re
another sun set.

He ignored the Italian's existence.

"You are ready, Miss Jennie?"

She took Dick's proffered arm in silence and bowed to Socola who watched
them go with a peculiar smile playing about his handsome mouth.

Jennie insisted on stopping at Senator Davis' home to tell his wife of
the wonderful power with which his speech had swept the galleries.

The house was still, the library door open. The girl paused on the
threshold in awe. The Senator's tall figure was lying prostrate across
his desk, his thin hands clasped in prayer, his face buried in his arms.
His lips were murmuring words too low to be heard until at last they
swelled in sorrowful repetition:

"May God have us in his holy keeping and grant that before it is too
late peaceful councils may prevail!"

The girl turned softly and left without a word.

CHAPTER III

A MIDNIGHT SESSION

The Secretary of War invited Socola to join him at the White House after
the Cabinet meeting which President Buchanan had called at the unusual
hour of ten at night. He had waited for more than two hours in the
anteroom and still the Cabinet was in session. Without show of
impatience he smoked cigar after cigar, flicked their ashes into the
fireplace and listened with an expression of quiet amusement to the
storm raging within while the sleet of a January blizzard rattled
against the windows with increasing fury.

Once more the question of the little fort in the harbor of Charleston
had plunged the discordant Cabinet of the dying administration into the
convulsions of a miniature war.

The feeble old President, overwhelmed by the gathering storm, crouched
in the corner by the fire. His emaciated figure was shrouded in a
ridiculous old dressing-gown. Mentally and physically prostrate he sat
shivering while his ministers wrangled.

He rose at last, shambled to the Cabinet table, and leaned his trembling
hands on it for support.

"What can I do, gentlemen--what can I do? If Anderson hadn't gone into
that fort at night, the State of South Carolina might not have
seceded--"

Stanton shook his massive head with an expression of uncontrollable
rage.

"Great God!"

The President continued in feeble, pleading tones:

"Now they tell me that unless Anderson withdraws his troops their
presence will provoke bloodshed--"

"Let them fire on him if they dare!" shouted Stanton.

"I cannot plunge my country into fratricidal war. My sands are nearly