“I can’t tell you.  Excuse me.”  A customer waits.

“Yes, yes, yes!” growls Corkey.  But he never was busier.  He is trying to do his work at the office and to get through election week.

“Where is Chalmers?” Again Corkey is at the drug store.  “See here, my friend, I don’t take no street-car way down here to have you do no cunning act.  Is Chalmers in town?”

“I do not know.”

The clerk is telling the truth, and is in turn offended.  “I do not know,” he says, resolutely.

Corkey is convinced.  “I’ll bet it’s true,” he says, suddenly summing up the situation.

He hurries away.  The weather is wet and cold.

Corkey is drenched, and of all things he dreads a drenching.  For that he wears the thickest of clothes.

Three hours later he is known to be badly beaten at the polls.  He is denounced as a sore-head, a bolter, and a fool.

Corkey goes to his home.  On the night of the fourth day he appears in the yellow light of the telegraph-room.

“Commodore, we’re sorry for you.  Take it easy, and get back to work.  No man can live, doing as you’ve done.  You were up all the time, weren’t you?”

Corkey’s light is burning because the other editors need it.  He sits with his coat on, his face on his hands, his elbows on the table.

“I was up the last six days,” he explains.  “I just got out of bed now.”

“Do you good to sleep,” says the night editor.

“What day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“Well, I go to sleep some time Wednesday.  I sleep ever since.”

There is a chorus of astonishment.  “It will save your life, Corkey. 
We thought the election would kill you.”

“I’m sleepy yet.”

“Go back and sleep more.”

“Good-bye, boys.  I’m much obliged to you all.  I’m out of politics.  They got all my stuff.  I’m worried over a friend, too.”

“Too bad, Corkey, too bad.”

These editors, whose very food is the human drama, have not lost sight of the terrible chapter of Corkey’s activity, anxiety and inevitable disappointment.

“Too bad, isn’t it!” the telegraph editor says.  “Had any fires?”

“It makes me almost cry,” answers the assistant telegraph editor.  “Fires?  Yes, I’ve enough for a display head.”

“We must go and look after Corkey if he isn’t here to-morrow night,” observes the night editor.  “He’s bad off.”

A little after midnight there is a loud rattle at the door of the drug store.

The prescription clerk at last opens the door.

“Is Chalmers home yet?”

The clerk is angry.  “You have no right to call me up for that!” he avers.  “I need my sleep.”

“You don’t need sleep no worse than I do, young feller.”

The door is shut, and Corkey must go home.