ice rang high, cold, clear,
and resonant as a Puritan church bell on Sunday morning:

"Not Guilty!"

A murmur, half groan and sigh, half cheer and cry, rippled the great
hall.

The other votes were discounted now save that of Edmund G. Ross, of
Kansas. No human being on earth knew what this man would do save the
silent invisible man within his soul.

Over the solemn trembling silence the voice of the Chief Justice rang:

"Senator Ross, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, guilty or
not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this article?"

The great Judge bent forward; his brow furrowed as Ross arose.

His fellow Senators watched him spellbound. A thousand men and women,
hanging from the galleries, focused their eyes on him. Old Stoneman drew
his bristling brows down, watching him like an adder ready to strike, his
lower lip protruding, his jaws clinched as a vise, his hands fumbling the
arms of his chair.

Every breath is held, every ear strained, as the answer falls from the
sturdy Scotchman like the peal of a trumpet:

"Not Guilty!"

The crowd breathes--a pause, a murmur, the shuffle of a thousand feet----

The President is acquitted, and the Republic lives!

The House assembled and received the report of the verdict. Old Stoneman
pulled himself half erect, holding to his desk, addressed the Speaker,
introduced his second bill for the impeachment of the President, and fell
fainting in the arms of his black attendants.

CHAPTER XII

TRIUMPH IN DEFEAT

Upon the failure to convict the President, Edwin M. Stanton resigned, sank
into despair and died, and a soldier Secretary of War opened the prison
doors.

Ben Cameron and his father hurried Southward to a home and land passing
under a cloud darker than the dust and smoke of blood-soaked
battlefields--the Black Plague of Reconstruction.

For two weeks the old Commoner wrestled in silence with Death. When at
last he spoke, it was to the stalwart negroes who had called to see him
and were standing by his bedside.

Turning his deep-sunken eyes on them a moment, he said slowly:

"I wonder whom I'll get to carry me when you boys die!"

Elsie hurried to his side and kissed him tenderly. For a week his mind
hovered in the twilight that lies between time and eternity. He seemed to
forget the passions and fury of his fierce career and live over the
memories of his youth, recalling pathetically its bitter poverty and its
fair dreams.