The express train going south on the Northern Central Railroad, March 3d, 186-, carried perhaps a score of newly-elected Congressmen, prepared to take their seats on the first day of the term. For every Congressman there were at least five followers, adventurers or clients, some distinguished by their tighter-fitting faces, signifying that they were men of commerce; others, by their unflagging and somewhat overstrained amiability, not to say sycophancy, signifying that out of the aforesaid Congressmen they expected something "fat." Of the former class the hardest type was unquestionably Jabel Blake, and the business which he had in hand with the freshly Honorable Arthur MacNair, who sat at his side reading the Pittsburg news-paper, was the establishment of a national bank at the town of Ross Valley, Pennsylvania.

Jabel Blake had as little the look of a bank president as had his representative the bearing of a politician. MacNair was a thin, almost fragile young person, with light-red hair and a freckled face and clear blue eyes, which nearly made a parson of him—a suggestion carried out by his plain guard and silver watch and his very sober, settled expression. The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe, who had served three terms from the Apple-butter District, remarked of him, from the adjoining seat, "Made his canvass, I s'pose, by a colporterin' Methodist books, and stans ready to go to his hivinly home by way of the Injin Ring!"

But, in reality, the Congressman belonged to the same faith with his constituent and client—both Presbyterians like their great-grandfathers, who were Scotch pioneers among the spurs of the Alleghenies; and there still lived these twain, in fashion little changed—MacNair a lawyer at the court-house town, and Jabel Blake the creator, reviver, and capitalist of the hamlet of Ross Valley. Jabel was hard, large, bony, and dark, with pinched features and a whitish-gray eye, and a keen, thin, long voice high-pitched, every separate accent of which betrayed the love of money.

"It's an expensive trip," said Jabel Blake; "it's a costly trip. More men are made poor, Arthur MacNair, by travellin' than by sickness. Twice a year to Pittsburg and twice to Phildelfy is the whole of my gadding. I stop, in Phildelfy, at the Camel Tavern, on Second Street, and a very expensive house—two dollars a day. At Washington they rob everybody, I'm told, and I shall be glad to get away with my clothes."

"Tut! Jabel," said MacNair, "brother Elk has taken rooms for me at Willards', and for the little time you stay at the capital you can lodge with us. A man who has elected a Congressman in spite of the Pennsylvania Railroad shouldn't grudge one visit in his life-time to Washington."

"Oh!" said Jabel, "I don't know as I begrudge that, though your election, Arty, cost me four hundred and seven dollars and—I've got it here in a book."

"I know that," said MacNair quietly; "don't read it again, Jabel. You behaved like a sturdy, indignant man, paid all my expenses, though you protested against an election in a moral land involving the expenditure of a dime, and though you pass for the closest man west of the mountains. And here we are, going upon errands of duty, as little worldly as we can be, yet not anxious to belittle ourselves or our district."

"I'd cheerfully given more, Arty, to beat that corporation. A twenty-dollar bill or so, you know! But money is tight. I've scraped and scraped for years to start my bank at Ross Valley, and every dollar wasted retards the village. You boys have cost me a sight of money. There's Elk's sword and horse, and the schooling of both of you, and the burying of your father, Jim MacNair, eighteen years ago this May. Dear! dear!"

The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe, catching a part of this remark, observed that Jabel Blake, judging by his appearance, shouldn't have buried MacNair's father, but devoured him. Jabel's unfeeling remark gave MacNair no apparent pain; but he said:

"Jabel, don't speak to Elk about father. He is not as patient as he should be, and perhaps in Washington they disguise some of the matters which we treat bluntly and openly. There's Kitty Dunlevy, you know, and she is a little proud."

The glazed, whitish eye of Jabel bore the similitude of a beam of satisfaction.

"It's nothing agin you boys," he said, "that Jim MacNair, your father, didn't do well. He wronged nobody but himself, as I made the stonecutter say over his grave. That cost me upwards of eleven dollars, so I did my duty by him. You boys don't seem to have his appetite for liquor. You are a member of Congress, and Elk was one of the bravest ginerals in the war; and I don't see, if he saves his money and his health, but he is good enough even for Judge Dunlevy's girl."

Judge Dunlevy was the beau ideal of Jabel Blake, as the one eminent local statesman of the region round Ross Valley—the County Judge when Jabel was a child, the Supreme Justice of the State, and now a District Justice of the United States in a distant field. His reputation for purity, dignity, original social consideration, moral intrepidity, and direct Scotch sagacity had made his name a tower of strength in his native State. To Jabel's clannish and religious nature Judge Dunlevy represented the loftiest possibilities of human character; and that one of the two poor orphans—the sons of a wood-cutter and log-roller on the Alleghenies, and the victim of intemperance at last—whom Jabel had watched and partly reared, should now be betrothed to Catharine Dunlevy, the judge's only daughter, affected every remaining sentiment in Jabel's heart.

