Danforth at last broke a long silence with: “Well, we got licked, all right. What’s going to happen now? Are you going to quit?” “Quit?” Carrington snapped the word at the other, his eyes flaming with rage. Then he laughed, mirthlessly, resuming: “This defeat was unexpected; I wasn’t set for it. But it won’t alter things—very much. I’ll have to shake a leg, that’s all. What time does the next train leave here for the capital?” “At two o’clock this afternoon.” Danforth’s eyes widened as he looked at Carrington. The curiosity in his glance caused Carrington to laugh shortly. “You don’t mean that the governor is in this thing?” said Danforth. “Why not?” demanded Carrington. “Bah! Do you think I came in with my eyes closed!” There was a new light in Danforth’s eyes—the flame of renewed hope. “Then we’ve still got a chance,” he declared. Carrington laughed. “A too-popular mayor is not a good thing for a town,” he said significantly. CHAPTER VII—THE SHADOW OF THE PAST Marion Harlan and her uncle, Elam Parsons, did not accompany Carrington to the Castle Hotel. By telegraph, through Danforth, Carrington had bought a house near Dawes, and shortly after Quinton Taylor left the station platform accompanied by his friends and admirers, Marion and her uncle were in a buckboard riding toward the place that, henceforth, was to be their home. For that question had been settled before the party left Westwood. Parsons had declared his future activities were to be centered in Dawes, that he had no further interests to keep him in Westwood, and that he intended to make his home in Dawes. Certainly Marion had few interests in the town that had been the scene of the domestic tragedy that had left her parentless. She was glad to get away. For though she had not been to blame for what had happened, she was painfully conscious of the stares that followed her everywhere, and aware of the morbid curiosity with which her neighbors regarded her. Also—through the medium of certain of her “friends,” she had become cognizant of speculative whisperings, such as: “To think of being brought up like that? Do you think she will be like her mother?” Or—“What’s bred in the bone, _et cetera_.” Perhaps these good people did not mean to be unkind; certainly the crimson stains that colored the girl’s cheeks when she passed them should have won their charity and their silence. There was nothing in Westwood for her; and so she was glad to get away. And the trip westward toward Dawes opened a new vista of life to her. She was leaving the old and the tragic and adventuring into the new and promising, where she could face life without the onus of a shame that had not been hers.