So saying, he left the stage, and the crowd dispersed. But Harley waited, and he saw Plover and his wife meet. He saw, too, the look of surprise and then joy on the man's face, and he saw them throw their arms around each other's neck and kiss in the dark. They were only a poor, prosaic, and middle-aged couple, but he knew they were now happy and that all was right between them. When Grayson went to his room, he fell from exhaustion in a half-faint across the bed; but when Harley told him the next afternoon the cause of it all, he laughed and said it was well worth the price. They obtained, about a week later, the New York papers containing an account of the record-breaking day. When Harley opened the _Monitor_, Churchill's paper, he read these head-lines: GRAYSON'S GAB HE IS TALKING THE FARMERS OF THE WEST TO DEATH TWENTY-FOUR SPEECHES IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS HE TALKS FIFTY THOUSAND WORDS IN ONE DAY, AND SAYS NOTHING But when he looked at the _Gazette_, he saw the following head-lines over his own account: HIS GREATEST SPEECH GRAYSON'S WONDERFUL EXHIBITION OF PLUCK AND ENDURANCE AFTER RIDING FOUR HUNDRED MILES AND MAKING TWENTY-THREE SPEECHES HE HOLDS AN AUDIENCE SPELLBOUND FOR THREE HOURS AT HIS TWENTY-FOURTH SPEAKS FROM MIDNIGHT UNTIL THREE IN THE MORNING IN THE OPEN AIR AND NOT A SOUL LEAVES, THOUGH A BLIZZARD WAS RAGING Harley sighed with satisfaction. "That managing editor of mine knows his business," he said to himself. VIII SYLVIA'S RETURN Harley slept late the next day, and it was the heavy, somewhat nervous slumber of utter exhaustion, like that which he had more than once experienced in the war on the other side of the world, after days of incessant marching. When he awoke, it was afternoon on the special train, and as he joined the group he was greeted with a suppressed cheer. "I understand that you stayed the whole thing through last night, or rather this morning," said Churchill, in a sneering tone. "There's devotion for you, boys!" "I was amply repaid," replied Harley, calmly. "His last speech was the most interesting; in fact, I think it was the greatest speech that I ever heard him make." "I fear that Jimmy Grayson is overdoing it," said the elderly Tremaine, soberly. "A Presidential nominee is not exactly master of himself, and I doubt whether he should have risked his voice, and perhaps the success of his party, speaking in that cold wind until three or four o'clock this morning."