Absorbed in the contemplation of this honorable alliance, Jabel took out his account-book and absently cast up the additions, and so the long delay at Baltimore caused no remarks and the landscapes slipped by until, like the sharp oval of a colossal egg, the dome of the Capitol arose above the vacant lots of the suburbs of Washington.

A tall, handsome, manly gentleman in citizen black, standing expectantly on the platform of the station, came up and greeted MacNair with the word,

"Arthur!"

"Elk!"

And the brothers, legislator and soldier, stood contrasted as they clasped hands with the fondness of orphans of the same blood. They had no superficial resemblances, Arthur being small, clerical, freckled, and red-haired, with a staid face and dress and a stunted, ill-fed look, like the growth of an ungracious soil; Elk, straight and tall, with the breeding and clothing of a metropolitan man, with black eyes and black hair and a small "imperial" goatee upon his nether lip; with an adventurous nature and experience giving intonation to his regular face, and the lights and contrasts of youth, command, valor, sentiment, and professional associations adding such distinction that every lady passenger going by looked at him, even in the din of a depot, with admiration.

To Jabel Blake, who came up lugging an ancient and large carpet-bag, and who repelled every urchin who wanted the job of carrying it, Elk MacNair spoke cordially but without enthusiasm.

"Jabel," he said, "if I hear you growl about money as long as you are here, I'll take you up to the Capitol and lose you among the coal-holes."

"It took many a grunt to make the money," said Jabel Blake, "and it's natural to growl at the loss of it."

By this time they had come to the street, and there in a livery barouche were the superb broad shoulders, fringed from above with fleece-white hair, of Judge Dunlevy. Health, wisdom, and hale, honorable age were expressed attributes of his body and face, and by his side, the flower of noble womanhood, sat Catharine, his child, worthy of her parentage. Both of them welcomed Arthur MacNair with that respectful warmth which acknowledged the nearness of his relationship to the approaching nuptials, and the Judge said:

"Great credit to Jabel Blake as a representative citizen, in that his eyes have seen the glory of these fine boys, to whom he has been so fast a friend!"

Jabel's glassy eyes shone, and his mouth unclosed like a smile in a fossil pair of jaws.

"It's the nighest I ever come to being paid for my investment in Arty and Elk," he said, "to get sech a compliment from Judge Dunlevy! They are good boys, though they've cost me a powerful lot, and I hope they'll save their money, stick to their church, and never forgit Ross Valley, which claims the honor of a buildin' 'em up."

"Get up here, Jabel, and ride!" cried Elk. "Remember that coal-hole, old man!"

"No! no!" cried Jabel; "I can walk. These fine carriages is expensive luxuries. They'll do for politicians, I 'spose, but not for business men with limited means."

The Judge made Jabel Blake sit facing him, however, and they rattled off to the hotel, where Elk MacNair had secured a parlor and suite for his brother in the retired end of the structure, commanding a view of Newspaper Row upon one side and of the Treasury faÇade on the other. The long, tarnished mirrors, the faded tapestry, and the heavy, soiled, damask curtains impressed Jabel Blake as parts of the wild extravagance of official society, and gave him many misgivings as to the amount of his bill. He retained enough of his Scotch temperament, however, to make no ceremony about a glass of punch, which the General ordered up for the old man, Arthur MacNair only abstaining, and the beauty and amiability of the Judge's daughter, who sat at his side and beguiled him to speak of his idolized village, his mills, his improvements, and his new bank, softened his hard countenance as by the reflection of her own, and touched him with tender and gratified conceptions of the social opportunities of his protÉgÉs. Miss Dunlevy's face, with the clear intellectual and moral nature of her father calmly looking out, expressed also a more emotional and more sympathetic bias. A pure and strong woman, whose life had ripened among the families and circles of the best in condition and influence, she had never crossed to the meaner side of necessity, nor appreciated the fact, scarcely palpable, even to her father, that he was poor. An entire life spent in the public service had allowed neither time nor propriety for improving his private fortune; and as his salary continued over the war era at the same modest standard which had barely sufficed for cheaper years, he had been making annual inroads upon his little estate, which was now quite exhausted. His daughter might have ended his heartache and crowned his wishes by availing herself of any of several offers of marriage which had been made to her; but the soldierly bearing, radiant face, and fine intellect of Elk MacNair had conquered competition when first he sought, through her father's influence, a lieutenancy in the army.

