Dick Welford heard the shot and gripped the fierce old Southerner's hand as Chandler turned on his heel and disappeared with an oath.
"I did, didn't I? Sometimes we can only think of our best things when it's too late. But by Gimminy I got the old rascal this time, didn't I?"
"You certainly plugged him--what did you think of the speeches?"
"Clay said something! Davis is too slow. He's got no blood in his veins. I don't like him. He'll pull us back into the Union yet if we don't watch him. He's a reconstructionist at heart. The State of Mississippi is dragging him out of Washington by the heels. He makes me tired. The time for talk has passed. To your tents now, O Israel!"
Dick hurried to the gallery and watched Socola talking in his graceful Italian way with Jennie. He had hated this elegant foreigner the moment he had laid eyes on him. He made up his mind to declare himself before another sun set.
She took Dick's proffered arm in silence and bowed to Socola who watched them go with a peculiar smile playing about his handsome mouth.
Jennie insisted on stopping at Senator Davis' home to tell his wife of the wonderful power with which his speech had swept the galleries.
The house was still, the library door open. The girl paused on the threshold in awe. The Senator's tall figure was lying prostrate across his desk, his thin hands clasped in prayer, his face buried in his arms. His lips were murmuring words too low to be heard until at last they swelled in sorrowful repetition:
"May God have us in his holy keeping and grant that before it is too late peaceful councils may prevail!"
The girl turned softly and left without a word.
The Secretary of War invited Socola to join him at the White House after the Cabinet meeting which President Buchanan had called at the unusual hour of ten at night. He had waited for more than two hours in the anteroom and still the Cabinet was in session. Without show of impatience he smoked cigar after cigar, flicked their ashes into the fireplace and listened with an expression of quiet amusement to the storm raging within while the sleet of a January blizzard rattled against the windows with increasing fury.
Once more the question of the little fort in the harbor of Charleston had plunged the discordant Cabinet of the dying administration into the convulsions of a miniature war.