iven orders that the hearing should be public.

So far not a word had been said as to the fact which underlay the
motives of the bill. Iron had been found in workable quantities in
those three thousand square miles of hill country. Not a word had been
said about iron.

No one in the room had listened to the speech with any degree of
interest. It was intended entirely for the consumption of the outside
public. Even the reporters had sat listless and bored during its
delivery. They had been furnished with advance copies of it and had
already turned them in to their papers. But with the naming of the
next witness a stir of interest ran sharply around the room.

Bishop Joseph Winthrop of Alden rose from his place in the rear of the
room and walked briskly forward to the chair reserved. A tall, spare
figure of a man coming to his sixty years, his hair as white as the
snow of his hills, with a large, firm mouth and the nose of a Puritan
governor, he would have attracted attention under almost any
circumstances.

Nathan Gorham, the chairman of the committee, had received his orders
from the leader of the majority in the Senate that the bill should be
reported back favourably to that body before night. He had anticipated
no difficulty. The form of a public hearing had to be gone through
with. It was the most effective way of disarming the suspicions that
had been aroused as to the nature of the bill. The speech of the
Racquette County Judge was the usual thing at public hearings. The
chairman had expected that one or two self-advertising reformers of
the opposition would come before the committee with time-honoured,
stock diatribes against the rapacity and greed of railroads in general
and this one in particular. Then he and his two majority colleagues
would vote to report the bill favourably, while the two members of the
minority would vote to report adversely. This, the chairman said, was
about all a public hearing ever amounted to. He had not counted on
the coming of the Bishop of Alden.

"The committee would like to hear, sir," began the chairman, as the
Bishop took his place, "whom you represent in the matter of this
bill."

The reporters, scenting a welcome sensation in what had been a dull
session of a dull committee, sat with poised pencils while the Bishop
turned a look of quiet gravity upon the chairman and said:

"I represent Joseph Winthrop, a voter of Racquette County."

"I beg pardon, sir, of course. The