His career had been brilliant and fortunate, and when he was brought in from the field dangerously wounded, her womanly ministrations at the hospital had helped to set him upon his horse again, with life made better worth preserving for the promise of her hand, surrendered with her father's free consent. It was a love-match, without reservations or inquiries, the rapport and wish of two equal beings, kindred in youth, sympathy, and career, earnest to dwell together and absorbed in the worship of each other. Folded in full union of soul as perfectly as the leaves of a book, which are in contact at every point equally, they felt at this period the wistful tenderness of a marriage near at hand, and their eyes anticipated it, seeking each other out. She was cast in the large stature of her father, and her dark brown hair and eyes betokened the stability of her character, while her graces of movement and speech no less revealed her adaptability to the social responsibilities which she had solely conducted since her mother's death. Together, Catharine and her affianced made a couple equal to the fullest destiny, and they won praise without envy from all.

"It is a happy fortuity," said Judge Dunlevy, putting aside his glass; "Catharine's marriage to a worthy man, native to my own part of the country; Arthur's induction into national life; and hard-working Jabel Blake's final triumph with his bank! There is no misgiving in the mind of any of us. The way is all smooth. Perfect content, perfect love, no stain upon our honors or our characters: with such simple family democracies all over the land we vindicate the truthfulness of our institutions, and grow old without desponding of our country!"

"I feel almost religiously happy," said Arthur, the Congressman; "not for myself, particularly; not for my mere election to Congress, for in our district there are many abler men to make representatives of—I hope none with more steadfast good intentions!—but Elk here always had so much health, blood, wayward will, and brilliancy that I sometimes feared he might abandon the safe highways of labor and self-denial and try some dangerous short-cut to fortune. To see him survive the battle-field and begin the longer campaigns of peace with a profession, a reputation, no entanglements, and such a wife, makes me a religious man. God bless you, brother Elk!"

General MacNair said, in a jesting way, that Arthur was the truest, most old-fashioned, and most ridiculously scrupulous brother that ever grew up among the daisies; but he was affected, as were they all.

"Elk MacNair," asked Jabel Blake, in his hard, incisive, positive, business voice, "what do you mean to do after you are married?"

The General looked at Jabel as if he were a little officious and with large capacities for being disagreeable.

"I have arranged to buy a partnership in a legal firm having the largest practice in the North west. This is better than beginning alone and waiting to make a business."

"How much will that cost?" persisted Jabel Blake, not remarking the growing repulsion with which the General answered, after some little embarrassment:

"One hundred and sixty thousand dollars."

"Why!" cried Jabel Blake, "that is nearly as much as it takes to start the Ross Valley bank. Take care! Take care! Beware, Elk MacNair, of getting into debt at your time of life. It makes gray hairs come. It breaks up domestic pleasure. It mortgages tranquil years. Neither a borrower nor a lender be! That's Bible talk, and the Bible is not only the best book for the family, but the best business book besides."

"I don't mean to run in debt," said the General, with a look, perhaps surly; "I mean to buy into the firm with cash."

"Bosh!" said Jabel Blake, rising up, "where did you get one hundred and sixty thousand dollars, Elk MacNair?"

"If you were not claiming to its fullest extent the privilege of my father's friend, Jabel, I should tell you that it was none of your business! I will have made the money by the practice of law in the City of Washington."

"Dear me, Elk," said his brother, quietly; "I don't presume to be worth five thousand dollars, all told. But I suppose you have genius and opportunity, and the times are wondrous for men of acquaintance and enterprise."

Jabel Blake stared at Elk MacNair a long while without speaking.

II.

The sudden revelation that Elk MacNair was very rich had, on the whole, a depressing effect. Kate Dunlevy, who had expected to marry purely for love, found with a little chagrin that she was also marrying for money. The Judge was led to remark upon the curiosities of a speculative age and a fluctuating currency, and said he longed for the solid times of hard coin, cheap prices, easy stages, and a Jeffersonian republic. As for Jabel Blake, he was too late for that day to deposit his bonds at the Treasury and obtain the currency for the Ross Valley bank, so he went sauntering around the city, grim as a defeated office-seeker.

The brothers also made some calls, and Arthur MacNair was puzzled and at the same time pleased, to find that his dashing junior knew everybody, had something to chat about with innumerable strangers or members, and was freely admitted to any public office he desired. They came home at twilight, quite fatigued, and found Jabel Blake lying on a bed in the inner chamber, fast asleep.

"Dreaming of his bank!" said Elk MacNair; "what a metallic soul must Jabel's be! His very voice rattles like money. His features are cut hard as a face on a coin."

