The man is crooning.  He is happy with his dead.

He talks to the nearest person and to Davy.

There is a great noise at the head of the street.  There is an inflow of the people.  The shrill flageolet, the brass horns, the bass drums, the crash of the general brass and the triangle—­these sounds fill the air.

Where is the people’s idol, elected to Congress by to-night’s count, already conceded at Opposition head-quarters?

The orator stands over his dead.  What is that?  Elected to Congress?  A speech?

“It will be better,” says Richard Tarbelle.  “Come up on the balcony, Mr. Lockwin.  It will be better.”

This noise relieves the father’s brain.  How fortunate it has come.  The orator goes up by a rear stairway.  He appears on the balcony.  There is a cheer that may be heard all over the South Side.

“He looks haggard,” says the first citizen.

“You’d look tired if you opened your barrel the way he did,” vouchsafes the second citizen.

The orator lifts his voice.  It is the proudest moment of his life, he assures them.  In this eventful day’s work the nation has been offered a guarantee of its welfare.  The sanctity of our institutions has been vindicated.

Here the tin-horns, the cat-calls, the drunken congratulations—­the whole Babel—­rises above the charm of oratory.  But the people’s idol does not stop.  The words roll from his mouth.  The form sways, the finger points.

“He’s the boy!” “Notice his giblets!” “He will be President—­if his barrel lasts.”  Thus the first, second and third saloon-keepers determine.

There is a revulsion in the crowd.  What is the matter at the basement gate?

It is the cook and the housekeeper in contention.

“I tell ye’s I’m goin’ to fasten it on the door!  Such doings as this I never heard of.  Oh, Davy, my darlint!  Oh!  Davy, my darlint!”

The crowd is withdrawing to the opposite curb, But the crush is tremendous.  There are ten thousand people in the street.  Only those near by know what is happening.

The cook escapes from the housekeeper.  She climbs the steps of the portico.  She flaunts the white crape.  “Begone, ye blasphemous wretches!” she cries.

“What the devil is that?” asks the first citizen.

The cook is fastening the white gauze and the white satin ribbon on the bell knob.

“Do ye see that, ye graveyard robbers?  Will ye blow yer brass bands and yer tin pipes now, ye murtherin’ wretches?”

The host has seen the signal of death, as it flaunts under the flickering light of the gas lamp.  There is an insensible yet rapid departure.  There were ten thousand hearers.  There are, perhaps, ten hundred whose eyes are as yet fixed upward on the orator.

“Our republic will forever remain splendid among nations,” comes the rich voice from the balcony.  One may see a form swaying, an arm reaching forth in the dim light.