who tottered there before them, holding off Death with his big ugly left hand, while with his right he clutched at the throat of his foe! Honest and dishonest, cruel and tender, great and mean, a party leader who scorned public opinion, a man of conviction, yet the most unscrupulous politician, a philosopher who preached the equality of man, yet a tyrant who hated the world and despised all men!
His very presence before them an open defiance of love and life and death, would not his word ring omnipotent when the verdict was rendered? Every man in the great court-room believed it as he looked on the rows of Senators hanging on his lips.
He spoke at first with unnatural vigour, a faint flush of fever lighting his white face, his voice quivering yet penetrating.
"Upon that man among you who shall dare to acquit the President," he boldly threatened, "I hurl the everlasting curse of a Nation—an infamy that shall rive and blast his children's children until they shrink from their own name as from the touch of pollution!"
He gasped for breath, his restless hands fumbled at his throat, he staggered and would have fallen had not his black guards caught him. He revived, pushed them back on their haunches, and sat down. And then, with his big club foot thrust straight in front of him, his gnarled hands gripping the arms of his chair, the massive head shaking back and forth like a wounded lion, he continued his speech, which grew in fierce intensity with each laboured breath.
The effect was electrical. Every Senator leaned for-
