n dismissed from the service,
a victim of the mania for gambling. His ruddy face, iron-gray hair, and
jovial mien indicated that he enjoyed life in spite of troubles.

There were no clubs in Washington at this time except the regular
gambling-houses, of which there were more than one hundred in full blast.

Stoneman was himself a gambler, and spent a part of almost every night at
Hall & Pemberton's Faro Palace on Pennsylvania Avenue, a place noted for
its famous restaurant. It was here that he met Colonel Howle and learned
to like him. He was a man of talent, cool and audacious, and a liar of
such singular fluency that he quite captivated the old Commoner's
imagination.

"Upon my soul, Howle," he declared soon after they met, "you made the
mistake of your life going into the army. You're a born politician. You're
what I call a natural liar, just as a horse is a pacer, a dog a setter.
You lie without effort, with an ease and grace that excels all art. Had
you gone into politics, you could easily have been Secretary of State, to
say nothing of the vice-presidency. I would say President but for the fact
that men of the highest genius never attain it."

From that moment Colonel Howle had become his charmed henchman. Stoneman
owned this man body and soul, not merely because he had befriended him
when he was in trouble and friendless, but because the colonel recognized
the power of the leader's daring spirit and revolutionary genius.

On his left sat a negro of perhaps forty years, a man of charming features
for a mulatto, who had evidently inherited the full physical
characteristics of the Aryan race, while his dark yellowish eyes beneath
his heavy brows glowed with the brightness of the African jungle. It was
impossible to look at his superb face, with its large, finely chiselled
lips and massive nose, his big neck and broad shoulders, and watch his
eyes gleam beneath the projecting forehead, without seeing pictures of the
primeval forest. "The head of a Caesar and the eyes of the jungle" was the
phrase coined by an artist who painted his portrait.

His hair was black and glossy and stood in dishevelled profusion on his
head between a kink and a curl. He was an orator of great power, and
stirred a negro audience as by magic.

Lydia Brown had called Stoneman's attention to this man, Silas Lynch, and
induced the statesman to send him to college. He had graduated with credit
and had entered the Methodist ministry. In his