e Capitol a gravelled drive leads between a short
avenue of lindens to the turnstile iron gates that open before the
governor's house. Here, too, there is an atmosphere of the past and the
picturesque. The lawn, dotted with chrysanthemums and rose trees, leads
down from the rear of the house to a wall of grapevines that overlooks
the street below. In front the yard is narrow and broken by a short
circular walk, in the centre of which a thin fountain plays amid
long-leaved plants. The house, grave, gray, and old-fashioned--the
square side porches giving it a delusive suggestion of length--faces
from its stone steps the thin fountain, the iron gates, beyond which
stretches the white drive beneath the lindens, and the great bronze
Washington above his bodyguard of patriots. Between the house and the
city the square lies like a garden of green.

It was on a bright morning in January that Ben Galt entered one of the
iron gateways of the square and walked rapidly across to the Capitol.

He ascended the steep flight of stone steps, and paused for an instant
in the lobby which divided the Senate Chamber from the House of
Delegates. The legislature had convened some six weeks before, and the
building was humming like a vast beehive.

In the centre of the tesselated floor of the lobby, which was fitted out
with rows of earthenware spittoons, stood Houdon's statue of Washington,
and upon the railing surrounding it groups of men were leaning as they
talked. Occasionally a speaker would pause to send a mouthful of tobacco
juice in aimless pursuit of a spittoon, or to slice off a fresh quid
from the plug he carried in his pocket.

Galt, stopping behind a stout man with sandy hair, tapped him carelessly
on the shoulder.

"Eh, Major?" he exclaimed.

The major turned, presenting a florid, hairy face, with small, shrewd
eyes and an unpleasant mouth. His name was Rann, and he was the most
important figure in the Senate. It was said of him that he had never
made a speech in his life, but that he was continually speaking through
the mouths of others. He could command more votes in both branches than
any member of the Assembly, but his ambition was confined to the
leadership of the men about him; he had been in the State Senate fifteen
years, and he had never tried to climb higher, though it was reported
that he had sent a United States senator to Washington.

"Ah, we'll see you oftener among us now," he said as he wheeled round,
hol