"Jabel has good points, Elk," said the Congressman; "if you can understand the passion of the town builder you can apprehend him. He has devoted his life to Ross Valley, and the only text of Scripture he finds it hard to understand is, that he who ruleth his soul is greater than he who buildeth a city."

The two brothers sat together in the main room; the day, at the windows, was growing grayer, and they were silent for a while.

The face of Elk MacNair had been growing long during the whole afternoon, but with an assumed gayety he had sought to make the hours pass pleasantly, and when his thoughtful and modest brother endeavored to argue with him that his legal labors were wearing him out, Elk MacNair turned the conversation off in a cheerful way by saying:

"Arthur, I have arranged that you shall have the chairmanship of a first-rate committee."

"How arranged it?"

"Oh, these things can be managed, you know. Every good position in Washington has to be begged for, or brought about by strategic approaches. I know the Speaker and the Speaker's friends below him, and the old chairman of the committee where I wish you to be; and, among us all, you have obtained the rare distinction, for a new member, of going to the head of one of the best of the second-class committees."

"I do not like this, Elk," said Arthur. "I hope I am without ambition, particularly of that sort which would annihilate processes and labors, and seek to obtain distinction by an easy path. I do not know that I shall make a speech during the whole of this Congress, although I shall try to be in my seat every day, and to vote when I am well informed. What committee is it that you have been at such pains to put me at the head of it?"

"The Committee on Ancient Contracts."

Arthur MacNair, who had not much color at the best of times, turned a little pale.

"Elk," said he, "there is a bad sound in that word 'contracts.' Of course, I do not take much stock in the widespread scandal about our Government giving away contract work to do from base or personal considerations; but I have a little belief that one ought to avoid even the appearance of evil. I think I must refuse to go on that committee."

Elk MacNair seemed to grow darker and older, and his face assumed an intensity of expression which his brother did not perceive.

"Pshaw! Arty," he said, with agitation, "everything here goes by friends. You brought with you no renown, no superstition, nothing which would entitle you to the Speaker's consideration. He might have put you, but for me, away down on the Committee on Revolutionary Pensions."

"I think I would like that committee," said Arthur MacNair quietly. "In it I might be the means of doing gratitude to some old and needy hero. I like those tasks which involve no notoriety. At home, in our church and among our townsfolks, I always tried to get on the societies which are unknown to public fame; and there, any little thing which I can diligently do brings its own reward. I must decline to go on the Committee on Ancient Contracts, Elk!"

The younger brother, with his dark burning eyes, met at this point the cool, unsuspecting glance of the country lawyer, and something in it seemed to embarrass even his worldliness, for he rose from his seat and threw up his hands impatiently.

"Oh! very well," he said. "I thought I was doing you a service, and now I see that it has been love's labor lost. In fact, I want you on that committee to serve a little turn for me!"

The country brother looked up with truthful surprise.

"For you, Elk?"

"Yes," cried the younger, striding up and down the floor with the step of one made decisive by being put at bay; "I want you upon that committee, not only to do me a turn but to do me a benefit; to come to my rescue; to fulfil the expectations of many hard-working months; to make me happy. Yes, Arthur, to make my fortune!"

Arthur MacNair followed the rapid walk and excited voice of his brother with astonishment. His small, thin, commonplace face seemed to develop lights and intelligences which were painful to him, the clearer his apprehensions became. He said, in a quiet, still voice, as if he also were interested now,

"I am afraid I am on the eve of hearing something bad, my brother. If it must come, let it all come."

"Arthur MacNair," said Elk, his voice raised above the ordinary pitch, and the recklessness of an officer in the ardor of battle showing in his working face, quick talk, and rapid gestures, "you are on the eve of hearing something. In your answer lies my destiny. I told you I was a lawyer, and had made one hundred and sixty thousand dollars with which I was to buy my way into an attorney's firm and establish myself in business. It was true. I have made that engagement. My talent and energy are recognized, and the place of which I spoke is waiting for me immediately after my marriage. The lady who is to be my bride is divided from me by no other consideration than this—that I have not obtained the one hundred and sixty thousand dollars."

The Congressman grew paler, and he made an effort to say "Go on," but his voice was scarcely audible, and Elk MacNair saw that he seemed to be suddenly sick. With self-reproach the younger brother observed all this, but it was too late for him to falter; the time was too precious.

"Arty," he said; "oh, my brother, the whole story must be told and the full crisis met. I am dependent upon you for the price of my happiness; for the hand of my wife; for the key to my fortune; for all that makes the future auspicious and the past clear. I am not a lawyer, as I have said, in the common sense in which, with modest effort and goodness, you have followed out your career. I am a lobbyist!"

