an manage the negro," he said calmly.

"With thousands of your own people disfranchised?"

"The negroes will vote with us, as they worked for us during the war. If
they give them the ballot, they'll wish they hadn't."

Ben looked at her tenderly, bent near, and whispered:

"Don't waste your sweet breath talking about such things. My politics is
bounded on the North by a pair of amber eyes, on the South by a dimpled
little chin, on the East and West by a rosy cheek. Words do not frame its
speech. Its language is a mere sign, a pressure of the lips--yet it
thrills body and soul beyond all words."

Elsie leaned closer, and looking at the Capitol, said wistfully:

"I don't believe you know anything that goes on in that big marble
building."

"Yes, I do."

"What happened there yesterday?"

"You honoured it by putting your beautiful feet on its steps. I saw the
whole huge pile of cold marble suddenly glow with warm sunlight and flash
with beauty as you entered it."

The girl nestled still closer to his side, feeling her utter helplessness
in the rapids of the Niagara through which they were being whirled by
blind and merciless forces. For the moment she forgot all fears in his
nearness and the sweet pressure of his hand.

CHAPTER XI

THE SUPREME TEST

It is the glory of the American Republic that every man who has filled the
office of President has grown in stature when clothed with its power and
has proved himself worthy of its solemn trust. It is our highest claim to
the respect of the world and the vindication of man's capacity to govern
himself.

The impeachment of President Andrew Johnson would mark either the lowest
tide-mud of degradation to which the Republic could sink, or its end. In
this trial our system would be put to its severest strain. If a partisan
majority in Congress could remove the Executive and defy the Supreme
Court, stability to civic institutions was at an end, and the breath of a
mob would become the sole standard of law.

Congress had thrown to the winds the last shreds of decency in its
treatment of the Chief Magistrate. Stoneman led this campaign of insult,
not merely from feelings of personal hate, but because he saw that thus
the President's conviction before the Senate would become all but
inevitable.

When his messages arrived from the White House they were thrown into the
waste-basket without being read, amid jeers, hisses, curses, and ribald
laughter.

In lieu