were times when he was a stranger even to her. Some secret, dark
and cold, stood between them. Once she had tenderly asked him what it
meant. He merely pressed her hand, smiled wearily, and said:

"Nothing, my dear, only the Blue Devils after me again."

He had always lived in Washington in a little house with black shutters,
near the Capitol, while the children had lived with his sister, near the
White House, where they had grown from babyhood.

A curious fact about this place on the Capitol hill was that his
housekeeper, Lydia Brown, was a mulatto, a woman of extraordinary animal
beauty and the fiery temper of a leopardess. Elsie had ventured there once
and got such a welcome she would never return. All sorts of gossip could
be heard in Washington about this woman, her jewels, her dresses, her
airs, her assumption of the dignity of the presiding genius of National
legislation and her domination of the old Commoner and his life. It
gradually crept into the newspapers and magazines, but he never once
condescended to notice it.

Elsie begged her father to close this house and live with them.

His reply was short and emphatic:

"Impossible, my child. This club foot must live next door to the Capitol.
My house is simply an executive office at which I sleep. Half the business
of the Nation is transacted there. Don't mention this subject again."

Elsie choked back a sob at the cold menace in the tones of this command,
and never repeated her request. It was the only wish he had ever denied
her, and, somehow, her heart would come back to it with persistence and
brood and wonder over his motive.

The nearer she drew, this morning, to the hospital door, the closer the
wounded boy's life and loved ones seemed to hers. She thought with anguish
of the storm about to break between her father and the President--the one
demanding the desolation of their land, wasted, harried, and unarmed!--the
President firm in his policy of mercy, generosity, and healing.

Her father would not mince words. His scorpion tongue, set on fires of
hell, might start a conflagration that would light the Nation with its
glare. Would not his name be a terror for every man and woman born under
Southern skies? The sickening feeling stole over her that he was wrong,
and his policy cruel and unjust.

She had never before admired the President. It was fashionable to speak
with contempt of him in Washington. He had little following in Congress.
Nine tenth