"I returned from the war flushed with my success, and told on every hand that an immediate and profound prosperity were close before me. These politicians and speculators around the capital took me by the hand, flattered me, and showed me where my fortune was within my own grasp. Little by little they led me on, using my reputation and influence to accomplish their ends; and my mode of living, my acquaintances, my expectations, increased with my facilities, until, chafing under the consciousness that I was working out the private interests of others, I resolved to stake all upon one large hazard, conclude this wayward, self-accusing life, and depart from the purlieus of legislation. Up to the present time no stigma has been attached to my irregularities, none have suspected that I was less than I claimed to be—a soldier and a gentleman, betrothed to the noblest woman in the world. But this manner of living in the end works the destruction of habits and reputation to any who continue in it. To be brief, I have found political life nothing but a commerce. All have their price, and the highest sometimes sell out the cheapest. Men are estimated here by their boldness and breadth only, and a single successful venture of the kind I have in hand will dismiss me from this city rich and without exposure, and I swear never again to be seen in the lobbies of the Federal legislature. All my dependence in this, however, is upon you. I watched your campaign in our native region—how gallantly and how exceptionably you fought it, none knows so well!—and I took to heart the belief that, wishing to see me distinguished, wedded, and settled, your old scruples might give way, and you would afford me this last, best chance. Shall I go on?"

The small, thin face of the elder brother seemed to have lost all of its vitality; his fragile form was even more diminished; it might almost have been paralysis which had seized him.

"Water!" he muttered. "I cannot talk."

The younger brother ran for a glass, and with a look of mingled guilt and affection sought to support him with his arm. Arthur MacNair feebly repelled his assistance.

"You may finish, sir," he said.

"God forgive me," cried Elk MacNair, sinking into a chair; "my brother, I beseech you, do not think so evil of me as to suppose that in this enterprise I would compromise your character for one minute, and if it shall be necessary, all the fault shall be mine by open confession. There is an old claim for postal services rendered many years ago, which has reposed in the catacombs of one of the departments. The claimant has long been dead, and it was purchased for a small sum from his heirs. There are some equities about the claim; the attestations in its favor are purely documentary, and I have so entirely manipulated every instrumentality on the way to its passage, judicial, legislative, and executive, that if the Committee on Ancient Contracts should report favorably upon it at the beginning of the session, my confederates in the House will see that it goes along, and the department will pay it immediately. Congress will then at once adjourn, within a day or two, for such is the usage here. With my share of the money, which will be large, I will be a man of wealth and able to turn my back once and for all upon this Capitol. You are to be the chairman of the committee; the other members, as is habitual here, will intrust the whole matter to you; a few words explanatory of this claim will send it on its way, and the crisis of my life will have passed."

When the younger brother had finished, he also seemed to have expended his strength in the effort he had made, and he sat limp and despondent. The elder brother, on the contrary, appeared to recover his strength by a vigorous effort of the will. He stood up. He walked straight before his brother and looked down upon him with his penetrating blue eyes.

"Elk MacNair," he said, "tell me—by our common origin, solemnly, truthfully, and on your honor, tell me—will this claim stand the test of full investigation? Is it right?"

"Arthur," said the younger, feebly, "under that appeal I must speak truthfully. The claim is irregular; perhaps it has been paid already. There is no time for investigation. I have stocked the cards, and the trick must be taken at once or never. You have this alternative. I can take you off that committee, and I have a man in reversion who will get the post and pass the claim."

The stature of Arthur MacNair seemed to expand, and he became the positive spirit of the room.

"Not so," he said; "it shall not pass, Elk MacNair, neither by my help nor by any other man's! You have acknowledged to me that there is no justice in this thing. You have made me a party to a fraud. You shall know that the only oath I came here to take is that of allegiance to the interests of the country. No brotherhood, no sympathy, no ambition, no pity, nothing shall be able to swerve me from my full duty."

"What would you do, fanatic?" cried Elk MacNair.

"I will denounce that claim upon the floor of Congress, and couple with the denunciation the story of this infamous proposal you have made to a member of Congress."

The younger brother gave a laugh.

"What nonsense, Arthur," he said. "If you expect to find any large class of Americans who will appreciate such heroism, exhibited at the sacrifice of your own blood and family, you do not know your countrymen in these days. The only men who deal in sentiment in our time are demagogues, who never feel it. A sneer will go up from all the circles of the capital, from all the presses of the land, at a man who seeks, in a political age, to play the part of the elder Brutus."

