The door of the anteroom afforded a view across the stage.  The hour had arrived.  The secretary of the State Committee appeared from the wings and waited until the delegates were in their seats and quiet.  He read the call, and then the temporary organization was promptly effected, the tagged delegates popping up here and there and making the motions that had been entrusted to them.

A clergyman invoked Divine blessing, praying fulsomely and long, beseeching that the delegates would be guided by the higher will in their deliberations.

“It’s the only prayer I ever find amusing—­God pardon me!” whispered the General at Harlan’s side, watching the preliminaries.  “To call a State convention, as the machine runs it, a deliberative body is a sad jest of some magnitude.  The managers intend to hold the real convention the night before in the State Committee’s headquarters at the hotel.  But to-day I hope that prayer proves prophetic.”

He studied the faces on the platform.  The United States Senator, smug and now satisfied that he had chosen aright for his personal interests, sat in the chairman’s central seat, and studied his people from under eyelids half lowered while the parson prayed.

After the prayer, the routine proceeded hurriedly.  For five minutes the convention seemed to be in a state of riot.  Men were bellowing and yelping, and standing on settees.  The counties were holding simultaneous caucuses for the purpose of selecting, each its vice-president of convention, its State committeeman, and member of the Committee on Resolutions—­the resolutions then reposing in the breast-pocket of the Hon. Luke Presson.

The secretaries were announced, the temporary organization was made permanent, and, advancing against a blast of band-music and a salvo of applause, the Senator-chairman began his address.

“Now,” remarked General Waymouth, grimly, “I am ready to open headquarters in earnest.  My boy, in that anteroom across the stage you’ll find your grandfather and Mr. Presson, and certain members of the State Committee.  David Everett will be there, too.  Inform them I send my urgent request that they meet, at once, the Hon. Arba Spinney and a delegation in my room here.  I think that combination will suggest to guilty consciences that they’d better hurry.  If they show any signs of hesitating, you may intimate as much to them.”

The plain and stolid men came in just then.  They brought Mr. Spinney through the side door.  The unhappy conspirator, jostled by his body-guard, was near collapse.  He was now traitor to both sides.  Circumstances hemmed him in.  But more than he feared the recriminations of Luke Presson and his associates, he feared the papers in the breast-pocket of Varden Waymouth.

Harlan went on his errand, crossing the stage behind a backdrop.  Senator Pownal had got well under way, and was setting forth the sturdy principles of the Republican party with all the power of his lungs.