For several years a struggle had gone on between the two nearly matched elements in this western city, which, so far, had resulted in securing him two terms of office--possibly because his character appealed to men of all grades and varying convictions.

But the opposite party was strong in the state, and the question whether he could carry his ticket against such odds, and thus give hope to his party in the coming presidential election, was one yet to be tested.
Forceful as a speaker, he was expected to reap hundreds of votes from the mixed elements that invariably thronged to hear him, and, ignorant as I necessarily was of the exigencies of such a campaign, I knew that not only his own ambition, but the hopes of his party, depended on the speeches he had been booked to make in all parts of the state.

And now, three weeks before election, while every opposing force was coming to the surface, this trouble had come upon him.

A mystery in his home and threatened death in his heart! For he loved his wife--that was apparent to me from the first; loved her to idolatry, as such men sometimes do love,--often to their own undoing.
All this, the thought of an instant.

Meanwhile he had been studying me well.
"You understand my position," he commented.