"Miserable, lost, dishonored man!" said Arthur MacNair. "In the valleys of my State, in the quiet farming districts all through the Union, among the hard-working, the penurious, and the plain—such as you and your class despise—there are armies of men who would rise and march upon this capital if they appreciated the whole of the scene in which you have figured to-day! You would steal the money of the people that you may buy a character and a position among your countrymen. Shame upon the man who would defend the acquisition of such booty to wed the woman he loves."

Every word which Arthur MacNair had uttered, and most of all the last, cut like a knife into the pride of Elk MacNair.

"I thought I was pleading with my brother," he said hoarsely, "not to a stone. I shall say no more. I have placed myself in your power. Remember this: if my point is not carried within three days, or if it be balked by your interference, I will blow out my brains. I have walked to the door of hell on the battle-field, and I can go further."

He seized his hat and hurried away like a fury. Arthur MacNair stood motionless an instant in the middle of the floor, and then, worn out with the intensity of the scene, his limbs gave way beneath him, and he fell unconscious.

In a moment the hard, strong face and giant form of Jabel Blake appeared over the threshold of the bedroom; he lifted his Congressman and counsel in his arms and carried him grimly to a sofa.

III.

The Honorable Perkiomen Trappe was much delighted, on the morning subsequent to the occurrences related in our last chapter, to see Jabel Blake walk down Pennsylvania Avenue with the pensive air of a man whose heart had been broken. The Honorable Perkiomen supposed that Jabel had failed to receive some drawback or other upon his income-tax, and he rejoiced in the reverses of the close and thrifty.

But Jabel Blake was now concerned solely with the sudden and violent rupture between the MacNair brothers. He had little acquaintance with Elk MacNair, and no great fondness for him; but, being well informed as to the positive, combative traits of character in Arthur MacNair, Jabel knew very well that what his counsel had threatened to do he would do, though his own heart-strings might be sundered.

The deepest wish in Jabel's heart, next to establishing a national bank in Ross Valley, was to see the marriage between Kate Dunlevy and the MacNair family brought to pass; yet such was his reverence for the Dunlevys and so great his antagonism to the Washington Lobby that he was half inclined to be himself the means of breaking off the match between the daughter of his great neighbor and exemplar and the son of his old chum and companion.

Jabel took his way to the house of the old Circuit Judge, which was one of a row of tall brown-stone structures not far from the city hall, and when he rang the bell a servant showed him to a library in the second story, where the Judge was dictating certain judicial opinions to his daughter. The two elderly men retired to an adjacent apartment, which seemed, from its appointments and the character of needlework and literature strewn about, to be the boudoir of Miss Dunlevy; and the Judge, who was somewhat past the prime of life, plunged into a long story about Ross Valley and its early settlement, speaking much of the time with his eyes closed in a sort of half reverie, while Jabel, who occupied a seat nearer to the library, was meantime overhearing a conversation between Kate Dunlevy and young Elk MacNair, who had followed hard upon Jabel's heels. The old Judge meantime, used to their voices, paused only to remark that he thought Elk MacNair one of the strongest, most brilliant, and most promising men in the nation, and then went on with his dissertation upon pioneer days among the spurs of the Alleghenies. Jabel, however, who was an attentive, inquisitive busybody, and who lived in a part of the country where folks of quality and large pursuits were few, observed that the two voices in the next room were lowered, and that their key, while not so high, was yet even more startling than before.

"Kate," said Elk MacNair, "I had counted upon my brother as an assured ally in something of the most momentous importance to me at this juncture, before our marriage. My brother is a man of power, but of narrow views, and I have unconsciously aroused his animosity. He is not to be appeased. Nothing can divert him from his purpose.

"It can be nothing, if Arthur is the arbiter and your happiness the subject," said Miss Dunlevy.

"It is a point of honor differently taken by two men," said Elk MacNair; "and the issue is a matter of character. It is a matter of fortune besides, and if neither relents both will suffer."

These words were attended with some emotion which smote the rough feelings of Jabel Blake, and he was a witness of some subsidiary endearments, besides, which softened his indignation against the young officer. So he followed Elk MacNair from the house and accosted him upon the street.

"General," he said, "I claim the privilege of a guardian over you boys—over your brother in particular, who is a true man and an obstinate one. I know the matter of your difference. If you do not yield, Arthur MacNair will keep his word! You will be exposed on the floor of Congress, exactly as he promised, and your engagement with Kitty Dunlevy broken forever."

"Jabel Blake," answered the soldier, "I know just what I am about. I told my brother that I would blow my own head off if he sacrificed me for a sentiment. And just that I mean to do."

