Roger B. Ridgefield to have taken himself out of the world in this abrupt fashion.  Before the first shock had passed, there were those about the State House who, scanning the newspaper extras, were saying that a secret fondness for poker and not an enthusiasm for ducks had led the Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield to the remote arm of the Chesapeake, where he had been the guest of a financier whose influence in the upper house of Congress was notoriously pernicious.  This did not, however, alter the immediate situation.  The language of the Federal and State Constitutions was all too explicit for the Republican minority; it was only in recess that a governor might fill a vacancy; and beyond doubt the general assembly was in town, lawfully brought from the farm, the desk, the mine, and the factory, as though expressly to satisfy the greed for power of a voracious Democracy.

Groups of members were retiring to quiet corners to discuss the crisis.  Bassett had already designated a committee room where he would meet his followers and stanch adherents.  Thatcher men had gone forth to seek their chief.  The Democrats would gain a certain moral strength through the possession of a Senator in Congress.  The man chosen to fill the vacancy would have an almost irresistible claim upon the senatorship if the Democrats should control the next legislature.  It was worth fighting for, that dead man’s seat!

The full significance of the news was not wasted upon Representative Harwood.  The house adjourned promptly, and Dan hastened to write telegrams.  He wired Colonel Ramsay, of Aurora, to come to the capital on the first train.  Telegrams went flying that afternoon to every part of Indiana.

Thatcher read the evening papers in Chicago and kept the wires hot while he waited for the first train for Indianapolis.

One of his messages, addressed to Harwood, read: 

     “Breakfast with me to-morrow morning at my house.  Strictly private. 
     This is your big chance.”

Harwood, locked in his office in the Law Building, received this message by telephone, and it aroused his ire.  His relations with Thatcher did not justify that gentleman in tendering him a strictly private breakfast, nor did he relish having a big chance pointed out to him by Mr. Thatcher.  It cannot be denied that Dan, too, felt that Senator Ridgefield had chosen a most unfortunate season for exposing himself to the ravages of the pneumococcus.  He kept away from the State House and hotels that evening, having decided to take no part in the preliminary skirmishes until he had seen Ramsay, who would bring a cool head and a trained hand to bear upon this unforeseen situation.

He studied the newspapers as he ate breakfast alone at the University Club early the next morning.  The “Advertiser” had neatly divided its first page between the Honorable Roger B. Ridgefield, dead in a far country, and the Honorable Morton Bassett, who, it seemed, was very much alive at the Hoosier capital.  A double column headline conveyed this intelligence:—­