"And it speaks right," said the man with the book. "Mr. Grayson cuts down the majority polled against us there four years ago by 433 votes."
A little cheer was raised in the room, and down the street at the transparency there was a cheer, too, but the voices were not the same as those that cheered a few moments ago.
"Good old Boston," said Hobart, "and we made that gain right where the enemy thought he was strongest!"
The first gain of the evening had a hopeful effect upon all, and they spoke cheerfully.
But a vote from Providence, a minute later went the other way, and it was followed by one of a similar nature from New Haven. The gloom returned. Their minds fluctuated with the bulletins.
"It was too good to last," whispered Hobart, downcast.
The children again appeared at the door and wanted to know if their father was elected. Sylvia took upon herself the task of assuring them that he was not yet elected, but he certainly would be before many hours. Then they went away sanguine and satisfied, and trying to keep sleepy eyelids from closing. In the street the noise was increasing as the crowd received facts, and the cheers were loud and various. But those of the enemy predominated, and Harley thrilled more than once with silent anger. A half-dozen men passed the house singing a song in derision of Jimmy Grayson; some of the words came to them through the window, and Sylvia flushed, but Mr. Grayson himself showed no sign that he understood.
The telegrams now were arriving fast; there were two streams of boys, one coming in at the door and the other going out, and Mr. Dexter, at the table, settled to his work. For a while the chief sounds in the room were the tearing of paper, the rustling of unfolded despatches, and the dry voice of the chairman announcing results. These votes were all from Eastern cities, where the polls closed early and the ballots could be counted quickly. Over the West and the Far West darkness still brooded, and the country districts everywhere were silent.
Yet Harley knew that throughout the United States the utmost activity prevailed. To him the night was wonderful; in a day of perfect peace nearly twenty million votes had been cast, and the most powerful ruler in the world had been made by the free choice of the nation, just as four years or eight years hence another ruler would be made in his place by the same free choice, the old giving way to the new. Now to-night they were trying to find out who this ruler was, and no one yet could tell.
But the tale would be told in a few hours. Harley knew that over an area of three million square miles, as large as the ancient civilized world, men were at work counting, down to the last remote mountain hamlet, and putting the result on the wires as they counted it. And ninety million people waited, ready to abide by the result, whether it was their man or the other. To him there was something extraordinary in this organized, this peaceful but tremendous activity. To-night all the efforts of the world's most energetic nation were bent upon a single point. In each state the wires talked from every town and village to a common centre, and each state in turn, through its metropolis, talked to the common centre of them all, and the general result of all they said would be known to everybody before morning. It seemed marvellous to him, although he understood it perfectly, that a few hours after the boxes were opened the votes should be counted and accredited to the proper man.