ch of flesh, resembling more
closely an elephant's hoof than the foot of a man.

He was absolutely bald, and wore a heavy brown wig that seemed too small
to reach the edge of his enormous forehead.

He rarely visited the White House. He was the able, bold, unscrupulous
leader of leaders, and men came to see him. He rarely smiled, and when he
did it was the smile of the cynic and misanthrope. His tongue had the lash
of a scorpion. He was a greater terror to the trimmers and time-servers of
his own party than to his political foes. He had hated the President with
sullen, consistent, and unyielding venom from his first nomination at
Chicago down to the last rumour of his new proclamation.

In temperament a fanatic, in impulse a born revolutionist, the word
conservatism was to him as a red rag to a bull. The first clash of arms
was music to his soul. He laughed at the call for 75,000 volunteers, and
demanded the immediate equipment of an army of a million men. He saw it
grow to 2,000,000. From the first, his eagle eye had seen the end and all
the long, blood-marked way between. And from the first, he began to plot
the most cruel and awful vengeance in human history.

And now his time had come.

The giant figure in the White House alone had dared to brook his anger and
block the way; for old Stoneman was the Congress of the United States. The
opposition was too weak even for his contempt. Cool, deliberate, and
venomous alike in victory or defeat, the fascination of his positive faith
and revolutionary programme had drawn the rank and file of his party in
Congress to him as charmed satellites.

The President greeted him cordially, and with his habitual deference to
age and physical infirmity hastened to place for him an easy chair near
his desk.

He was breathing heavily and evidently labouring under great emotion. He
brought his cane to the floor with violence, placed both hands on its
crook, leaned his massive jaws on his hands for a moment, and then said:

"Mr. President, I have not annoyed you with many requests during the past
four years, nor am I here to-day to ask any favours. I have come to warn
you that, in the course you have mapped out, the executive and legislative
branches have come to the parting of the ways, and that your encroachments
on the functions of Congress will be tolerated, now that the Rebellion is
crushed, not for a single moment!"

Mr. Lincoln listened with dignity, and a ripple of fun play