"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:—
"When you asked me to join you and others in nominating Mr. Boyd Westover for Senator, I felt bound to decline, for reasons which I did not, because I could not, offer. Through very distressing and to me embarrassing circumstances, I now discover that I have been acting under a misapprehension. There are peculiar circumstances which forbid me to explain myself further. I cannot do so without injustice to others. But so far as Mr. Boyd Westover is concerned I earnestly desire to make such atonement as is still possible. To that end I hereby authorize you to add my name to the list of those who urge Mr. Boyd Westover's election. You are free to make this public in any and every way that may seem to you desirable. If it were possible, I should myself announce it from the platform at Fighting Creek to-morrow. As it is I authorize you to do so in my absence. I beg you to use all the influence you can command to spare me the necessity of explanation in this case. I cannot explain. The situation is the most distressing one possible to me. I place it and myself in your hands, and I am always, my dear Dr. Farnsworth,
"Your sincere friend,
"Robert Conway."
"There you have the whole story, so far as I know anything about it," said the Doctor.