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A few minutes later, Alonzo Rawson, his neckwear disordered and his face white with rage, stumbled out of the great doors upon the trail of Battle, who had quietly hurried away to his hotel for lunch as soon as he had voted.

The black automobile was vanishing round a corner. Truslow stood upon the edge of the pavement staring after it ruefully:

“Where is Mrs. Protheroe?” gasped the Senator from Stackpole.

“She’s gone,” said the other.

“Gone where?”

“Gone back to Paris. She sails day after tomorrow. She just had time enough to catch her train for New York after waiting to hear how the vote went. She told me to tell you good-bye, and that she was sorry. Don’t stare at me Rawson! I guess we’re in the same boat!–Where are you going?” he finished abruptly.

Alonzo swung by him and started across the street. “To find Battle!” the hoarse answer came back.

The conquering Josephus was leaning meditatively upon the counter of the cigar-stand of his hotel when Alonzo found him. He took one look at the latter’s face and backed to the wall, tightening his grasp upon the heavy-headed ebony cane it was his habit to carry, a habit upon which he now congratulated himself.

But his precautions were needless. Alonzo stopped out of reaching distance.

“You tell me,” he said in a breaking voice; “you tell me what you meant about Delilah and sirens and Samsons and inside facts! You tell me!”

“You wild ass of the prairies,” said Battle, “I saw you last night behind them pa’ms! But don’t you think I told it–or ever will! I just passed the word around that she’d argued you into her way of thinkin’, same as she had a good many others. And as for the rest of it, I found out where the mgger in the woodpile was, and I handed that out, too. Don’t you take it hard, my son, but I told you her husband left her a good deal of land around here. She owns the ground that they use for the baseball park, and her lease would be worth considerable more if they could have got the right to play on Sundays!”

Senator Trumbull sat up straight, in bed, that night, and, for the first time during his martyrdom, listened with no impatience to the prayer which fell upon his ears.

“O, Lord Almighty,” through the flimsy partition came the voice of Alonzo Rawson, quaveringly, but with growing strength: “Aid Thou me to see my way more clear! I find it hard to tell right from wrong, and I find myself beset with tangled wires. O God, I feel that I am ignorant, and fall into many devices. These are strange paths wherein Thou hast set my feet, but I feel that through Thy help, and through great anguish, I am learning!”