These men might be tearing the
leader to pieces to-morrow, or the day after; but he was still in the
saddle, and not knowing but that young Harwood might be of use to them
some day, they greeted him as one of the inner circle.

Most of these men sincerely liked and admired Bassett; and many of them
accepted the prevailing superstition as to his omniscience and
invulnerability; even in the Republican camp many shared the belief that
the spears of the righteous were of no avail against him. Dan's loyalty
to Bassett had never been more firmly planted. Bassett had always
preserved a certain formality in his relations with him; to-night he was
calling him Dan, naturally and as though unconscious of the transition.
This was not without its effect on Harwood; he was surprised to find how
agreeable it was to be thus familiarly addressed by the leader in such a
gathering.

Bassett suggested that he speak to Mrs. Bassett and Marian, who were
spending a few days in town, and he found them in the hotel parlor,
where Bassett joined them shortly. Mrs. Bassett and Dan had always got
on well together; his nearness to her husband brought him close to the
domestic circle; and he had been invariably responsive to her demands
upon his time. Dan had learned inevitably a good deal of the inner life
of the Bassetts, and now and then he had been aware that Mrs. Bassett
was sounding him discreetly as to her husband's plans and projects; but
these approaches had been managed with the nicest tact and discretion.
In her long absences from home she had lost touch with Bassett's
political interests and occupations, but she knew of his break with
Thatcher. She prided herself on being a woman of the world, and while
she had flinched sometimes at the attacks made upon her husband, she was
nevertheless proud of his influence in affairs. Bassett had once, at a
time when he was being assailed for smothering some measure in the
senate, given her a number of books bearing upon the anti-slavery
struggle, in which she read that the prominent leaders in that movement
had suffered the most unjust attacks, and while it was not quite clear
wherein lay Bassett's likeness to Lincoln, Lovejoy, and Wendell
Phillips, she had been persuaded that the most honorable men in public
life are often the targets of scandal. Her early years in Washington
with her father had impressed her imagination; the dream of returning
there as the wife of a Senator danced brightly in her