* * * * *

Several times Frank tried to reach Aleta on the telephone.  But she did not respond to calls, a fact which he attributed to disorganized service.  But presently there came a letter from Camp Curry in the Yosemite Valley.

“I am here among the everlasting pines and cliffs,” she wrote, “thinking it all out.  I thank you for the book, which has helped me.  If only we might waken from our ‘dream’!  But here one is nearer to God.  It is very quiet and the birds sing always in the golden sunshine.

“I shall come back saner, happier, to face the world....  Perhaps I can forget myself in service, I think I shall try settlement work.

“Meanwhile I am trying not to think of what has happened ... what can never happen.  I am reading and painting.  Yesterday a dog came up and licked my hand.  I cried a little after that, I don’t know why.”

In his room that evening, Frank re-read the letter.  It brought a lump to his throat.

CHAPTER LXXXVII

NORAH FINDS OUT

Very soon after the appointment of Mayor Taylor, the second trial of Louis Glass ended in his conviction.  He was remanded to the county jail awaiting an appeal.  The trial of an official of the United Railways began.  Meanwhile the politicians rallied for election.

Schmitz had been elected at the end of 1905.  His term, which Dr. Taylor was completing, would be terminated with the closing of the present year.  And now the Graft Prosecution was to learn by public vote how many of the people stood behind it.

Union Labor, ousted and discredited by venal representatives, was not officially in favor of the Taylor-Langdon slate.  P.H.  McCarthy, labor leader and head of the Building Trades Council, was Labor’s nominee for Mayor.

Frank met McCarthy now and then.  He posed as “a plain, blunt man,” but back of the forthright handgrip, the bluff directness of manner, Frank scented a massive and wily self-interest.  He respected the man for his power, his crude but undeniable executive talents.

The two opponents for the Mayoralty were keenly contrasted.  Taylor was quiet, suavely cultured, widely read but rather passive.  Some said he lacked initiative.

Frank MacGowan was Langdon’s foeman in the struggle for the district attorneyship.  Little could be said for or against him.  A lawyer of good reputation who had made his way upward by merit and push, he had done nothing big.  He was charged with no wrong.

The “dark horse” was Daniel Ryan.

Ryan was a young Irishman, that fine type of political leader who approximates what has sometimes been called a practical idealist.  He had set out to reform the Republican Party and achieved a certain measure of success, for he had beaten the Herrin or Railroad forces at the Republican Convention.  Ryan was avowedly pro-prosecution.  It was believed that he would deliver his party’s nomination to Taylor and Langdon.