"Now, I wonder what it is that makes him so content with himself," thought Harley, but he had little time to devote to Churchill, as his own despatch was occupying his attention. Harley could not go back to the hotel with the Grayson party when the speech was over, as he had to file his despatch first, but he saw them all the next morning at the breakfast-table. "King" Plummer was there, too, as expansive as ever, and showing mingled joy and sorrow--joy over the second triumph of the candidate, which was repeated at great length in the morning papers, and sorrow because he could not continue with them on the campaign, which moved to Detroit for the third night. "I'd be a happy man if I could do it," he said, in his booming tones, "happy for more reasons than one. It would be a big holiday to me. Wouldn't I enjoy hearing you tear the enemy to pieces night after night, Jimmy! and then I'd be with you right along, Sylvia." He looked at the girl, and his look was full of love and protection. She flushed and seemed embarrassed. But there was no hesitation or awkwardness about the big man. "Never you mind, little girl," he said; "when you are Mrs. Plummer--an' that ain't far away, I hope--you'll be with me all the time. Besides, I'm goin' to join Jimmy Grayson when he comes out West, an' make the campaign there with him." The color in Miss Morgan's face deepened, and she glanced, not at "King" Plummer or her uncle, but at Harley, and when her eyes met his the color in her cheeks deepened still further. Then she looked down at her plate and was silent and embarrassed. Harley, as he heard these words of the "King," felt a strange thrill of disapproval. It was, as he told himself, because of the disparity in ages. It was true that a man of this type was the very kind to restrain Sylvia Morgan, but twenty and fifty should never wed, man and wife should be young together and should grow old together. It was no business of his, and there was no obligation upon him to look after the happiness of either of these people, but it was an arrangement that he did not like, violating as it did his sense of fitness. "King" Plummer was to leave them an hour later, taking a train for St. Paul, and thence for Idaho. He bade them all a hearty good-bye, shaking hands warmly with Jimmy Grayson, to whom he wished a career of unbroken triumph, repeating these good wishes to Mrs. Grayson, and again kissing Sylvia Morgan on the forehead--the proper kiss, Harley thought, for fifty to bestow upon twenty, unless twenty should happen to be fifty's daughter. "We won't be separated long, Sylvia, girl," he said, and she flushed a deep red and then turned pale. To Harley he said: "And I'll try to show you the West, young man, when you come out there. This is no West; Milwaukee ain't West by a jugful. Just you wait till you get beyond the Missouri, then we'll show you the real West, and real life at the same time."