interest Ben in politics. To her surprise she found that he knew nothing of her father's real position or power as leader of his party. The stunning tragedy of the war had for the time crushed out of his consciousness all political ideas, as it had for most young Southerners. He took her hand while a dreamy look overspread his swarthy face: "Don't cross a bridge till you come to it. I learned that in the war. Politics are a mess. Let me tell you

He felt her hand's soft pressure and reverently kissed it. "Listen," he whispered. "I was dreaming last night after I left you of the home we'll build. Just back of our place, on the hill overlooking the river, my father and mother planted trees in exact duplicate of the ones they placed around our house when they were married. They set these trees in honour of the first-born of their love, that he should make his nest there when grown. But it was not for him. He has pitched his tent on higher ground, and the others with him. This place will be mine. There are forty varieties of trees, all grown-elm, maple, oak, holly, pine, cedar, magnolia, and every fruit and flowering stem that grows in our friendly soil. A little house, built near the vacant space reserved for the homestead, is nicely kept by a farmer, and birds have learned to build in every shrub and tree. All the year their music rings its chorus-one long overture awaiting the coming of my bride"

Elsie sighed.

"Listen, dear," he went on, eagerly. "Last night I dreamed the South had risen from her ruins. I saw you

there. I saw our home standing amid a bower of roses your hands had planted. The full moon wrapped it in soft light, while you and I walked hand in hand in silence beneath our trees. But fairer and brighter than the moon was the face of her I loved, and sweeter than all the songs of birds the music of her voice!"

A tear dimmed the girl's warm eyes, and a deeper flush mantled her cheeks, as she lifted her face and whispered: "Kiss me."

W

CHAPTER IX

THE KING AMUSES HIMSELF

ITH savage energy the Great Commoner pressed to trial the first impeachment of a President of the United States for high crimes and

misdemeanours.

His bill to confiscate the property of the Southern people was already pending on the calendar of the House. This bill was the most remarkable ever written in the English language or introduced into a legislative body of the Aryan race. It provided for the confiscation of ninety per cent. of the land of ten great states of the American Union. To each negro in the South was allotted forty acres from the estate of his former master, and the remaining millions of acres were to be divided among the "loyal who had suffered by reason of the Rebellion."

The execution of this, the most stupendous crime ever conceived by an English law-maker, involving the exile and ruin of millions of innocent men, women, and children, could not be intrusted to Andrew Johnson.

No such measure could be enforced so long as any man was President and Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy who claimed his title under the Constitution. Hence the absolute necessity of his removal.

The conditions of society were ripe for this daring enterprise.

Not only was the Ship of State in the hands of revolutionists who had boarded her in the storm stress of a civic convulsion, but among them swarmed the pirate captains of the boldest criminals who ever figured in the story of a nation.

The first great Railroad Lobby, with continental empires at stake, thronged the Capitol with its lawyers, agents, barkers, and hired courtesans.

The Cotton Thieves, who operated through a ring of Treasury agents, had confiscated unlawfully three million bales of cotton hidden in the South during the war and at its close, the last resource of a ruined people. The Treasury had received a paltry twenty thousand bales for the use of its name with which to seize alleged "property of the Confederate Government." The value of this cotton, stolen from the widows and orphans, the maimed and crippled, of the South was over $700,000,000 in gold-a capital sufficient to have started an impoverished people again on the road to prosperity. The agents of this ring surrounded the halls of legislation, guarding their booty from envious eyes, and demanding the enactment of vaster schemes of legal confiscation.

The Whiskey Ring had just been formed, and began its system of gigantic frauds by which it scuttled the Treasury. Above them all towered the figure of Oakes Ames, whose master mind had organised the Crédit Mobilier steal. This vast infamy had already eaten its way into the heart of Congress and dug the graves of many illustrious men.

So

open had become the shame that Stoneman was compelled to increase his committees in the morning, when a corrupt majority had been bought the night before.

He arose one day, and, looking at the distinguished Speaker, who was himself the secret associate of Oakes Ames, said:

"Mr. Speaker: While the House slept, the enemy has sown tares among our wheat. The corporations of this country, having neither bodies to be kicked nor souls to be lost, have, perhaps by the power of argument alone, beguiled from the majority of my Committee the member from Connecticut. The enemy have now a majority of one. I move to increase the Committee to twelve."

Speaker Colfax, soon to be hurled from the Vice-president's chair for his part with those thieves, increased his Committee.

Everybody knew that "the power of argument alone" meant ten thousand dollars cash for the gentleman from Connecticut, who did not appear on the floor for a week, fearing the scorpion tongue of the old Commoner.

A Congress which found it could make and unmake laws in defiance of the Executive went mad. Taxation soared to undreamed heights, while the currency was depreciated and subject to the wildest fluctuations.

The statute-books were loaded with laws that shackled chains of monopoly on generations yet unborn. Public lands wide as the reach of empires were voted as gifts to private corporations, and subsidies of untold millions fixed as a charge upon the people and their children's children.