American had been born into
the world, by the might of whose genius that fateful name was sped to the
uttermost parts of the nation. Abraham Lincoln was elected President of
the United States. And the moan of the storm gathering in the South grew
suddenly loud and louder.

Stephen Brice read the news in the black headlines and laid down the
newspaper, a sense of the miraculous upon him. There again was the
angled, low-celled room of the country tavern, reeking with food and
lamps and perspiration; for a central figure the man of surpassing
homeliness,--coatless, tieless, and vestless,--telling a story in the
vernacular. He reflected that it might well seem strange yea, and
intolerable--to many that this comedian of the country store, this crude
lawyer and politician, should inherit the seat dignified by Washington
and the Adamses.

And yet Stephen believed. For to him had been vouchsafed the glimpse
beyond.

That was a dark winter that followed, the darkest in our history. Gloom
and despondency came fast upon the heels of Republican exultation. Men
rose early for tidings from Charleston, the storm centre. The Union was
cracking here and there. Would it crumble in pieces before Abraham
Lincoln got to Washington?

One smoky morning early in December Stephen arrived late at the office to
find Richter sitting idle on his stool, concern graven on his face.

"The Judge has had no breakfast, Stephen," he whispered. "Listen!
Shadrach tells me he has been doing that since six this morning, when he
got his newspaper."

Stephen listened, and he heard the Judge pacing and pacing in his room.
Presently the door was flung open, And they saw Mr. Whipple standing in
the threshold, stern and dishevelled. Astonishment did not pause here. He
came out and sat down in Stephen's chair, striking the newspaper in his
hand, and they feared at first that his Mind had wandered.

"Propitiate!" he cried, "propitiate, propitiate, and again propitiate.
How long, O Lord?" Suddenly he turned upon Stephen, who was frightened.
But now his voice was natural, and he thrust the paper into the young
man's lap. "Have you read the President's message to Congress, sir? God
help me that I am spared to call that wobbling Buchanan President. Read
it. Read it, sir. You have a legal brain. Perhaps you can tell me why, if
a man admits that it is wrong for a state to abandon this Union, he
cannot call upon Congress for men and money to bring her back. No, thi