y and cheerful, but when she
entered her room she burst into crying. She would laugh a while and
cry a while as though she had a foretaste of coming bliss mixed with
bitterness.

Bernard at once took the place left vacant by the dropping away of the
jealous young man and became Viola's faithful attendant, accompanying
her wherever he could. The more he met Viola, the more beautiful she
appeared to him and the more admirable he found her mind.

Bernard almost forgot his political aspirations, and began to ponder
that passage of scripture that said man should not be alone. But he
did not make such progress with Viola as was satisfactory to him.
Sometimes she would appear delighted to see him and was all life and
gayety. Again she was scarcely more than polite and seemed perfectly
indifferent to him.

After a long while Bernard decided that Viola, who seemed to be very
ambitious, treated him thus because he had not done anything worthy
of special note. He somewhat slacked up in his attentions and began
to devote himself to acquiring wide spread popularity with a view to
entering Congress and reaching Viola in this way.

The more he drew off from Viola the more friendly she would seem to
him, and he began to feel that seeming indifference was perhaps the
way to win her. Thus the matter moved along for a couple of years.

In the mean time, Mr. Tiberius Gracchus Leonard, Bernard's old
teacher, was busy in Norfolk looking after Bernard's political
interests, acting under instructions from Bernard's father, Senator
------.

About this stage of Bernard's courtship Mr. Leonard called on him and
told him that the time was ripe for Bernard to announce himself
for Congress. Bernard threw his whole soul into the project. He
had another great incentive to cause him to wish to succeed, Viola
Martin's hand and heart.

In order to understand what followed we must now give a bit of
Virginia political history.

In the year ---- there was a split in the democratic party of Virginia
on the question of paying Virginia's debt to England. The bolting
section of the party joined hands with the republicans and whipped
the regular democrats at the polls. This coalition thus formed was
eventually made the Republican party of Virginia.

The democrats, however, rallied and swept this coalition from power
and determined to forever hold the state government if they had to
resort to fraud. They resorted to ballot box stuffing and various
ot