midnight
It was an intuitive sense , a sort of premonition that the battalions were closing in for the final conflict , and he did not doubt the result . He had just returned from a war on the other side of the world , where he had been present as the correspondent of a great New York journal on many battle-fields , and he often noticed this strained , breathless feeling that the moment had come , just before the combat was joined . Now this convention-hall was none the less a battle-field though the weapons were ballots , not bullets , and Harley believed in his intuition . At midnight the flood-tide swept in , bearing Grayson on its crest , and , when they saw that he was the man , everybody flocked to him , making the nomination unanimous by a rising vote . Harley now stood a moment at the door , listening to the cheers as they swelled again , then he stepped out and ran swiftly down the street . A fat policeman , taking him for a fleeing pickpocket , shouted to him to stop , but he flitted by and was gone . It was only two or three blocks to the hotel , where Mr. Grayson sat quietly in his room , and Harley was running swiftly , but in the minute or two that elapsed much passed through his mind .