Neither spoke until they passed the low stone wall, and then the candidate said, brusquely:
"Harley, unless this moonlight deceives me, there is moisture on your eyelids. What do you mean by such unmanly weakness?"
Harley smiled, but, refraining from the tu quoque, left Jimmy Grayson to lead the way, and he noticed that he chose a course that did not take them back to the hotel. Moreover, he did not speak again for a long time, and Harley walked on by his side, silent, too, but thoughtful and keenly observant. He saw that his friend was troubled, and he divined the great struggle that was going on in his mind. Whether he could do it if he were in the place of the candidate he was unable to say, and he was glad that the decision did not lie with himself.
They walked on and on until they left the town and were out upon the broad prairie, where the wind moaned in a louder key, and the candidate's face was still troubled.
"Harley," said the candidate, at last, "I cannot get rid of the look in that girl's eyes."
"I do not wish to do so," said Harley.
It was nearly midnight when he turned and began to walk back towards the town. The moonlight, breaking through a cloud, again flooded Jimmy Grayson's face, and Harley, who knew him so well, saw that the look of trouble had passed. The lips were compressed and firm, and in his eyes shone the clear light of decision. Harley's feelings, as he saw, were mingled, a strange compound of elation and apprehension. But at the hotel he said, gravely, "Good-night," and the candidate replied with equal seriousness, "Good-night." Neither referred to what they had seen nor to what they expected.
The second speech at Egmont drew an even greater audience than the first, as the fame of Jimmy Grayson's powers spread fast, and there would be, too, the added spice of combat; members of the other party would accept his challenge, replying to his logic if they could, and the hall was crowded early with eager people. Harley, sitting at the back of the stage, saw the Honorable John Anderson come in, importantly, his wife under one arm and his daughter under the other. Helen looked paler than ever, but here under the electric lights her sad loveliness made the same appeal to Harley. Lee arrived late, and although, as one of the speakers, he was forced to sit on the stage, he hid himself behind the others. But a single glance passed between the two, and then the girl sat silent and pale, hoping against hope for her lover.
The candidate spoke well. His voice was as deep and as musical as ever, and his sentences rolled as smoothly as before. All his charm and magnetism of manner were present; the old spell which he threw over everybody—a spell which was from the heart and the manner as well as from the meaning of his words—was not lacking, but to Harley, keenly attentive, there seemed to be a flaw in his logic. The reasoning was not as clear and compact as usual. Only a man with a penetrating, analytical mind would observe it, but there were openings here and there where his armor could be pierced. Blaisdell, one of the correspondents, noticed the fact, and he whispered to Harley:
"It's a good thing that Jimmy Grayson has no great speaker against him to-night; I never knew him to wander from the point before."