But the sun of election day went down and a breath of relief passed like a south wind over the land.  Perhaps it was the universal recognition of the universal danger that prevented an outbreak, but the morning after found both parties charging fraud, claiming victory, and deadlocked like two savage armies in the crisis of actual battle.  For a fortnight each went on claiming the victory.  In one mountain county the autocrat’s local triumvirate was surrounded by five hundred men, while it was making its count; in another there were three thousand determined onlookers; and still another mountain triumvirate was visited by nearly all the male inhabitants of the county who rode in on horseback and waited silently and threateningly in the court-house square.

At the capital the arsenal was under a picked guard and the autocrat was said to be preparing for a resort to arms.  A few mountaineers were seen drifting about the streets, and the State offices—­“just a-lookin’ aroun’ to see if their votes was a-goin’ to be counted in or not.”

At the end of the fortnight the autocrat claimed the fight by one vote, but three days before Thanksgiving Day two of the State triumvirate declared for the Republican from the Pennyroyal—­and resigned.

“Great Caesar!” shouted Colonel Pendleton.  “Can the one that’s left appoint his own board?”

Being for the autocrat, he not only could but did—­for the autocrat’s work was only begun.  The contest was yet to come.

Meanwhile the great game was at hand.  The fight for the championship lay now between the State University and old Transylvania, and, amid a forest of waving flags and a frenzied storm from human throats, was fought out desperately on the day that the nation sets aside for peace, prayer, and thanksgiving.  Every atom of resentment, indignation, rebellion, ambition that was stored up in Jason went into that fight.  It seemed to John Burnham and to Mavis and Marjorie that their team was made up of just one black head and one yellow one, for everywhere over the field and all the time, like a ball of fire and its shadow, those two heads darted, and, when they came together, they were the last to go down in the crowd of writhing bodies and the first to leap into view again—­and always with the ball nearer the enemy’s goal.  Behind that goal each head darted once, and by just those two goals was the game won.  Gray was the hero he always was; Jason was the coming idol, and both were borne off the field on the shoulders of a crowd that was hoarse with shouting triumph and weeping tears of joy.  And on that triumphal way Jason swerved his eyes from Marjorie and Mavis swerved hers from Gray.  There was no sleep for Jason that night, but the next night the fierce tension of mind and muscle relaxed and he slept long and hard; and Sunday morning found him out in the warm sunlight of the autumn fields, seated on a fence rail—­alone.

He had left the smoke cloud of the town behind him and walked aimlessly afield, except to take the turnpike that led the opposite way from Mavis and Marjorie and John Burnham and Gray, for he wanted to be alone.  Now, perched in the crotch of a stake-and-ridered fence, he was calmly, searchingly, unsparingly taking stock with himself.