publication of such a story, and asked for a committee of three to look
into the truth of what was set forth.

"For," observed Senator Hanway, after paying a tribute to Richard and
the _Daily Tory_, in which he extolled the honesty and intelligent
conservatism of both the paper and its correspondent, "for it is only
justice that the charges be sifted. The _Daily Tory_ does not make them
on its own behalf; it finds them in the mouths of others. They should be
taken up and weighed. If there be aught due the government, we have a
right to know and measure it. If the charges are without support--and I
have reason to believe that such is the situation--then Northern
Consolidated is entitled to the refutation of a calumny that, whispered
in some quarters and talked aloud in others, has borne heavily upon its
interests."

No one opposed, and Senator Hanway, with Senators Price and Loot, were
selected to be a special committee. They were to send for men and
papers, be open or secret in their sessions, and report to the Senate
whenever they finished the inquiry. The affair excited no comment, and
was forgotten within the hour by all except Storri and Mr. Harley and
those others of the osprey pool.

After Richard left Senator Hanway upon the Northern Consolidated
evening, he ran plump upon an incident that was to have a last profound
effect upon this history. No one not a prophet would have guessed this
from the incident's character, for on its ignoble face it was nothing
better than just a drunken clash between a Caucasian, and an African
triumvirate that had locked horns with him in the street. The Caucasian,
moved of liquor and pride of skin, had demanded the entire sidewalk. He
enforced his demands by shoving the obstructing Africans into the
gutter. The latter, recalling amendments to the organic law of the land
favorable to folk of color, objected. In the war that ensued, owing to
an inequality of forces, the Caucasian--albeit a gallant soul--was given
the bitter side of the argument. Richard came upon them as he rounded a
corner; the quartette at the time made a struggling, scrambling, cursing
tangle, rolling about the sidewalk.

Being one in whom the race instinct ran powerfully, and who was not
untainted of antipathies to red men and yellow men and black men and all
men not wholly white, Richard did not pause to inquire the rights and
the wrongs of the altercation. He seized upon the topmost person of
color and pit