When the two friends returned from their ride of a dozen miles or so, bringing with them a pair of wild turkey gobblers shot upon the flush, they found Carley Farnsworth in the hall, as the broad passageway through a Virginia house was called, very busily writing upon small slips of paper, of which he had prepared a considerable number before beginning to write. He was too busy to give more than a scant greeting to his friends, but in lieu of greater cordiality he handed one of his written slips to each, saying: "Read that, and don't interrupt me, please. I'm expecting a messenger every moment." On each of the slips was written: "I am authorized by Colonel Robert Conway to add his name to the list of those who urge Mr. Boyd Westover's election. "(Signed) Don Carlos Farnsworth." As Westover and Towns looked wonderingly at each other, after reading the slips, Carley Farnsworth threw down his pen, exclaiming: "There! that's fifty. Talk will do the rest." Then, filling and lighting a long-stemmed pipe, he said to the others: "Something has happened. Don't ask me what it is, for I don't know. Yonder comes Dick Ventress, and the slips are ready for him. He has a pot of gum stick'em in his pocket and he's going to paste those slips to all the nominating placards within twenty miles between now and to-morrow morning. They'll set everybody talking, and talk will do the rest." When Dick Ventress had received the papers and galloped away, Carley vouchsafed some small and exceedingly unsatisfying explanation. "Something has happened at The Oaks," he said. "I don't know what it is, but when I got there to-day to attend Miss Margaret's sick people, I found everybody agitated, Miss Betsy in something like collapse, and Colonel Conway littering up the house with the torn fragments of letters he'd been trying to write but couldn't. I gave him something to quiet his nerves, and suggested that in his state of mind perhaps literary endeavors were unadvisable. Presently he exclaimed: 'I'll arrange the whole thing. I'll write a letter to you.' "With that he set to work and wrote this." He offered a sheet of paper on which was written: "Dr. D. C. Farnsworth. "_My dear Sir_:--