"I know the devil in the MacNair blood," said Jabel Blake; "but you are playing a false part and Arthur a true one. He fought his campaign against the corruptions and chicanery of power, and he will trample you out like a snake."

"He thinks he's correcting a boy," said Elk MacNair; "he shall find me a soldier."

"And you will find him a Christian soldier, truer to his allegiance than to rob his country!"

"Pshaw!" laughed Elk MacNair; "a skinflint who has raked up fortune with his fingers, ground down his laborers, pinched his soul, and stooped his stature for money, has no right to be my chaplain, Jabel Blake! You have grown rich like a scavenger. What matter if I bring down fortune with my rifle, though the American eagle be the bird. I would spare my body some of the dirty crawling you have done to get your bank!"

"Base boy!" cried Jabel Blake, with more contempt than anger; "I will live to teach you that a life of thrift and honest toil is above your power to insult it. You can neither repel me nor break your brother's heart. The time will come when you will weep to deserve the respect you have lost from these gray hairs."

He passed away with his old, heavy, deliberate gait, and left the young man almost repentant.

The galleries and floors of the House of Representatives were crowded, as was usual upon early working days of the session. Among the members in a retired seat his red shock of hair, clerical dress, and thin, worn, commonplace, freckled face denoted the new member from the Scotch district of Pennsylvania. The gay daughter of the Honorable Perkiomen Trappe, picking him out from the diplomatic gallery by the aid of her opera-glass, remarked that she mourned for her country when Europe could behold such a specimen of homespun among American Congressmen.

"And what's more, pet," said the Honorable Perkiomen, "he's a bin put on a fat committee. He has the cheer in the room on Ancient Contracts, and your unfortnit father is only a member under him. I think that staving cavalry brother of his'n, Elk MacNair, fixed his feed for him!"

They turned to look at Elk MacNair, sitting in the gallery near by with the venerable Judge and the Judge's daughter. His dark goatee, eyes, and hair, were set in a face unusually pale and intense, and his manly and refined worldly bearing suited his associations. Kate Dunlevy, with her charms of bloom, repose, and stateliness, looked like the wife of such a public man.

"Elk," said she, "you do not seem to be at ease to-day. You are pale and nervous, and you have stared down there at your brother's seat till people are taking notice of you."

"I am suffering a little, Kitty; that is all. My case comes up within five minutes, and I might as well blow my head off if it shall stick anywhere."

His eyes seemed to flame out with a reckless light as he said this.

"Arthur has a sick look as well," said Kate. "This public life is too exciting for him. See how nervously he sips that glass of water."

"Sick!" exclaimed Elk MacNair, with a voice of bitterness, yet with a melancholy glance of admiration in the direction of the Congressman; "he is more dangerous than sick. His will is sublime, Kate; nothing can soften it, not even pity."

The committees were now being called by the Speaker, and chairman after chairman rose to make his report. As the list diminished more and more, and the Committee upon Ancient Contracts approached its turn, there were no two such livid, deathly faces in all the crowded house as these two brothers wore. Elk MacNair's had a settled ferocity. The youthfulness and comely moods were gone from it, and the burnt-out countenance of a man of the world looked dead and ashen above the exhausted reservoirs of a diseased mind. Nothing was left but the last chance before despair, and apprehensive of the failure of this hope also, his gloved hand, resting upon a pocket hidden at his hip, sought support from the hilt of a pistol secreted there. Was this the meaning of the sullen and ghastly determination glaring from his eyes? Yes, love and death were almost mated; and so in every busy Congress do the spectres of temptation and ill-omen lurk in wait.

The country brother on the floor showed also his tenacious purpose in his compressed lips, straight, expanded breast and shoulders, and clear and direct but grave look. No extremity of occasion could make a heroic figure of him, but in his plain face was the beauty of moral courage. He rose to his feet when the Speaker cried:

"Committee on Ancient Contracts is next in order. The gentleman from Pennsylvania!"

The people in the galleries were not disappointed that such a homely man should have no voice nor grace, and that he spoke only with the gravest effort.

"The gentleman's voice is inaudible to the chair," said the Speaker.

But Elk MacNair had heard it from where he sat. He had distinguished the fitful words:

"The committee reports against the —— claim for postal services, desires that it do not pass, and the chairman wishes to make a personal explanation relative to the claim."

"Kitty," said Elk MacNair, in a coarse whisper, "my brother has broken my heart!"

"Stay!" said Miss Dunlevy; "he staggers in his seat as if he were about to fall. A page has run to him with a letter. He reads it. Elk, for Heaven's sake, go to his help! He is dying!"

There was a rush of members about the new chairman of committee. Confusion reigned upon the floor of Congress. The lobby brother had apprehended it all. He cleared the gallery at a run, passed a familiar doorkeeper like a dart, and raised his senior to his breast.

