East and to the West by the hundred thousand, and his own fate was being decided. Harley and Sylvia, after the greetings and the casual talk, slipped away from the others. There was a little glass-covered piazza at the back of the house, and there they sat. "Now you must tell me all that you have been doing since I left you." "Nothing worth the telling. How could anything interesting happen after you had gone? But I've been doing some fine thinking." "Of what?" "Of you!--always you! I've had to tear up the first page of many of my despatches." "Why?" "Because I would address them to Sylvia instead of to the _Gazette_." "John, I didn't know that you had imagination." "It isn't imagination; I don't need imagination when I'm near you or thinking of you, which is all the time." "And you are going to marry a Western girl, after all?" irrelevantly. "I wouldn't marry any other kind, and there is only one of them that I would marry." They did not speak again for a half-minute, but what they said was relevant. But the best of times must come to an end, even if it is merely to give way to another good time, and Harley could not remain long at the candidate's house, but strolled with Blaisdell and two or three others through the city. He, too, had a sense of helplessness in regard to the campaign. Like Jimmy Grayson, he was now condemned to a period of inaction, and, strive as he might, he could not aid his friend a particle. They went to the local headquarters of the party--two parlors of the largest hotel in the city.