If Peter had found himself a marked man in the trip up, he was doubly so on the return train.  He sat most of the time by himself, pondering on what had happened, but he could not be unconscious of the number of people to whom he was pointed out.  He was conscious too, that his course had not been understood, and that many of those who looked at him with interest, did so without approbation.  He was not buoyed up either, by a sense that he had succeeded in doing the best.  He had certainly hurt Porter, and had made enemies of Maguire and Kennedy.  Except for the fact that he had tried to do right, he could see no compensating balance.

Naturally the newspapers the next morning did not cheer him, though perhaps he cared less for what they said than he ought.  He sent them, good, bad, and indifferent, to his mother, writing her at the same time a long letter, telling her how and why he had taken this course.  He wrote also a long letter to Porter, explaining his conduct.  Porter had already been told that Peter was largely responsible for his defeat, but after reading Peter’s letter, he wrote him a very kind reply, thanking him for his support and for his letter.  “It is not always easy to do what one wants in politics,” he wrote, “but if one tries with high motives, for high things, even defeat loses its bitterness.  I shall not be able to help you, in your wished-for reforms as greatly as I hoped, but I am not quite a nonentity in politics even now, and if at any time you think my aid worth the asking, do not hesitate to call on me for it.  I shall always be glad to see you at my house for a meal or a night, whether you come on political matters or merely for a chat.”

Peter found his constituents torn with dissensions over his and Kennedy’s course in the convention.  He did not answer in kind the blame and criticism industriously sowed by Kennedy; but he dropped into a half-a-dozen saloons in the next few days, and told “the b’ys” a pretty full history of the “behind-the-scenes” part.

“I’m afraid I made mistakes,” he frankly acknowledged, “yet even now I don’t see how I could have done differently.  I certainly thought I was doing right.”

“An’ so yez were,” shouted Dennis.  “An’ if that dirty beast Kennedy shows his dirty face inside these doors, it’s a washin’ it will get wid the drainin’ av the beer-glasses.  We wants none av his dirty bargains here.”

“I don’t know that he had made any bargain,” said Peter.

“But we do,” shouted one of the men.  “It’s a bargain he’s always makin’.”

“Yes,” said Dennis.  “It’s Kennedy looks out for himself, an’ we’ll let him do it next time all by himself.”  It could not be traced to its origin, but in less than a week the consensus of opinion in the ward was that:  “Kennedy voted for himself, but Stirling for us.”

The ward, too, was rather proud of the celebrity it had achieved.  The papers had not merely paragraphed Peter, and the peculiar position of the “district” in the convention, but they had begun now asking questions as to how the ward would behave.  “Would it support Catlin?” “Was it true that the ward machine had split, and intended to nominate rival tickets?” “Had one faction made a deal with the Republicans?”