“It’s no time to be leaving a caucus,” he pleaded.  “We’ve fixed up a new call.  We’ll get down to business now.”

“I know where my business is just this minute!” shouted the man who was leading the first volunteers.  “And it ain’t in politics.”

The chairman tried to put a motion to adjourn, but at that moment the meeting-house bell began to clang its alarm.

“Save your property, you Jo Quacca fellows!” some one cried, and the crowd stampeded.

Thornton remained in his place in front of the rostrum.  He noted who were running away.  The deserters were the back-district voters—­the opposition among whom his enemies had prevailed.  The villagers remained.  Here and there among them walked Talleyrand Sylvester.  He was unobtrusive and he spoke low, but he was earnest.

When at last the chairman made his voice heard, Ivus Niles was shouting for recognition.  That stern patriot had remained on guard.

“Maybe my house is burning, gents, but I ain’t going to desert my post of duty till a square deal has been given.  I call on you to adjourn this caucus till evening.”

“Question!” was the chorus that assailed the chairman.  The villagers crowded around the rostrum.

The motion to adjourn was voted down with a viva voce vote there was no disputing.

“It ain’t just nor right!” squalled the War Eagle.  “I’m here to protest!  You ain’t giving the voters a show!  This thing shan’t be bulled through this way!”

But that caucus was out of the hands of Mr. Niles and such as he, though some of the staunchest of Thornton’s opposition had remained to fight.

Sylvester elbowed his way to the front, his followers at his back.

“I move, Mr. Chairman, that the check-list be dispensed with.  It ain’t ever been used in this caucus, anyway.  And I’m in favor of hustling this thing so that we can all get up there and fight that fire.  I don’t believe in staying here caucusing, and let folks’ property burn up.”

The opposition howled their wrath.  They understood all the hypocrisy of this bland assertion, but protest amounted to nothing.  The voters were behind Sylvester.  That gentleman promptly put in nomination the name of Harlan Thornton for representative to the legislature from the Canibas class of towns and plantations, and the choice was affirmed by a yell that made the protesting chorus seem only a feeble chirp.  And then the caucus adjourned tumultuously.

Through it all Thelismer Thornton stood with shoulders against the boarding, that quizzical half-smile on his face.  He walked out of the hall past the outraged Ivus Niles without losing that smile, though the demagogue followed him to the door with frantic threats and taunts.

The meeting-house bell still chattered its alarm, an excited ringer rolling the wheel over and over.

Chairman Presson, who had found speech inadequate for some time, followed the Duke to the stairway outside, and stood beside him, gazing up at the conflagration.  Smoke masked the hills.  Fire-flashes, pallid in the afternoon light, shot up here and there in the yellow billows rolling nearest the ground.