e drove away, he turned once to look at the great
house, with its shades closely drawn, as it stood amidst its setting of
shrubbery silent under the moon.

An hour later he sat in Hanover Street before the supper Euphrasia had
saved for him. But though he tried nobly, his heart was not in the
relation, for her benefit, of Mr. Crewe's garden-party.

CHAPTER IX

Mr. CREWE ASSAULTS THE CAPITAL

Those portions of the biographies of great men which deal with the small
beginnings of careers are always eagerly devoured, and for this reason
the humble entry of Mr. Crewe into politics may be of interest. Great
revolutions have had their origins in back cellars; great builders of
railroads have begun life with packs on their shoulders, trudging over
the wilderness which they were to traverse in after years in private
cars. The history of Napoleon Bonaparte has not a Sunday-school moral,
but we can trace therein the results of industry after the future emperor
got started. Industry, and the motto "nil desperandum" lived up to, and
the watchword "thorough," and a torch of unsuspected genius, and
"l'audace, toujours l'audace," and a man may go far in life.

Mr. Humphrey Crewe possessed, as may have been surmised, a dash of all
these gifts. For a summary of his character one would not have used the
phrase (as a contemporary of his remarked) of "a shrinking violet." The
phrase, after all, would have fitted very few great men; genius is sure
of itself, and seeks its peers.

The State capital is an old and beautiful and somewhat conservative town.
Life there has its joys and sorrows and passions, its ambitions, and
heart-burnings, to be sure; a most absorbing novel could be written about
it, and the author need not go beyond the city limits or approach the
state-house or the Pelican Hotel. The casual visitor in that capital
leaves it with a sense of peace, the echo of church bells in his ear, and
(if in winter) the impression of dazzling snow. Comedies do not
necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheatre for their
enactment.

No casual visitor, for instance, would have suspected from the faces or
remarks of the inhabitants whom he chanced to meet that there was
excitement in the capital over the prospective arrival of Mr. Humphrey
Crewe for the legislative session that winter. Legislative sessions, be
it known, no longer took place in the summer, a great relief to Mr. Crewe
and to farmers in general, who