es; no man can make a speech to an
audience of six. Cicero himself would have been dumb under such meager
conditions.

When Mr. Harley drank Mr. Gwynn's health for the tenth time, and
attempted, assisted by Senators Gruff and Price, to sing a song in his
honor, Senator Hanway adroitly brought the dinner to a close. He was the
more stirred to this as the plaster of Paris countenance of Mr. Gwynn,
when Mr. Harley began to sing, betrayed manifest alarm.

After dinner Senator Hanway got Mr. Gwynn into a corner. Thereupon, in a
manner creditable to himself, Mr. Gwynn gave Senator Hanway to know that
he was his friend. The _Daily Tory_ should be his; Richard should be
his; Mr. Gwynn and all he called his own should be his; Senator Hanway
was to make whatever use of Richard and the _Daily Tory_ and Mr. Gwynn
his experience and his interests might suggest. Indeed, Mr. Gwynn talked
very well in private and in whispers; and Senator Hanway said later to
Senator Kink that he was the deepest man he had ever met.

"And," said Senator Hanway, squeezing Mr. Gwynn's hand as that gentleman
made ready for home, "tell your young man that I shall be glad to see
him. There are certain contingencies touching the next Speakership of
the House which should interest his paper. I shall see you to-morrow,
Mr. Gwynn--with your permission. You can and should play a most
important part in selecting that same Speaker. Your measureless
interests in the great Anaconda Airline warrant me in the assertion."

CHAPTER IV

HOW A SPEAKERSHIP WAS FOUGHT FOR

Fate now and then turns jester in a bitter way, and stoops to ironies
and grinning sarcasm. Often it gives with the right hand only to take
with the left, and blinded ones are set to chop and saw and plane those
trees which in the end make gallows for their hopes. The story of the
world shows many an inadvertent Frankenstein and deeply justifies the
grewsome Mrs. Shelley.

Something less than two years prior to that evening when Senator Hanway
took the congealed Mr. Gwynn into a corner and told him how, with his
great Anaconda Airline, he should cut a figure in the selection of a
next Speaker for the House of Representatives, it had been that
statesman's fortune to so reconstruct a tariff that it gave unusual
riches and thereby unusual comfort to the dominant ones of a certain
manufacturing Northeastern State. This commonwealth at the time was
politically in the hands of the party opposed t