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 about their leader. He wore evening clothes, his black dinner-coat and white shirt bosom striking a vivid note in the scene. He walked briskly, but his mind was so intent upon his pose that it was not until he had removed his cigarette from his lips and had observed Underwood, that his white teeth showed beneath his reddish mustache in the well-known smile of George R. Baldwin. He elbowed his way into the very midst of the Underwood men from the Fifth Ward, and leading one of them aside, talked with him an instant, and then returned him, as it were, to his place in the delegation. Then he brought forth another, whispered to him for an earnest moment, and sent him back, with a smile and a slap on the shoulder. The third delegate detained him longer, and once, as he argued with him, the slightest shade of displeasure crossed Baldwin's face, but in an instant the smile replaced it, and he talked—convincingly, it seemed. Before Baldwin returned this man to his delegation, he shook hands with him.

The secretary was calling the wards, and Nolan had announced the result in his delegation. The Fifth Ward was a long while in preparing its bal