wished to be at home in haying time.

The capital abounded in comfortable homes and boasted not a dwellings of
larger pretensions. Chief among these was the Duncan house--still so
called, although Mr. Duncan, who built it, had been dead these fifteen
years, and his daughter and heiress, Janet, had married an Italian
Marquis and lived in a Roman palace, rehabilitated by the Duncan money.
Mr. Duncan, it may be recalled by some readers of "Coniston," had been a
notable man in his day, who had married the heiress of the State, and was
president of the Central Railroad, now absorbed in the United
Northeastern. The house was a great square of brick, with a wide cornice,
surrounded by a shaded lawn; solidly built, in the fashion of the days
when rich people stayed at home, with a conservatory and a library that
had once been Mr. Duncan's pride. The Marchesa cared very little about
the library, or about the house, for that matter; a great aunt and uncle,
spinster and bachelor, were living in it that winter, and they vacated
for Mr. Crewe. He travelled to the capital on the legislative pass the
Northeastern Railroads had so kindly given him, and brought down his
horses and his secretary and servants from Leith a few days before the
first of January, when the session was to open, and laid out his bills
for the betterment of the State on that library table where Mr. Duncan
had lovingly thumbed his folios. Mr. Crewe, with characteristic
promptitude, set his secretary to work to make a list of the persons of
influence in the town, preparatory to a series of dinner-parties; he
dropped into the office of Mr. Ridout, the counsel of the Northeastern
and of the Winona Corporation in the capital, to pay his respects as a
man of affairs, and incidentally to leave copies of his bills for the
improvement of the State. Mr. Ridout was politely interested, and
promised to read the bills, and agreed that they ought to pass.

Mr. Crewe also examined the Pelican Hotel, so soon to be a hive, and
stood between the snow-banks in the capital park contemplating the statue
of the great statesman there, and repeating to himself the quotation
inscribed beneath. "The People's Government, made for the People, made by
the People, and answerable to the People." And he wondered, idly,--for
the day was not cold,--how he would look upon a pedestal with the
Gladstone collar and the rough woollen coat that would lend themselves so
readily to reproduction in marbl