"I want to know how you formed your opinion of political matters--of Senators. Is it possible, sir, that you have actual knowledge of actual happenings that give you the right to talk as you have? I want to know if I must feel shame, feel disgrace, sir, to be a Senator from Mississippi; that State, sir, that the Almighty himself, sir, would choose to live in if he came to earth." "There, there, Senator, don't take too seriously what I have said," Sanders replied in reassuring tone, having outlined his course of action. "I lost my head because you wouldn't promise me something I needed--that appointment for Hagley. What I said about Senators an' such was all wild words--nothin' in 'em. Why, how could there be, Senator?" This query was a happy afterthought which Sanders craftily suggested in a designedly artless manner. "Just what I thought and know!" exclaimed Langdon, sharply. "It couldn't be; it isn't possible. Now you go, sir, and let it be your greatest disgrace that you are not fit to enter any gentleman's house." "Oh, don't rub it in too hard, Senator. You may need my help some day, but you'll have to deliver the goods beforehand." "I said, 'Go!'" "I'm goin', but here's a tip. Don't blame me for fightin' you. I've got to fight to live. I'm a human bein', an' humans are pretty much the same all over the world; all except you--you're only half natural. The rest of you is reformer." After Sanders' departure the Colonel sat at his table, his head resting in his hand, the events of the day crowding his brain bewilderingly. "The battles of peace are worse than any Beauregard ever led me into," he murmured. "Fighting o conquer oneself is harder than turning the left flank of the Eighth Illinois in an enfilading fire." But the new Senator from Mississippi did not know that for him the wars of peace had only just begun, that perhaps his own flesh and blood and that of the wife and mother who had gone before would turn traitor to his colors in the very thickest of the fray. CHAPTER III HOW TO PLEASE A SENATOR The International Hotel in Washington was all hustle and bustle. Was it not preparing for its first Senator since 1885? No less a personage than the Hon. William H. Langdon of Mississippi, said to be a warm personal friend of Senator Stevens, one of the leading members of his party at the capital, had engaged a suit of rooms for himself and two daughters. "Ain't it the limit?" remarked the chief clerk to Bud Haines, correspondent of the New York _Star_. "The Senator wrote us that he was coming here because his old friend, the late Senator Moseley, said back in '75 that this was the best hotel in Washington and where all the prominent men ought to stay."