"I'll see you soon."
Tom waved his hand from the buggy when his father's back was turned and threw her an audacious kiss over his head as the tall figure bent to climb into the seat. The girl answered with another from her finger tips which he caught with a smile.
Norton's fears of Tom were soon at rest at the sight of his overflowing boyish spirits. He had entered into the adventure of the campaign from the moment he found himself alone with his father, and apparently without reservation.
Through every one of his exciting speeches, when surrounded by hostile crowds, the father had watched Tom's face with a subconscious smile. At the slightest noise, the shuffle of a foot, the mutter of a drunken word, or the movement of a careless listener, the keen eyes of the boy had flashed and his right arm instinctively moved toward his hip pocket.
When the bitter struggle had ended, father and son had drawn closer than ever before in life. They had become chums and comrades.
Norton had planned his tour to keep him out of town until after the polls closed on the day of election. They had spent several nights within fifteen or twenty miles of the Capital, but had avoided home.
He had planned to arrive at the speaker's stand in the Capitol Square in time to get the first returns of the election.
Five thousand people were packed around the bulletin board when they arrived on a delayed train.
The first returns indicated that the leader's daring platform had swept the state by a large majority. The negro race had been disfranchised and the ballot restored to its original dignity. And much more had been done. The act was purely political, but its effects on the relations, mental and moral and physical, of the two races, so evenly divided in the South, would be tremendous.
The crowds of cheering men and women felt this instinctively, though it had not as yet found expression in words.