“Say?  Why, you are good enough for any woman alive.  I am very glad, Dick.  Patty married to you!  You old farmer,” affectionately, “I’ve always been mentally pairing off you two!  Come on; let’s hear what the political windmill has to say.  They’re burning red fire in front of the hall.”

But a moment gone their feet had dragged with each step; now there was a lightness that was dancing.  John knew that it was all a lie; and his heart was as light as his feet.  Kate, dear Kate!  He was a wretch!  He slapped Warrington on the shoulder.

“To think of your marrying Patty, the little sister!”

“Don’t go too fast, John,” said Warrington with less enthusiasm.  “I haven’t said a word to Patty yet; and if she’s a sensible young woman, she’ll give me my conge first-off.”

“By George, women are strange creatures.  It’s the truth, Dick; you can’t tell which way they’ll go.  But Patty’s no fool.”  John hadn’t felt so good in many hours.

“But I love her, and God knows I shall try to be worthy of her, even if I lose her. ...  Sky-rockets!” with an upward glance.  “That’s the signal for Rudolph’s arrival at the hall.”

“Come on, then!”

Rudolph was the great Jeffersonian Democrat, not by excellence, rather by newspaper courtesy, and that, to be specific, by his own newspaper.  He had come up from New York that day to deliver his already famous speech.  He was one of the many possibilities in the political arena for the governorship.  And as he was a multimillionaire, he was sure of a great crowd.  As an Englishman loves a lord, so does the American love a millionaire.  Rudolph’s newspaper was the only one in the metropolis that patted him on the back regularly each morning.  He was the laboring man’s friend; he was the arch enemy of the monopolies (not yet called trusts); and so forth and so on.  For all that some laughed at him, he was an able politician, and was perfectly honest in all his political transactions, which is something of a paradox.  So he came up to Herculaneum to convert the doubting.  The laboring party greeted him en masse, and stormed the hall for choice seats.

The hall was a low, rambling structure, bad for the voice, but capable of seating a few thousands.  The curbs glared with green and red fire, and a band blared out the songs of freedom.  The crowds surged back and forth, grumbling and laughing and shouting.  And the near-by saloons did a land-office business.  It was a great night for the man who had nothing to do.  All at once there was loud hurrahing.  An open hack drove up to the entrance, and the great Jeffersonian stood up, bowing, bowing.  The green light on one side and the red on the other gave to his face a Gargantuan aspect rather than that of a Quixote, to whom he was more often likened than to any other character in fiction.  The police cleared a pathway for the great man, and he hurried up the steps.  Another cheer, and another blast from the band.  Great is popularity, whose handmaiden is oblivion.