down there at your brother's seat
till people are taking notice of you."

"I am suffering a little, Kitty; that is all. My case comes up within
five minutes, and I might as well blow my head off if it shall stick
anywhere."

His eyes seemed to flame out with a reckless light as he said this.

"Arthur has a sick look as well," said Kate. "This public life is too
exciting for him. See how nervously he sips that glass of water."

"Sick!" exclaimed Elk MacNair, with a voice of bitterness, yet with a
melancholy glance of admiration in the direction of the Congressman;
"he is more dangerous than sick. His will is sublime, Kate; nothing
can soften it, not even pity."

The committees were now being called by the Speaker, and chairman
after chairman rose to make his report. As the list diminished more
and more, and the Committee upon Ancient Contracts approached its
turn, there were no two such livid, deathly faces in all the crowded
house as these two brothers wore. Elk MacNair's had a settled
ferocity. The youthfulness and comely moods were gone from it, and the
burnt-out countenance of a man of the world looked dead and ashen
above the exhausted reservoirs of a diseased mind. Nothing was left
but the last chance before despair, and apprehensive of the failure of
this hope also, his gloved hand, resting upon a pocket hidden at his
hip, sought support from the hilt of a pistol secreted there. Was
_this_ the meaning of the sullen and ghastly determination glaring
from his eyes? Yes, love and death were almost mated; and so in every
busy Congress do the spectres of temptation and ill-omen lurk in wait.

The country brother on the floor showed also his tenacious purpose in
his compressed lips, straight, expanded breast and shoulders, and
clear and direct but grave look. No extremity of occasion could make a
heroic figure of him, but in his plain face was the beauty of moral
courage. He rose to his feet when the Speaker cried:

"Committee on Ancient Contracts is next in order. The gentleman from
Pennsylvania!"

The people in the galleries were not disappointed that such a homely
man should have no voice nor grace, and that he spoke only with the
gravest effort.

"The gentleman's voice is inaudible to the chair," said the Speaker.

But Elk MacNair had heard it from where he sat. He had distinguished
the fitful words:

"The committee reports against the ---- claim for postal services,
desires that it do not pass, and t