dissipation. Young
Francis Chenoweth never failed to follow both into whatever they
planned; he was short and pink, and the uptilt of his nose was coherent
with the appealing earnest-ness which was habitual with him. Eugene
Madrillon was the sixth of these intimates; a dark man, whose Latin eyes
and color advertised his French ancestry as plainly as his emotionless
mouth and lack of gesture betrayed the mingling of another strain.

All these, and others of the town, were wont to "talk politics" a great
deal at the little club on Main Street and all were apt to fall foul of
Tom Vanrevel or Crailey Gray before the end of any discussion. For those
were the days when they twisted the Lion's tail in vehement and bitter
earnest; when the eagle screamed in mixed figures; when few men knew how
to talk, and many orated; when party strife was savagely personal; when
intolerance was called the "pure fire of patriotism;" when criticism of
the existing order of things surely incurred fiery anathema and black
invective; and brave was he, indeed, who dared to hint that his country,
as a whole and politically, did lack some two or three particular
virtues, and that the first step toward obtaining them would be to help
it to realize their absence.

This latter point-of-view was that of the firm of Gray & Vanrevel,
which was a unit in such matters. Crailey did most of the talking--quite
beautifully, too--and both had to stand against odds in many a sour
argument, for they were not only Abolitionists, but opposed the attitude
of their country in its difficulty with Mexico; and, in common with
other men of the time who took their stand, they had to grow accustomed
to being called Disloyal Traitors, Foreign Toadies, Malignants, and
Traducers of the Flag. Tom had long been used to epithets of this sort,
suffering their sting in quiet, and was glad when he could keep Crailey
out of worse employment than standing firm for an unpopular belief.

There was one place to which Vanrevel, seeking his friend and partner,
when the latter did not come home at night, could not go; this was the
Tower Chamber, and it was in that mysterious apartment of the Carewe
cupola that Crailey was apt to be deeply occupied when he remained away
until daylight. Strange as it appears, Mr. Gray maintained peculiar
relations of intimacy with Robert Carewe, in spite of the feud between
Carewe and his own best friend. This intimacy, which did not necessarily
imply any mu