ral influence was thus brought, to bear in favor of the bill;
the weightiest of friends flocked to its standard; its most energetic
enemies said it was useless to fight longer; they had tacitly surrendered
while as yet the day of battle was not come.

CHAPTER LIII.

The session was drawing toward its close. Senator Dilworthy thought he
would run out west and shake hands with his constituents and let them
look at him. The legislature whose duty it would be to re-elect him to
the United States Senate, was already in session. Mr. Dilworthy
considered his re-election certain, but he was a careful, painstaking
man, and if, by visiting his State he could find the opportunity to
persuade a few more legislators to vote for him, he held the journey to
be well worth taking. The University bill was safe, now; he could leave
it without fear; it needed his presence and his watching no longer.
But there was a person in his State legislature who did need watching
--a person who, Senator Dilworthy said, was a narrow, grumbling,
uncomfortable malcontent--a person who was stolidly opposed to reform,
and progress and him,--a person who, he feared, had been bought with
money to combat him, and through him the commonwealth's welfare and its
politics' purity.

"If this person Noble," said Mr. Dilworthy, in a little speech at a
dinner party given him by some of his admirers, "merely desired to
sacrifice me.--I would willingly offer up my political life on the altar
of my dear State's weal, I would be glad and grateful to do it; but when
he makes of me but a cloak to hide his deeper designs, when he proposes
to strike through me at the heart of my beloved State, all the lion in me
is roused--and I say here I stand, solitary and alone, but unflinching,
unquailing, thrice armed with my sacred trust; and whoso passes, to do
evil to this fair domain that looks to me for protection, must do so over
my dead body."

He further said that if this Noble were a pure man, and merely misguided,
he could bear it, but that he should succeed in his wicked designs
through, a base use of money would leave a blot upon his State which
would work untold evil to the morals of the people, and that he would not
suffer; the public morals must not be contaminated. He would seek this
man Noble; he would argue, he would persuade, he would appeal to his
honor.

When he arrived on the ground he found his friends unterrified; they were
standing firmly by h