But suddenly, in a second, when the crowd was held in the magic spell of his oratory, when men were least thinking of such a thing, he ceased to talk, the speech was over, the event was closed, and the great man, not pausing even long enough to let the vice-presidents of the meeting shake hands with him, or to hear the Lincoln Glee Club sing a campaign song, looked about for the colonel, climbed out of the stand into his carriage and was whirled away, lifting his hat, still with that distinguished air, amid cheers that would not let the campaign song begin, and with little boys swarming like outrunners at his glistening wheels.
When the meeting was over, Garwood went to the hotel to wait for Rankin, who had a mysterious, but always purposeful way of disappearing at times of such political excitement as had been rocking Lincoln all that day. Garwood had long since learned, when Rankin thus went under the political waters, to await calmly his reappearance at the surface, and so he wrote Rankin's name and his own name on the blotted register of the hotel, and asked for a room. He had scarcely laid down the corroded pen the landlord found in a drawer, when a voice beside him said:
Garwood turned to look in the grinning face of Julius Vogt, who had come over with the Grand Prairie "excursion" that morning.
"Why," said Vogt, drawing something from his pocket, "Pusey's article about you--there," and he opened the copy of the _News_ and gave it to Garwood.
"Oh!" said Garwood, "_that!_--I saw part of it." And he smiled on Vogt, whom he felt like striking.
"Well," said Vogt, still grinning, though his grin was losing something, "I jus' thought, maybe,--"
"Thanks," said Garwood. Several others of the Grand Prairie boys, as any one, considering them in their political capacity, would have called them, had drawn near, attracted by their candidate for Congress, whose wide hat rode above all the heads in the crowd. Doubtless they expected Garwood to open the paper, but he was too good a politician for that. As he stood there he idly picked at the ragged edges of the sheets, and when he spoke seemed to have forgotten it, for he said:
"Didn't he lam into 'em?" said Burr Rippleman.
Still their eyes were on the paper which Garwood seemed to be in danger of picking to pieces.