suggestions, appeared from time to time on the
scene, and, dropping into a chair by Ratcliffe's desk, whispered with
him in mysterious tones.

Thus the Senator worked on, hour after hour, mechanically doing what was
required of him, signing papers without reading them, answering remarks
without hearing them, hardly looking up from his desk, and appearing
immersed in labour. This was his protection against curiosity and
garrulity.

The pretence of work was the curtain he drew between himself and the
world.

Behind this curtain his mental operations went on, undisturbed by what
was about him, while he heard all that was said, and said little or
nothing himself. His followers respected this privacy, and left him
alone. He was their prophet, and had a right to seclusion. He was their
chieftain, and while he sat in his monosyllabic solitude, his ragged
tail reclined in various attitudes about him, and occasionally one man
spoke, or another swore. Newspapers and tobacco were their resource in
periods of absolute silence.

A shade of depression rested on the faces and the voices of Clan
Ratcliffe that evening, as is not unusual with forces on the eve of
battle. Their remarks came at longer intervals, and were more pointless
and random than usual. There was a want of elasticity in their bearing
and tone, partly coming from sympathy with the evident depression of
their chief; partly from the portents of the time. The President was to
arrive within forty-eight hours, and as yet there was no sign that
he properly appreciated their services; there were signs only too
unmistakeable that he was painfully misled and deluded, that his
countenance was turned wholly in another direction, and that all their
sacrifices were counted as worthless. There was reason to believe that
he came with a deliberate purpose of making war upon Ratcliffe and
breaking him down; of refusing to bestow patronage on them, and of
bestowing it wherever it would injure them most deeply. At the thought
that their honestly earned harvest of foreign missions and consulates,
department-bureaus, custom-house and revenue offices, postmasterships,
Indian agencies, and army and navy contracts, might now be wrung from
their grasp by the selfish greed of a mere accidental intruder--a man
whom nobody wanted and every one ridiculed--their natures rebelled, and
they felt that such things must not be; that there could be no more hope
for democratic government if such thi