"Arty," he whispered, "may Heaven forgive me! I repent of my folly and wickedness, and entreat you to speak to me!"

"Heaven has forgiven you, Elk MacNair!" muttered the spent Congressman. "Your father's friend has spared your fame and my feelings at the expense of his fortune. It has taken the bank of Jabel Blake—the dream of his life—to save you from a dishonored name, and to give you a wife too worthy for you!"

He put a piece of paper in the lobbyist's hands. It said:

"Jabel Blake."

V.

On the terrace of the Capitol, while all this was occurring, a gaunt, gigantic, aged figure might have been seen, looking away into the city basking in the plain at his feet, with almost the bitterness of prophecy. He carried an old worn carpet-bag, and a railroad ticket appeared in his hat-band. It was Jabel Blake, shaking the dust of the capital city from his feet!

To him the soft and purple panorama brought no emotions, as pride of country or Æsthetic associations; and even the bracing savor of the gale upon the eminence seemed laden, to his hard regard, with the corruptions and excesses of a debauched government and a rank society. The river, to him, was but the fair sewer to this sculptured sepulchre. The lambent amphitheatre of the inclosing ridges was like the wall of a jail which he longed to cross and return no more. He saw the dark granite form of the Treasury Department, and groaned like one whose heart was broken there. The bank of Ross Valley was never to be!

Jabel thought in one instant of the inquiries which should be addressed to him on his return, the prying curiosity of the hamlet, the strictures of his neighbors and laborers, the exultation of his enemies, the lost chance of his cherished village to become the mart of its locality and dispense from its exchequer enterprise and aid to farms and mines and mills.

"The good God may make it up to my children some day," he said; "but the bank is never to be in the life of old Jabel Blake!"

So Jabel went home and met with all obtuseness the flying rumors of the country. His worst enemies said that he had fallen from grace while in Washington, and "bucked" with all his bonds against a faro bank. His best friends obtained no explanation of his losses. He kept his counsel, grew even sterner and thriftier than he had ever been, and only at the Presbyterian church, where he prayed in public frequently at the evening meetings, were glimpses afforded of his recollections of Washington by the resonant appeals he made that the money-changers might be lashed out of the temples there, and desolation wrought upon them that sold doves.

There was no bank at Ross Valley, but people began to say that old Jabel Blake had particles of gold in the flinty composition of his life, and that his trip to Washington had made him gentler and wider in his charities. He was attentive to young children. He encouraged young lovers. He lifted many errant people to their feet, and started them on their way to a braver life of sacrifice. And fortune smiled upon him as never before. His mills went day and night, stopping never except on Sabbaths. The ground seemed to give forth iron and lime wherever he dug tor it. The town became the thriftiest settlement in the Allegheny valleys, and Jabel Blake was the earliest riser and the hardest delver in the State.

It happened at the end of two years that rheumatism and an overstrained old age brought Jabel Blake to bed, and a flood, passing down the valley, aroused him, despite advice, to his old indomitable leadership against its ravages. He returned to his rest never to arise; for now a fever laid hold upon the old captain, and he talked in his delirium of Judge Dunlevy and his bank, and he was attended all the while by Arthur MacNair.

One night, in a little spell of relief, Jabel Blake opened his eyes and said,

"Arty, I dreamed old Jabel Blake was in heaven, and that he had founded a bank there!"

"Jabel," said the young Congressman, "you must have some treasure laid up there, old friend. And not only in heaven, but in this world also. Look on this happy family redeemed by your sacrifice!"

Jabel Blake opened his eyes wider, and they fell upon Judge Dunlevy.

"This is a great honor," he said; "Ross Valley brings her great citizen back."

"No!" cried the Judge, "it is you, Jabel, who have brought us all to your bedside to do ourselves honor. Here are Elk MacNair and my daughter, who owe all their fortune to your fatherly kindness, and who have come to repay you the uttermost farthing. Providence has appreciated your sacrifice. They bring for your blessing, my grandson, and the name they have given him is Jabel Blake."

"Jabel," said General MacNair, "take with our full hearts this money. It has been honestly earned with the capital of your bank. We return it that you may fulfil the dream of your life!"

Jabel Blake took the money, and a smile overspread his face. His hard lineaments were soft and fatherly now, and their tears attested how well he was esteemed. He drew Elk MacNair's ear to his lips, and said feebly, and with his latest articulate breath,

"General, you owe me two years' interest!"

They laid Jabel Blake away by his fathers, and on the day of the funeral Ross Valley was crowded like a shrine.