“Now what does all this mean?” he demanded.

“It means,” said Mr. Redbrook, “that when the time comes, we want you to run for governor.”

Austen went to the mantelpiece, and stood for a long time with his back turned, staring at a crayon portrait of Colonel Peasley, in the uniform in which he had fallen at the battle of Gettysburg.  Then he swung about and seized the member from Mercer by both broad shoulders.

“James Redbrook,” he said, “until to-night I thought you were about as long-headed and sensible a man as there was in the State.”

“So I be,” replied Mr. Redbrook, with a grin.  “You ask young Tom Gaylord.”

“So Tom put you up to this nonsense.”

“It ain’t nonsense,” retorted Mr. Redbrook, stoutly, “and Tom didn’t put me up to it.  It’s the’ best notion that ever came into my mind.”

Austen, still clinging to Mr. Redbrook’s shoulders, shook his head slowly.

“James,” he said, “there are plenty of men who are better equipped than I for the place, and in a better situation to undertake it.  I—­I’m much obliged to you.  But I’ll help.  I’ve got to go,” he added; “the Honourable Hilary wants to see me.”

He went into the entry and put on his overshoes and his coat, while James Redbrook regarded him with a curious mingling of pain and benevolence on his rugged face.

“I won’t press you now, Austen,” he said, “but think on it.  For God’s sake, think on it.”

Outside, Austen paused in the snow once more, his brain awhirl with a strange exaltation the like of which he had never felt before.  Although eminently human, it was not the fact that honest men had asked him to be their governor which uplifted him,—­but that they believed him to be as honest as themselves.  In that hour he had tasted life as he had never yet tasted it, he had lived as he might never live again.  Not one of them, he remembered suddenly, had uttered a sentence of the political claptrap of which he had heard so much.  They had spoken from the soul; not bitterly, not passionately, but their words had rung with the determination which had made their forefathers and his leave home, toil, and kindred to fight and die at Bunker Hill and Gettysburg for a principle.  It had bean given him to look that eight into the heart of a nation, and he was awed.

As he stood there under the winter moon, he gradually became conscious of music, of an air that seemed the very expression of his mood.  His eyes, irresistibly drawn towards the Duncan house, were caught by the fluttering of lace curtains at an open window.  The notes were those of a piano,—­though the instrument mattered little,—­that with which they were charged for him set the night wind quivering.  It was not simple music, although it had in it a grand simplicity.  At times it rose, vibrant with inexpressible feeling, and fell again into gentler, yearning cadences that wrung the soul with a longing that was world-old and world-wide, that reached out towards the unattainable stare—­and, reaching, became immortal.  Thus was the end of it, fainting as it drifted heavenward.