“I’ll send one of my own,” said Foerder, hastily lighting a Russian cigarette. He could not remain long in one place. He had patients to see and a lecture to deliver over at Rush Medical College and his man was waiting with his high-hooded phaeton down in Jackson Boulevard. The nurse, diffusing a faint odor of antiseptics, came from Doctor Foerder’s private hospital, laid aside her bonnet and veil and pausing an instant to give a woman’s touch to her hair, quietly and deftly set the room in order. All that afternoon the colonel lay in his darkened bedroom, fighting the battle of his life. He lay so still that the nurse almost fancied him asleep, so regular was his breathing. Once he broke the silence by asking the time. “Twenty minutes after three,” the nurse responded, glancing at her little watch. “Some of the conventions, then,” the colonel said, “are over. I wonder why they don’t send me word.” The nurse did not notice his speech, and he added: “Pardon me, you doubtless are not interested in politics.” The talking brought on a spasm of dyspnœa, and the colonel struggled so painfully for his breath that the nurse had to prop him up with pillows in a sitting posture, as those who are afflicted with asthma pass their nights, finding it easier thus to breathe. The colonel begged the nurse’s pardon, as if he had committed some indelicacy. About this time news was brought from the Fifth District convention in Arlington Hall and from the Sixth in Jung’s Hall, that the Warren men had carried both districts. The colonel, hearing the hoarse whispering between the messengers and Mosely in the room outside, demanded information, and Doctor Lambert had to tell him. The colonel wished to see Mosely, he had some new plan for the West Side to offset their loss; and he saw Mosely and the plan was put in execution. Then the colonel seemed once more to sleep. When he opened his eyes he asked if he could not have a cigar--“seegar,” he pronounced it--assuring the nurse that he felt much better, but she said, as one might say to the whim of a child to whom explanations are not vouchsafed: “Not just now.” And there was silence again, and the ticking of the nurse’s little watch. By four o’clock the colonel became restless once more, and asked if there were any news. When the nurse said no, he insisted that there must be some message, some letter, some telegram. He did not know that his followers, vindicating all history, were now standing afar off. He worried and grew incoherent. He seemed to confuse Carroll with the boy who was sleeping under the stars far away in Arizona.