ent. It was between one and two o'clock in the
morning, Crittenden had just concluded his heart-breaking appeal to the
North to be generous and not let the Union go by default, and Baker had
just closed his noble appeal to the new dominant party (of which he was
one) not to peril a nation by the adoption of the old Roman cry of '_Vae
Victis_,'--when I left the Senate gallery for an hour, intending to
return when I had breathed for awhile outside of that suffocating
atmosphere. I passed to the front through the entrance under the
collonade, and was just about to step out into the open air, when a
voice arrested me. Surely I had heard it before.

"'Straws against a whirlwind!' I heard it say. 'The work is already
done, and no human power can undo it!'

"'I yet believe that the Union can be saved by the adoption of the plan
proposed by Crittenden!' said the other voice. 'Mason is right when he
says that Virginia will join the seceding States if no concession is
made; but--'

"A laugh, deep, sonorous, and yet hollow and mocking, broke out from the
lips of the first speaker, and rung through the arches--such a laugh as
we may suppose to have rung from the bearded lips of the Norse Jarl when
the poor Viking asked his daughter's hand and the father intended to
stun if not to kill him with the bitter scoff. I had heard that laugh
before, more moderately given, and minus the accompaniment of the
rushing wind without and the ringing of the hollow arches within. It was
that of Dexter Ralston, and I now detected that he and his companion
were standing just within one of the embrasures, so as to be partially
sheltered from the wind, and I could trace their outlines. Ralston was
enveloped in a large cloak, and wearing his inevitable broad hat; and
his companion seemed much smaller, dressed in dark clothes, and wearing
the usual 'stovepipe.' I had no intention to play listener, but there
really did not seem to be any wish for privacy on the part of the man
who could laugh in that manner; and, at all events, I stood still in the
doorway and listened to the discussion of that topic, as I might not
have done to another.

"'Well, what does the laugh mean?' asked the other, in a tone that did
not indicate remarkable good humor, when the sound had ceased.

"'Excuse me, I was not laughing at _you_!' said Ralston, 'but at the
blind, besotted fools who believe that they hold in their hands the
destinies of this Republic, and who really ha