“That brings us a little nearer to the things that be—­and to your prospects, David,” said the guest.  “How are you fixed here?”

Kent shrugged.

“Gaston is dead, as you see; too dead to bury.”

“Why don’t you get out of it, then?”

“I shall some day, perhaps.  Up to date there has been no place to go to, and no good way to arrive.  Like some thousands of others, I’ve made an ass of myself here, Loring.”

“By coming, you mean?  Oh, I don’t know about that.  You have had some hard knocks, I take it, but if you are the same David Kent I used to know, they have made a bigger man of you.”

“Think so?”

“I’d bet on it.  We have had the Gaston epic done out for us in the newspapers.  No man could live through such an experience as you must have had without growing a few inches.  Hello!  What’s this?”

A turned corner had brought them in front of a lighted building in Texas Street with a straggling crowd gathered about the porticoed entrance.  As Loring spoke, there was a rattle of snare drums followed by the dum-dum of the bass, and a brass band ramped out the opening measures of a campaign march.

“It is a rally,” said Kent, when they had passed far enough beyond the zone of brass-throated clamorings to make the reply audible.  “I told you that the Gaston wolf-pack had gone into politics.  We are in the throes of a State election, and there is to be a political speech-making at the Opera House to-night, with Bucks in the title role.  And there is a fair measure of the deadness of the town!  When you see people flock together like that to hear a brass band play, it means one of two things:  that the town hasn’t outgrown the country village stage, or else it has passed that and all other stages and is well on its way to the cemetery.”

“That is one way of putting it,” Loring rejoined.  “If things are as bad as that, it’s time you were moving on, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” was the lack-luster response.  “Only I don’t know where to go, or what to do when I get there.”

They were crossing the open square in front of the wide-eaved passenger station.  A thunderous tremolo, dominating the distant band music, thrilled on the still air, and the extended arm of the station semaphore with its two dangling lanterns wagged twice.

“My train,” said Loring, quickening his step.

“No,” Kent corrected.  “It is a special from the west, bringing a Bucks crowd to the political rally.  Number Three isn’t due for fifteen minutes yet, and she is always late.”

They mounted the steps to the station platform in good time to meet the three-car special as it came clattering in over the switches, and presently found themselves in the thick of the crowd of debarking ralliers.

It was a mixed masculine multitude, fairly typical of time, place and occasion; stalwart men of the soil for the greater part, bearded and bronzed and rough-clothed, with here and there a range-rider in picturesque leathern shaps, sagging pistols and wide-flapped sombrero.