Mr. Polk, sir," said I, rising and facing him, "damn you, sir, you are
not fit to untie Mr. Calhoun's shoe! I will not see you offer him one
word of insult. Quarrel with me if you like! You will gain no votes here
now in any case, that is sure!"

Utterly horrified at this, Mr. Polk fumbled with his hat and cane, and,
very red in the face, bowed himself out, still mumbling, Mr. Calhoun
rising and bowing his adieux.

My chief dropped into his chair again. For a moment he looked at me
directly. "Nick," said he at length slowly, "you have divided the
Democratic party. You split that party, right then and there."

"Never!" I protested; "but if I did, 'twas ready enough for the
division. Let it split, then, or any party like it, if that is what must
hold it together! I will not stay in this work, Mr. Calhoun, and hear
you vilified. Platforms!"

"Platforms!" echoed my chief. His white hand dropped on the table as he
still sat looking at me. "But he will get you some time, Nicholas!" he
smiled. "Jim Polk will not forget."

"Let him come at me as he likes!" I fumed.

At last, seeing me so wrought up, Mr. Calhoun rose, and, smiling, shook
me heartily by the hand.

"Of course, this had to come one time or another," said he. "The split
was in the wood of their proposed platform of bluff and insincerity.
`What do the people say?' asks Jim Polk. 'What do they _think_?' asks
John Calhoun. And being now, in God's providence; chosen to do some
thinking for them, I have thought."

He turned to the table and took up a long, folded document, which I saw
was done in his cramped hand and with many interlineations. "Copy this
out fair for me to-night, Nicholas," said he. "This is our answer to the
Aberdeen note. You have already learned its tenor, the time we met Mr.
Pakenham with Mr. Tyler at the White House."

I grinned. "Shall we not take it across direct to Mr. Blair for
publication in his _Globe_?"

Mr. Calhoun smiled rather bitterly at this jest. The hostility of Blair
to the Tyler administration was a fact rather more than well known.

"'Twill all get into Mr. Polk's newspaper fast enough," commented he at
last. "He gets all the news of the Mexican ministry!"

"Ah, you think he cultivates the Dona Lucrezia, rather than adores her!"

"I know it! One-third of Jim Polk may be human, but the other two-thirds
is politician. He will flatter that lady into confidences. She is well
nigh distracted at best, these days, what with