with this
trial successfully over--with the election won--with the goods
delivered----"

He suddenly broke off, for the tail of his eye had sighted Blake's
open cabinet.

"Will you allow me a liberty?"

"Certainly," replied Blake, in the dark as to his visitor's purpose.

Mr. Brown crossed to the cabinet, and returned with the squat, black
bottle and two small glasses. He tilted an inch into each tumbler,
gave one to Blake, and raised the other on high. His face was
illumined with his fatherly smile.

"To our new Senator!" he said.

CHAPTER X

SUNSET AT THE SYCAMORES

When the door had closed behind the pleasant figure of Mr. Brown,
Blake pressed the button upon his desk. His stenographer appeared.

"I have some important matters to consider," he said. "Do not allow me
to be disturbed until Doctor and Mrs. Sherman come with the car."

His privacy thus secured, Blake sat at his desk, staring fixedly
before him. His brow was compressed into wrinkles, his dark face,
still showing a yellowish pallor, was hard and set. He reviewed the
entire situation, and as his consuming ambition contemplated the
glories of success, and the success after that, and the succession of
successes that led up and ever up, his every nerve was afire with an
excruciating, impatient pleasure.

For a space while Katherine had confronted him, and for a space after
she had gone, he had shrunk from this business he was carrying
through. But he had spoken truthfully to Mr. Brown when he had said
that his revulsion was but a temporary feeling, and that of his own
accord he would have come back to his original decision. He had had
such revulsions before, and each time he had swung as surely back to
his purpose as does the disturbed needle to the magnetic pole.

Westville considered Harrison Blake a happy blend of the best of his
father and mother; whereas, in point of fact, his father and his
mother lived in him with their personalities almost intact. There was
his mother, with her idealism and her high sense of honour; and his
father, with his boundless ambition and his lack of principles. In the
earlier years of Blake's manhood his mother's qualities had dominated.
He had sincerely tried to do great work for Westville, and had done
it; and the reputation he had then made, and the gratitude he had then
won, were the seed from which had grown the great esteem with which
Westville now regarded him.

But a few years back he had fou