d more in two weeks,
and the courteous proprietor now held orders for the lion's share of the
total pay and mileage of nearly every member of the House of
Representatives.

Over that table thousands of dollars of the people's money had been staked
and lost during the war by quartermasters, paymasters, and agents in
charge of public funds. Many a man had approached that green table with a
stainless name and left it a perjured thief. Some had been carried out by
those handsomely dressed waiters, and the man with the cold mouth could
point out, if he would, more than one stain on the soft carpet which
marked the end of a tragedy deeper than the pen of romancer has ever
sounded.

Stoneman at the moment was playing. He was rarely a heavy player, but he
had just staked a twenty-dollar gold piece and won fourteen hundred
dollars.

Howle, always at his elbow ready for a "sleeper" or a stake, said:

"Put a stack on the ace."

He did so, lost, and repeated it twice.

"Do it again," urged Howle. "I'll stake my reputation that the ace wins
this time."

With a doubting glance at Howle, old Stoneman shoved a stack of blue
chips, worth fifty dollars, over the ace, playing it to win on Howle's
judgment and reputation. It lost.

Without the ghost of a smile, the old statesman said: "Howle, you owe me
five cents."

As he turned abruptly on his club foot from the table, he encountered the
editor and his friends, a Western manufacturer and a Wall Street banker.
They were soon seated at a table in a private room, over a dinner of
choice oysters, diamond-back terrapin, canvas-back duck, and champagne.

They presented their plea for a truce in his fight until popular passion
had subsided.

He heard them in silence. His answer was characteristic:

"The will of the people, gentlemen, is supreme," he said with a sneer. "We
are the people. 'The man at the other end of the avenue' has dared to defy
the will of Congress. He must go. If the Supreme Court lifts a finger in
this fight, it will reduce that tribunal to one man or increase it to
twenty at our pleasure."

"But the Constitution----" broke in the chairman.

"There are higher laws than paper compacts. We are conquerors treading
conquered soil. Our will alone is the source of law. The drunken boor who
claims to be President is in reality an alien of a conquered province."

"We protest," exclaimed the man of money, "against the use of such
epithets in referring to the Chief