to send the second message.
Besides, should his reason return before the week's end, he could
recover from that illness and take up the letters again.

Being something sobered now, Richard lighted a cigar and strolled off
through a fall of snow that had set in, thinking on Dorothy. Arriving at
his home, he sat an hour in rose-colored reveries. He dived at last into
the bronze casket, and brought out the little boot-heel which was the
beginning of all First Causes.

"If I could but find the cheating bungler," thought Richard, "who
slighted that little shoe in making, I'd pile fortune upon him for the
balance of his life. And to think I owe my Dorothy to the cobbling
scoundrel!"

At three o'clock, with the soft fingers of the snow drumming drowsily
against the pane, Richard went to sleep and dreamed of angels, all of
whom were blue-eyed replicas of Dorothy.

Richard, still in a glorified trance, was up betimes. Mr. Pickwick, who
came to fawn upon him, the same being his doggish custom of a morning,
found Richard tolerant but abstracted. Hurt by a lack of notice, Mr.
Pickwick retired, and Matzai brought in breakfast. Richard could not
avoid a feeling of distrustful contempt for himself when he discovered
that he ate like a hod-carrier. It seemed treason to Dorothy to harbor
so rude an appetite.

While Richard had laid aside those _Daily Tory_ letters for a week, he
would still call on Senator Hanway at eleven. He considered what an
exquisite thrill would go over him as he sat gazing on Dorothy--that new
and beautiful possession of his heart!

Rather to Richard's dismay, Dorothy was not with them that morning in
Senator Hanway's study. Had her love of politics gone cooling? Senator
Hanway was there, however, and uppermost in his mind was something that
would again require countenance of the Anaconda Airline.

It was the subtile policy of Senator Hanway, in his move towards a
Presidency, to seem to be standing still. His attitude was feminine; the
nomination must abduct him; he must be dragged to the altar and wedded
into the White House by force. In short, Senator Hanway was for giving
the country a noble exhibition of the office seeking the man.

This attitude of holding delicately aloof did not prevent him in the
privacy of his study--out of which no secrets escaped--from unbuckling
confidentially with ones who, like Richard, were close about his counsel
board. It was not that he required that young journalist's