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Senator North

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watched it from the window of his Committee Room; he had seen it rosy with the mists of sunset, as dark as granite under stormy skies, as waxen as death. Normally, it was white and pure and inspiring, never companionable, but helpful in its cold and lofty beauty. "It _is_ a monument," he thought, to-night, "and to more than Washington." He turned into Massachusetts Avenue and strolled along, in no hurry to find himself between walls again. He was not conscious of physical fatigue, and experienced no longing for bed, but his brain was tired and he enjoyed the absence of enforced companionship and continued alertness, the cool air, the quiet morning in her last sleep. Betty, like all brilliant women who love passionately, had over- imagined, in her solitude and excitement. It is true that North had felt the bitterness of defeat, that his mind had dwelt upon the miserable and blasting thought that after years of unquestioned statesmanship and leadership, of hard work and unremitting devotion, his will had had no weight against hysteria and delirium. But both bitterness and the sense of failure had been dismissed in the moment when he had, once for all, accepted the situation; and that had been several days before. Since then, he had shoved aside the past, and had given his undivided thought to the present and the future. He had uttered his "aye" almost indifferently; it had been given to the President days since. Nevertheless, his brain, tired as it was, did not wander from the great climax in his country's history. To that country at large this climax meant simply a brief and arrogant chastisement of a cruel little nation; the generals would have been quite justified in sending their dress clothes and golf sticks on to Havana; but North knew that this officious "police duty" was the noisy prologue to a new United States, possibly to the birth of a new Constitution. "Is this the grand finale of the people's rule?" he thought. "They have screamed for the moon as they never screamed before, and this time they have got it fairly between their teeth. Well, it is a dead old planet; will its decay vitiate their own blood and leave them the half-willing prey of a Circumstance they do not dream of now? Dewey will take the Philippines, of course. He would be an inefficient fool if he did not, and he is the reverse. The Spanish in Cuba will crumble almost before the world realizes that the war has begun. The United States will find itself sitting open-mouthed with two huge prizes in its lap. It may, in a fit of virtue which would convulse history, give them back, present them, with much good advice and more rhetoric, to their rightful owners. And it may not. These prizes are crusted with gold; and the stars and stripes will look so well in the breeze above that the pride of patriotism may decide they must remain there. And if it does--if it does... The extremists in the Senate will grow twenty years in one... With the bit between their teeth and the arrogance of triumph in their blood--" He found himself in front of his own house. He turned slowly and looked intently for a moment toward I Street. His face softened, then he jerked out his latchkey, let himself in and went directly to the library. He still had no desire for bed, and threw himself into an easy-chair before the andirons. But it was the first time in several days that he had sat in a luxurious chair, and the room was full of soft warmth. He fell asleep, and although he seemed to awaken immediately, he could only conclude, when the experience which followed was over, that he had been dreaming. He suddenly became aware that a chair beside him was occupied, and he wheeled about sharply. His sense of companionship was justified; a man sat there. North stared at him, more puzzled than surprised, endeavouring to fit the familiar face to some name on his long list of acquaintances, and wondering who in Washington could have given a fancy-dress ball that night. His visitor wore his hair in a queue and powdered, a stock of soft lawn, and a dress-coat of plum-coloured cloth cut as in the days of the founders of the Republic. Although it was some moments before North recognized his visitor, his resentment at this unseasonable intrusion passed quickly; the personality in the chair was so charming, so magnetic, so genial. He was a young man, between thirty and forty, with a long nose, a mobile mouth, dark gray-blue eyes full of fire and humour, and a massive head. It was a face of extraordinary power and intellect, but lit up by a spirit so audacious and impulsive and triumphant that it was like a leaping flame of dazzling brilliancy in some forbidding fortress. He was smiling with a delighted expression of good fellowship; but North experienced a profound conviction that the man was weighing and analyzing him, that he would weigh and analyze everybody with whom he came in contact, and make few mistakes. "Who the deuce can he be?" he thought, "and why doesn't he speak?" And then it occurred to him that he had not spoken, himself. He was about to inquire with somewhat perfunctory courtesy in what manner he could serve his visitor, when his glance fell on the man's hands. He sat erect with a slight exclamation and experienced a stiffening at the roots of his hair. The hands under the lace ruffles were the most beautiful that ever had been given to a man, even to as small a man as this. They were white and strong and delicate, with pointed fingers wide apart, and filbert nails. North knew them well, for they were the hands of the man whom he admired above all men in the history of his country. But until to-night he had seen them on canvas only, in the Treasury Department of the United States. His feeling of terror passed, and he sat forward eagerly. "The little lion," he said caressingly, for the man before him might have been his son, although he had been in his tomb with a bullet in his heart for nearly a century. But he looked so young, so restless, so indomitable, that the years slipped out of the century, and Hamilton once more was the most brilliant ornament of a country which had never ceased to need him. "Yes," he said brightly, "here I am, sir, and you see me at last. This is that one moment in the lifetime of the few when the spirit burns

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