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He was infinitely daring, yet he skirted the cause of the quarrel with perfect tact: “The misinterpretation of a few careless and kindly words, said in passing, and repeated, with garbling additions, to a man who was not himself…. The brooding of a mind most unhappily beset with alcohol…. A blow resented by a too devoted but too violent kinsman….”

Then, with the greatest skill, and rather quietly, he passed to a eulogium of Trimmer’s public career, gradually increasing the warmth of his praise but controlling it as perfectly as he controlled the enthusiasm and excitement which followed each of his points. For myself, I only looked away from him once, and caught a glimpse of Henderson looking sick.

Hector finished with a great stroke. He went back to the original theme. “You ask me where my duty lies!” His great voice rose and rang through the hall magnificently: “I reply–‘first to my State and her needs’! Is that answer enough? If it be necessary that I should answer for my personal loyalty to one man or another then I ask you: Shall it go to the friend who, without cause, struck the first blow? Shall it go to that other friend who went out hot-headed and struck back to avenge a brother’s wrongs? Is it only between these that I–and many of you–are to choose to-day? Is there not a third?‘ I tell you that I have chosen, and that my loyalty and all my strength are devoted to that other, to that man who has suffered most of all, to him who received a blow and did not avenge it, because in his greatness he knew that his assailant knew not what he did!”

That carried them off their feet. Hector had turned Trimmer’s greatest danger into the means of victory. The Trimmer people led one of those extraordinary hysterical processions round the aisles that you see sometimes in a convention (a thing I never get used to), and it was all Trimmer, or rather, it was all Hector. Trimmer was nominated on the first ballot.

There was a recess, and I hurried out, meaning to slip round to Joe Lane’s for a moment to find out how he was. I’d seen the doctor in the morning and he said his patient had passed a good night and that Miss Rainey was still there. “I think she’s going to stay,” he added, and smiled and shook hands with me.

Joe’s old darkey cook let me in, and, after a moment, came to say I might go into Mr. Lane’s room; Mr. Lane wanted to see me.

Joe was lying very flat on his back, but with his face turned toward the door, and beside him sat Laura Rainey, their thin hands clasped together. I stopped on the threshold with the door half opened.

“Come in,” said Joe weakly. “Hector made it, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” I answered, and in earnest. “He’s a great man.”

Joe’s face quivered with a pain that did not come from his hurt. “Oh, it’s knowing that, that makes me feel like such a scoundrel,” he said. “I suppose you’ve come to congratulate me.”

“Yes,” I said, “the doctor says it’s a wonderful case, and that you’re one of the lucky ones with a charmed life, thank God!”

Joe smiled sadly at Miss Rainey. “He hasn’t heard,” he said. Then she gave me her left hand, aot relinquishing Joe’s with her right.

“We were married this morning,” she said, “just after the convention began.”

The tears came into Joe’s eyes as she spoke. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?” he said to me. “You must see it so. And I the kind of man I am, the town drunkard–“

Then his wife leaned over and kissed his forehead.

“Even so it was right–and so beautiful for me,” she said.