He fought his campaign
against the corruptions and chicanery of power, and he will trample
you out like a snake."

"He thinks he's correcting a boy," said Elk MacNair; "he shall find me
a soldier."

"And you will find him a Christian soldier, truer to his allegiance
than to rob his country!"

"Pshaw!" laughed Elk MacNair; "a skinflint who has raked up fortune
with his fingers, ground down his laborers, pinched his soul, and
stooped his stature for money, has no right to be my chaplain, Jabel
Blake! You have grown rich like a scavenger. What matter if I bring
down fortune with my rifle, though the American eagle be the bird. I
would spare my body some of the dirty crawling you have done to get
your bank!"

"Base boy!" cried Jabel Blake, with more contempt than anger; "I will
live to teach you that a life of thrift and honest toil is above your
power to insult it. You can neither repel me nor break your brother's
heart. The time will come when you will weep to deserve the respect
you have lost from these gray hairs."

He passed away with his old, heavy, deliberate gait, and left the
young man almost repentant.

IV.

The galleries and floors of the House of Representatives were crowded,
as was usual upon early working days of the session. Among the members
in a retired seat his red shock of hair, clerical dress, and thin,
worn, commonplace, freckled face denoted the new member from the
Scotch district of Pennsylvania. The gay daughter of the Honorable
Perkiomen Trappe, picking him out from the diplomatic gallery by the
aid of her opera-glass, remarked that she mourned for her country when
Europe could behold such a specimen of homespun among American
Congressmen.

"And what's more, pet," said the Honorable Perkiomen, "he's a bin put
on a fat committee. He has the cheer in the room on Ancient Contracts,
and your unfortnit father is only a member under him. I think that
staving cavalry brother of his'n, Elk MacNair, fixed his feed for
him!"

They turned to look at Elk MacNair, sitting in the gallery near by
with the venerable Judge and the Judge's daughter. His dark goatee,
eyes, and hair, were set in a face unusually pale and intense, and his
manly and refined worldly bearing suited his associations. Kate
Dunlevy, with her charms of bloom, repose, and stateliness, looked
like the wife of such a public man.

"Elk," said she, "you do not seem to be at ease to-day. You are pale
and nervous, and you have stared