at the corners of Blount's steady gray
eyes, but this time it was shot through with a faint suggestion of the
Blount grimness.

"It has touched me on the sympathetic side, Dick. I saw a large-hearted,
open-handed old cattle-king wading good-naturedly into the muddy stream
of politics to gratify an ambition that wasn't at all his own--a woman's
ambition. In order that the woman might mix and mingle in Washington
society for a brief minute or two, he got himself elected to fill out an
unexpired term of two months in the United States Senate--bought the
election, some said. That was three years ago, wasn't it?--a long time,
as political incidents or accidents go. But Washington hasn't forgotten.
When I was down there last winter the five-o'clock-tea people were still
recalling Mrs. Blount's gowns and the wild-Western naivete of 'The
Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.'"

Gantry was chuckling softly when the half-bitter admission had got
itself fully made.

"Land of love, Evan!" he said, "you may be an educated post-graduate all
right, with the proper Boston degree of culture laid on and rubbed down
to a hard-glaze finish, but you've got a lot to learn yet--about the
senator and his politics, I mean. Why, Great Snipes, man! he isn't in it
a little bit for the social frills and furbelows; he never was. Let me
intimate a few things: Politically speaking, David Blount is by long
odds the biggest man in his State to-day. He can have anything he wants,
from the head of the ticket down. You spoke rather contemptuously just
now of his two months in the Senate; you probably didn't know that he
might have gone back if he had wanted to; that he actually did a much
more difficult thing--named his successor."

David Blount's son stood up and put his shoulders against one of the
veranda pillars. From the new view-point he could look through the
reading-room windows and on into the assembly-room where the dancers
were keeping time to the measures of a two-step. But he was not thinking
of the dancers when he said:

"It's a sheer miracle, Dick, your dropping down here to-night like the
_deus ex machina_ of the old Greek plays. You've read this
telegram"--holding up the folded message--"it is just possible that you
can tell me what lies behind it. Why has my father sent it at this
particular time and in those words? He knows perfectly well that my
plans for settling here in Boston were definitely made more than a year
ago."

"I can tell y