rd.
I'll go to the convention; I'll do my best for you, as I always have.
But I don't like it, and after that I'm through. After that I become a
lawyer--lawyer, do you understand?"

"A lawyer?" Mr. Flint repeated.

"Yes, a lawyer. Ever since last June, when I came up here, I've realized
what I was. A Brush Bascom, with a better education and more brains,
but a Brush Bascom--with the brains prostituted. While things were going
along smoothly I didn't know--you never attempted to talk to me this way
before. Do you remember how you took hold of me that day, and begged
me to stay? I do, and I stayed. Why? Because I was a friend of yours.
Association with you for twenty-five years had got under my skin, and
I thought it had got under yours." Hilary let his hand fall. "To-day
you've given me a notion of what friendship is. You've given me a chance
to estimate myself on a new basis, and I'm much obliged to you for that.
I haven't got many years left, but I'm glad to have found out what my
life has been worth before I die."

He buttoned up his coat slowly, glaring at Mr. Flint the while with a
courage and a defiance that were superb. And he had picked up his hat
before Mr. Flint found his tongue.

"You don't mean that, Vane," he cried. "My God, think what you've said!"

Hilary pointed at the desk with a shaking finger.

"If that were a scaffold, and a rope were around my neck, I'd say it
over again. And I thank God I've had a chance to say it to you." He
paused, cleared his throat, and continued in a voice that all at once
had become unemotional and natural. "I've three tin boxes of the private
papers you wanted. I didn't think of 'em to-day, but I'll bring 'em up
to you myself on Thursday."

Mr. Flint reflected afterwards that what made him helpless must have
been the sudden change in Hilary's manner to the commonplace. The
president of the Northeastern stood where he was, holding the envelope
in his hand, apparently without the power to move or speak. He watched
the tall form of his chief counsel go through the doorway, and something
told him that that exit was coincident with the end of an era.

The end of an era of fraud, of self-deception, of conditions that
violated every sacred principle of free government which men had shed
blood to obtain.

CHAPTER XXIV. AN ADVENTURE OF VICTORIA'S

Mrs. Pomfret was a proud woman, for she had at last obtained the consent
of the lion to attend a lunch party. She would h