weapons of the World.

"Oh, my friend, stand fast! You are never alone. The spirit of another
is forever with you. Watching--waiting--knowing you shall win the
victory which transcends all price."

He read this letter endlessly while people waited in his ante-room. Then
he summoned Herbert Waters, now his secretary, and sent them all away.
Among them was a leader of the New York money-powers who never forgave
that slight; another was an emissary of the President. Broderick neither
knew nor cared. He put the letter in his pocket; walked for hours in the
snow, on the banks of the frozen Potomac.

That afternoon he reviewed the situation, was closeted an hour with
Douglas of Illinois. The two of them sought Seward of New York, who had
just arrived. To their conference came Chase and Wade of Ohio, Trumbull
of Illinois, Fessenden of Maine, Wilson of Massachusetts, Cameron of
Pennsylvania.

Soon thereafter Volney Howard in San Francisco received an unsigned
telegram, supposedly from Gwin:

Unexpected gathering anti-slavery forces. Looks bad for Lecompton
Resolution. President worried about California.

In the southeastern part of San Francisco a few tea and silk merchants
had, years before, established the nucleus of an Oriental quarter.
Gradually it had grown until there were provision shops where
queer-looking dried vegetables, oysters strung necklace-wise on rings of
bamboo, eggs preserved in a kind of brown mold, strange brown nuts and
sweetmeats were displayed; there were drugs-shops with wondrous gold and
ebony fret work, temples with squat gods above amazing shrines.

There were stark-odored fish-stalls in alleyways so narrow that the sun
touched them rarely, barred upper-windows from which the faces of
slant-eyed women peeped in eager wistfulness as if upon an unfamiliar
world. Cellar doorways from which slipper-shod, pasty-faced Cantonese
crept furtively at dawn; sentineled portals, which gave ingress to
gambling houses protected by sheet-iron doors.

On a pleasant Sunday, early in February, Benito, Alice, Adrian and Inez
walked in Chinatown with David Broderick. The latter was about to leave
for Washington to attend his second session in Congress. Things had
fared ill with him politically there and at home.

Just now David Broderick was trying to forget Congress and those battles
which the next few weeks were sure to bring. He wanted to carry with him
to Washington the memory of Alice Windham as she walked