ng sacred and custom itself the strongest of
arguments, his defeat for the place was thereby rendered well-nigh
impossible. Senator Hanway had undertaken no child's task when he went
about the gavel elevation of the popular, yet--by House usage--the
illegitimate Mr. Frost.

Months before ever Senator Hanway was granted the honor of knowing Mr.
Gwynn, he had been burrowingly busy about the Speakership. As a primary
step he was obliged to suppress his ebullient brother-in-law. Mr.
Harley, the moment a conquest of the House in the interests of Senator
Hanway was proposed, waxed threateningly exuberant. He was for issuing
forth to vociferate and slap members upon their backs and jovially
arrange committeeships on the giffgaff principle of give us the
Speakership and you shall become a Chairman. The optimistic Mr. Harley,
whose methods were somewhat coarse and who did most things with an ax,
was precisely of that hopeful sort who would advertise an auction of the
lion's hide while it was yet upon the beast. Senator Hanway, with
instincts safer and more upon the order of the mole's, forbade such
campaigns of noise.

"You must keep silent, John," said he, "and never let men know what we
are about. You are inclined, apparently, to regard a Speakership as you
might a swarm of bees; you think one has only to beat a tin pan long
enough or blow a tin horn loud enough in order to hive it according to
one's wish. The Speakership, however, so far from being a swarm of bees
is more like a flock of blackbirds, and the system to which you incline
would prove the readiest means of frightening away our every chance. In
short, you must work by my orders and meet no one, say nothing, except
as I direct."

Then Senator Hanway sent Mr. Harley, much modified of his vigor, with a
secret invitation to Mr. Frost; when that personage was brought to the
privacy of the Harley house, he laid open to his ambition those gavel
prospects which he, Senator Hanway, had already constructed in his
thoughts.

There was no conflict of argument with Mr. Frost; he rose to the
suggestion like a bass to a fly. Knowing himself to be of a genius too
openly bluff and frank, and no one to conquer those elements which his
campaign would require, he put himself in the hollow of Senator Hanway's
hand to be controlled by him with shut eyes. This voluntary prompt
submission on the part of Mr. Frost had a further subduing effect upon
Mr. Harley. In imitation thereof he,