Gilders raised Marie without effort and strode away with her in his arms. Jim followed. At times Gilders waited to permit Jim to rest, for Jim could not equal the woodsman’s pace, indeed could not have sustained any pace at all without frequent stops.
That last tramp was a thing of vagueness to Jim. How long it was, how many minutes, hours, days it required to traverse the distance, he did not know. It was a hades of blackness and weariness and pain. At last they arrived at Gilders’s shanty. Steve laid Marie on his bed. Jim waited for no bed, but sank to the floor, and the night held no further consciousness for him.
Somehow Steve procured a neighbor woman who gave of her kindliness and skill to Marie, ministering, watching through the night. Steve let Jim lie as he had fallen. Sleep, he knew, would work its own reviving miracle.
CHAPTER XXIV
On caucus days or election days it had been Zaanan Frame’s custom to sit in his office and receive his friends. There were few who did not take that opportunity to shake Zaanan’s hand, to show themselves at his levee. Most came because it was their pleasure to do so; some came because they regarded it as the part of wisdom.
But on this caucus day Zaanan sat alone. Outside on the steps was Dolf Springer, taciturn, doleful. That was all. The old man was deserted. Diversity had forsaken him on the day of his downfall. The power he had wielded for more than a generation had dropped from him, leaving in the place of the political dictator merely a tired, weary, disappointed old man.
He had taken some comfort in that greatest of all books, the Justices’ Guide. Now he laid it aside and rose.
“Dolf,” he called.
The one faithful retainer entered.
“Calc’late we’ll be startin’ for the op’ry-house, Dolf.”