ht. The love of power was the breath of his nostrils, and his
ambitions had at one time been boundless. His enormous power to-day was
due to the fact that he had given up all hope of office beyond the robes
of the king of his party. He had been offered a cabinet position by the
elder Harrison and for some reason it had been withdrawn. He had been
promised a place in Lincoln's cabinet, but some mysterious power had
snatched it away. He was the one great man who had now no ambition for
which to trim and fawn and lie, and for the very reason that he had
abolished himself he was the most powerful leader who ever walked the
halls of Congress.

His contempt for public opinion was boundless. Bold, original, scornful of
advice, of all the men who ever lived in our history he was the one man
born to rule in the chaos which followed the assassination of the chief
magistrate.

Audacity was stamped in every line of his magnificent head. His choicest
curses were for the cowards of his own party before whose blanched faces
he shouted out the hidden things until they sank back in helpless silence
and dismay. His speech was curt, his humour sardonic, his wit biting,
cruel, and coarse.

The incarnate soul of revolution, he despised convention and ridiculed
respectability.

There was but one weak spot in his armour--and the world never suspected
it: the consuming passion with which he loved his two children. This was
the side of his nature he had hidden from the eyes of man. A refined
egotism, this passion, perhaps--for he meant to live his own life over in
them--yet it was the one utterly human and lovable thing about him. And if
his public policy was one of stupendous avarice, this dream of millions of
confiscated wealth he meant to seize, it was not for himself but for his
children.

As he looked at Howle and Lynch seated in his library after dinner, with
his great plans seething in his brain, his eyes were flashing, intense,
and fiery, yet without colour--simply two centres of cold light.

"Gentlemen," he said at length. "I am going to ask you to undertake for
the Government, the Nation, and yourselves a dangerous and important
mission. I say yourselves, because, in spite of all our beautiful lies,
self is the centre of all human action. Mr. Lincoln has fortunately gone
to his reward--fortunately for him and for his country. His death was
necessary to save his life. He was a useful man living, more useful dead.
Our party has l