the tawny leopardess who keeps his house influences him in this cruel madness. I could wring her neck with exquisite pleasure. Why he allows her to stay and cloud his life with her she-devil temper and fog his name with vulgar gossip is beyond me."

Seated in the park on the Capitol hill the day after her father had introduced his Confiscation Bill in the House, pending the impeachment of the President, she again attempted to draw Ben out as to his feelings on politics.

She waited in sickening fear and bristling pride for the first burst of his anger which would mean their separation. "How do I feel?" he asked. "Don't feel at all. The surrender of General Lee was an event so stunning, my mind has not yet staggered past it. Nothing much can happen after that, so it don't matter."

"Negro suffrage don't matter?"

"No. We can manage the Negro," he said, calmly. "With thousands of your own people disfranchised?" "The negroes will vote with us, as they worked for us during the war. If they give them the ballot, they'll wish they hadn't."

Ben looked at her tenderly, bent near, and whispered:

"Don't waste your sweet breath talking about such things. My politics is bounded on the North by a pair of amber eyes, on the South by a dimpled little chin, on the East and West by a rosy cheek. Words do not frame its speech. Its language is a mere sign, a pressure of the lips-yet it thrills body and soul beyond all words."

Elsie leaned closer, and looking at the Capitol, said wistfully:

"I don't believe you know anything that goes on in that big marble building."

"Yes, I do."

"What happened there yesterday?"

"You honoured it by putting your beautiful feet on its steps. I saw the whole huge pile of cold marble suddenly glow with warm sunlight and flash with beauty as you entered it."

The girl nestled still closer to his side, feeling her utter helplessness in the rapids of the Niagara through which they were being whirled by blind and merciless forces. For the moment she forgot all fears in his nearness and the sweet pressure of his hand.

CHAPTER XI

THE SUPREME TEST

T is the glory of the American Republic that every

IT

man who has filled the office of President has grown

in stature when clothed with its power and has proved himself worthy of its solemn trust. It is our highest claim to the respect of the world and the vindication of man's capacity to govern himself.

The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson would mark either the lowest tide-mud of degradation to which the Republic could sink, or its end. In this trial our system would be put to its severest strain. If a partisan majority in Congress could remove the Executive, and defy the Supreme Court, stability to civic institutions was at an end, and the breath of a mob would become the sole standard of law.

Congress had thrown to the winds the last shreds of decency in its treatment of the Chief Magistrate. Stoneman led this campaign of insult, not merely from feelings of personal hate, but because he saw that thus the President's conviction before the Senate would become all but inevitable.

When his messages arrived from the White House they were thrown into the waste-basket without being read, amid jeers, hisses, curses, and ribald laughter.

In lieu of their reading, Stoneman would send to the Clerk's desk an obscene tirade from a party newspaper, and the Clerk of the House would read it amid the mocking groans, laughter, and applause of the floor and galleries.

A favourite clipping described the President as "an insolent drunken brute, in comparison with whom Caligula's horse was respectable."

In the Senate, whose members were to sit as sworn judges to decide the question of impeachment, Charles Sumner used language so vulgar that he was called to order. Sustained by the Chair and the Senate, he repeated it with increased violence, concluding with cold

venom:

"Andrew Johnson has become the successor of Jefferson Davis. In holding him up to judgment I do not dwell on his beastly intoxication the day he took the oath as Vice-president, nor do I dwell on his maudlin speeches by which he has degraded the country, nor hearken to the reports of pardons sold, or of personal corruption. These things are bad. But he has usurped the powers of Congress."

Conover, the perjured wretch, in prison for his crimes as a professional witness in the assassination trial, now circulated the rumour that he could give evidence that President Johnson was the assassin of Lincoln. Without a moment's hesitation, Stoneman's henchmen sent a petition to the President for the pardon of this villain that he might turn against the man who had pardoned him and swear his life away! This scoundrel was borne in

triumph from prison to the Capitol and placed before the Impeachment Committee, to whom he poured out his wondrous tale.

The sewers and prisons were dragged for every scrap of testimony to be found, and the day for the trial approached.

As it drew nearer, excitement grew intense. Swarms of adventurers expecting the overthrow of the Government crowded into Washington. Dreams of honours, profits, and division of spoils held riot. Gamblers thronged the saloons and gaming-houses, betting their gold on the President's head.

Stoneman found the business more serious than even his daring spirit had dreamed. His health suddenly gave way under the strain, and he was put to bed by his physician with the warning that the least excitement would be instantly fatal.

Elsie entered the little Black House on the hill for the first time since her trip at the age of twelve, some eight years before. She installed an army nurse, took charge of the place, and ignored the existence of the brown woman, refusing to speak to her or permit her to enter her father's

room.

His illness made it necessary to choose an assistant to conduct the case before the High Court. There was but one member of the House whose character and ability fitted him for the place-General Benj. F. Butler, of Massachusetts, whose name was enough to start a riot in any assembly in America.

His selection precipitated a storm at the Capitol. A