"How glad I am that I sharpened all my lead-pencils!" said Hobart, in a low tone to Harley.
But Harley never stopped writing.
"They did not even have the tact to treat this candidate with courtesy and consideration," continued Mr. Grayson. "They lectured him on his comparative youth and his ignorance of the world, when it was they who were ignorant. They told him, without hesitation, regardless of his own opinion and the fact that he was a free man among free men, that he must not speak on this issue. They threatened him."
"Did he take the bluff?" shouted a big man in the audience.
"Wait and we shall see," said Jimmy Grayson, sweetly. "They were entitled to their opinion, and he would have heard their advice, but their manner was intolerable; they undertook to treat him as a child. They called him to a conference, and there they laid down the law to him as a school-master would order a sulking child to be good."
"Did he take the bluff?" again shouted the big man in the crowd.
"Wait and we shall see," repeated Jimmy Grayson, as sweetly as ever. "Well, this conference came to pass, and it lasted a long time, but only the committee talked; they gave the candidate scarcely a chance to say a word. They treated him with increasing arrogance. They said that if he declared himself upon this great issue they would bolt the party and let him go headlong to destruction."
"The traitors!" shouted the big man in the audience. But the members of the committee, from some strange cause, seemed to be struck speechless. Their jaws fell, but the faces of them all were as red as fire. Sylvia leaned forward and clapped her gloved hands.
"Blaisdell," whispered Hobart, "slip away and arrange at the telegraph-office; any of us will give you his report. I shall have at least five thousand words myself."
Blaisdell slid noiselessly away.