"The papers _have_ rather skinned me; but on the whole, I'll do very
well. They say it isn't respectable to be a senator these days, but they
oughtn't to hold it up against a man that he's rich. If the Lord put
silver in the mountains of Montana and let me dig it out, it's nothing
against me, is it?"

"Decidedly not! And if you want to invest it in a senatorship it's the
Lord's hand again."

"Why sure!" and the Senator from Montana winked once more. "But it's
expensive. I've got to be elected again next winter--I'm only filling out
Billings' term--and I'm not sure I can go up against it."

"But you are nothing if not unselfish. If the good of the country demands
it you'll not falter, if I know you."

"There's hot water heat in this hotel, so please turn off the hot air. I
saw your foreman in Helena the last time I was out there, and he was
sober. I mention the fact, knowing that I'm jeopardizing my reputation
for veracity, but it's the Lord's truth. Of course you spent Christmas at
the old home in England--one of those yule-log and plum-pudding
Christmases you read of in novels. You Englishmen--"

"My dear Sanderson, don't call me English! I've told you a dozen times
that I'm not English."

"So you did; so you did! I'd forgotten that you're so damned sensitive
about it;" and Sanderson's eyes regarded Armitage intently for a moment,
as though he were trying to recall some previous discussion of the
young man's nativity.

"I offer you free swing at the bar, Senator. May I summon a Montana
cocktail? You taught me the ingredients once--three dashes orange
bitters; two dashes acid phosphate; half a jigger of whisky; half a
jigger of Italian vermuth. You undermined the constitutions of half
Montana with that mess."

Sanderson reached for his hat with sudden dejection.

"The sprinkling cart for me! I've got a nerve specialist engaged by the
year to keep me out of sanatoriums. See here, I want you to go with us
to-night to the Secretary of State's push. Not many of the Montana boys
get this far from home, and I want you for exhibition purposes. Say,
John, when I saw Cinch Tight, Montana, written on the register down there
it increased my circulation seven beats! You're all right, and I guess
you're about as good an American as they make--anywhere--John Armitage!"

The function for which the senator from Montana provided an invitation
for Armitage was a large affair in honor of several new ambassadors. At
ten o'c