t, and after a certain
interval of time Mr. Vane became chief counsel in the State for the
Imperial Railroad, on which dizzy height we now behold him. And he found,
by degrees, that he had no longer time for private practice.

It is perhaps gratuitous to add that the Honourable Hilary Vane was a man
of convictions. In politics he would have told you--with some vehemence,
if you seemed to doubt--that he was a Republican. Treason to party he
regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence, as an act for which a man should
be justly outlawed. If he were in a mellow mood, with the right quantity
of Honey Dew tobacco under his tongue, he would perhaps tell you why he
was a Republican, if he thought you worthy of his confidence. He believed
in the gold standard, for one thing; in the tariff (left unimpaired in
its glory) for another, and with a wave of his hand would indicate the
prosperity of the nation which surrounded him,--a prosperity too sacred
to tamper with.

One article of his belief, and in reality the chief article, Mr. Vane
would not mention to you. It was perhaps because he had never formulated
the article for himself. It might be called a faith in the divine right
of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal creed.
This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane. It was his
foundation-rock and too sacred for light conversation. When he allowed
himself to be bitter against various "young men with missions" who had
sprung up in various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of
politics, he would call them the unsuccessful with a grievance, and
recommend to them the practice of charity, forbearance, and other
Christian virtues. Thank God, his State was not troubled with such.

In person Mr. Hilary Vane was tall, with a slight stoop to his shoulders,
and he wore the conventional double-breasted black coat, which reached to
his knees, and square-toed congress boots. He had a Puritan beard, the
hawk-like Vane nose, and a twinkling eye that spoke of a sense of humour
and a knowledge of the world. In short, he was no man's fool, and on
occasions had been more than a match for certain New York lawyers with
national reputations.

It is rare, in this world of trouble, that such an apparently ideal and
happy state of existence is without a canker. And I have left the
revelation of the canker to the last. Ripton knew it was there, Camden
Street knew it, and Mr. Vane's acquaintances throughout the State; but