g their fists. Others rushed here and there trying
to find some trace of the Clerk. The Speaker, breathless from calling
for order and pounding with his gavel, had to sit down and let them
rage.

At last, from my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I
saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a
blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an
abject terror. He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin,
providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works;
but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to
the basement and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and
it was the Senator now who had him by the neck.

They thrust him back into his chair, got the confusion quieted, and
with muttered threats of the penitentiary for him and everybody
concerned in the affair, they got back to business again with the
desperate haste of men working against time. And our jury bill was
signed!

It was signed; and we had won! (At least we thought so.) And I walked
out of the crowded glare of the session's close, into an April midnight
that was as wide as all eternity and as quiet. It seemed to me that
the stars, even in Colorado, had never been brighter; they sparkled in
the clear blackness of the sky with a joyful brilliancy. A cool breeze
drew down from the mountains as peacefully as the breath in sleep. It
was a night to make a man take on his hat and breathe out his last
vexation in a sigh.

We had won. What did it matter that the Boss, the Speaker, the Clerk
and so many more of these miserable creatures were bought and sold in
selfishness? That spring night seemed to answer for it that the truth
and beauty of the world were as big above them as the heavens that
arched so high above the puny dome-light, of the Capitol. Had not even
we, two "boys"--as they called us--put a just law before them and made
them take up the pen and sign it? If we had done so much without even
a whisper from the people and scarcely a line from the public press to
aid and back us, what would the future not do when we found the help
that an aroused community would surely give us? Hope? The whole night
was hushed and peaceful with hope. The very houses that I
passed--walking home up the tree-lined streets--seemed to me in some
way so quiet because they were so sure. All was right with the world.
We had won.

[1] A New Eng