minick jeering at them and anticipating the pleasure of watching
me torment them. I choked back the surge of repulsion and said to
Roebuck: "Then where _shall_ I sit?"

Roebuck looked, almost wildly, toward the foot of the table. He longed
to have me as far from him as possible. Partridge, at the foot of the
table, cried out--in alarm: "Make room for the Senator between you and
Mr. Dominick, Roebuck! He ought to be as near the head of the table as
possible."

"No matter where Senator Sayler sits, it's the head of the table," said
Roebuck. His commonplace of courtesy indicated, not recovered
self-control, but the cunning of his rampant instinct of
self-preservation--that cunning which men so often exhibit in desperate
straits, thereby winning credit for cool courage.

"We're a merry company," said I, as we sat. This, with a glance at
Dominick heaving in the subsiding storm of his mirth. My remark set him
off again. I glanced at his place to see if he had abandoned his former
inflexible rule of total abstinence. There stood his invariable pot of
tea. Clearly, it was not drink that enabled him to enjoy a situation
which, as it seemed to me, was fully as unattractive for him as for his
fellows.

Soon the door opened and in strode Croffut; handsome, picturesque, with
his pose of dashing, brave manhood, which always got the crowds into the
mood for the frenzy his oratory conjured. Croffut seemed to me to put
the climax upon this despicable company--Croffut, one of the great
orators of the party, so adored by the people that, but for our
overwhelming superiority in the state, I should never have dared eject
him from office. Since I ejected him he had not spoken to me. Dominick
looked at him, said in a voice that would have flared even the warm
ashes of manhood into a furious blaze: "Go and shake hands with Senator
Sayler, Croffut, and sit down."

Croffut advanced, smiling. "I am fit for my company," thought I as I let
him clasp my hand.

"Better tilt Granby's ghost out of that chair, Croffut," said Dominick,
as the ex-Senator was seating himself. And in his animal exuberance of
delight at his joke and at the whole situation he clapped Roebuck on the
shoulder.

Roebuck shrank and winced. Moral humiliation he could shed as an
armor-plated turret sheds musket-balls. But a physical humiliation,
especially with spectators, sank in and sank deep. Instantly, alarmed
lest Dominick had seen and understood, he smiled and said: