Mr. Grayson presently excused himself, on the plea that he needed sleep, a plea which was admitted by everybody, and Harley also withdrew, while the members of the committee went to their private car pleased with the evening's work. Thus the Great Philipsburg Conference came to an end.
The candidate and Harley walked together to their rooms through a rather dim hall, but it was not too dim to hide from Harley a singular expression that passed over the face of the candidate. It was gone like a flash, but it seemed to Harley to be a compound of anger and anticipation. Wisely he kept silent, and Jimmy Grayson, stopping a moment at his own door, said, in the grave but otherwise expressionless tone that he had used throughout the discussion:
"Good-night, Harley; I don't think we shall forget this evening, shall we?"
"No," replied Harley, and he tried to decipher a meaning in Jimmy Grayson's tone, but he could not.
When Harley turned away, he found Hobart, Blaisdell, Churchill, and all the other correspondents waiting for him at the end of the hall to get the news of the conference.
"There is nothing, not a line," said Harley.
They looked at him incredulously.
"It is the truth, I assure you," continued Harley. "I am not sending a word to my own paper. I am going straight to my bed."
"If you say so, Harley, I believe you," said Churchill. "Besides, it's past one o'clock now, and that's past four o'clock in New York and past three in Chicago; all the papers have gone to press, and we couldn't send anything if we wanted to do so."
"There is nothing to tell you," said Harley, "except that Mr. Grayson will allude to the tariff in his speech to-morrow, or, rather, this morning, at Waterville. He has promised the committee not to do so again—they were not very willing to grant him even so little—but it is a sort of sop to Cerberus; later on, if any one twits him with avoiding the revision, he can say, and say truthfully, that he has spoken on it."