and whitened by
the struggles and anxieties of his ambition. "My God!" he cried out,
"how I am punished! When I started in my public career, I looked
forward and saw just this time,--when I should be the helpless tool in
the hands of the power I sold myself to. Governor!" He almost shouted
the word, rising and pacing the floor again. "Governor!"--and he laughed
in wild derision.

I watched him, fascinated. I, too, at the outset of my career, had
looked forward, and had seen the same peril, but I had avoided it.
Wretched figure that he was!--what more wretched, more pitiable than a
man groveling and moaning in the mire of his own self-contempt?
"Governor!" I said to myself, as I saw awful thoughts flitting like
demons of despair across his face. And I shuddered, and pitied, and
rejoiced,--shuddered at the narrowness of my own escape; pitied the man
who seemed myself as I might have been; and rejoiced that I had had my
mother with me and in me to impel me into another course.

"Come, come, Burbank," said I, "you're not yourself; you've lost
sleep--"

"Sleep!" he interrupted, "I have not closed my eyes since I read those
cursed bills."

"Tell me what you want done," was my suggestion. "I'll help in any way
I can,--any way that's practicable."

"Oh, I understand your position, Sayler," he answered, when he had got
control of himself again, "but I see plainly that the time has come when
the power that rules me,--that rules us both,--has decided to use me to
my own destruction. If I refuse to do these things, it will destroy
me,--and a hundred are eager to come forward and take my place. If I do
these things, the people will destroy me,--and neither is that of the
smallest importance to our master."

His phrases, "the power that rules us both," and "our master," jarred on
me. So far as he knew, indeed, so far as "our master" knew, were not he
and I in the same class? But that was no time for personal vanity. All I
said was: "The bills must go through. This is one of those crises that
test a man's loyalty to the party."

"For the good of the party!" he muttered with a bitter sneer. "Crime
upon crime--yes, crime, I say--that the party may keep the favor of the
powers! And to what end? to what good? Why, that the party may continue
in control and so may be of further use to its rulers." He rested his
elbows on the table and held his face between his hands. He looked
terribly old, and weary beyond the power ever to be r